20 Years ago

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1927: Pan American Airways flew its first flight from the newly constructed Key West International Airport. Pilots Huey Wells
(Looks like a Ford Tri-Motor)


Pan American Airway first flight from Key West to Havana in the plane General Machado. From the left Henry Barcello, Fred Gelhaus, Gus Alfonso, C.D. Swinson, Charles Morgan, Custom Officer, John Beck, Immigration Officer, C.D. "Slim" Pippinger and Stephen Floyd Whalton October 1927

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1948: President Harry Truman was re-elected in an upset victory over Gov. Tom Dewey of New York. After his victory President Truman announced he was going to Key West on vacation.

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Still there?

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Mae Tarracino beside a station wagon with ad for Capt. Tony's boat Greyhound III. There is a large jewfish mounted on top of the car.

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Ramond Navarro with his sightseeing bus and his dog Teddy.



1951: Teddy the dog on the sight-seeing vehicle died. Teddy was the nationally known, 15-year-old dog that rode on top of Ramon Navarro’s sight-seeing vehicle. He had been featured in countless magazines and newspaper articles.

1963: A U-2 spy plane crashed into the sea west of Smith Shoals Lighthouse

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Christmas Tree from the sea. Photo by Don Pinder.

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What the heck is the tree part?

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Coral.

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Tony Curtis as a Naval officer during the filming of Operation Petticoat in Key West in 1959.

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I think this Garrison Bight, where Roosevelt turns into Truman .



The Gill Havana Motel at 2401 North Roosevelt Circa 1960.

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What's this think stuff? You're supposed to know!!!

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1822: Crews arrived from Mobile, Alabama with material to erect the first house on the island.

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Hard to believe it was that late. I would have guessed there were homes there way before that.

When was the Fort in the Tortugas built?

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Florida was acquired from Spain by the United States in 1822. The Dry Tortugas were seen as a strategic point for the control of the Florida Straits and the Gulf of Mexico. Work on

a lighthouse on Garden Key started in 1825. Planning for a fortification began almost immediately, and construction started in 1847. In 1856 work on a new, more powerful

lighthouse on Loggerhead Key was started to replace the Garden Key light.[11]

Work was half complete in 1860. Construction continued into the American Civil War, but eventually stopped, and the fort was used as a military prison. It was here that Dr. Samuel

Mudd, who was convicted of aiding John Wilkes Booth—the killer of President Abraham Lincoln—was imprisoned. Mudd later was freed after averting a viral outbreak. This use as a

military prison continued until 1874.[11] With the introduction of coal-fueled ships, the Dry Tortugas became a coaling station for U.S. Navy ships.

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The opening of the Overseas Highway on the Seven Mile Bridge at Pigeon Key for an AP wire story on March 29, 1938.

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That had to be a big deal.

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Sloppy's!



Sloppy Joe's Bar at 201 Duval Street. Photo from the Library of Congress taken in January 1938 by Arthur Rothstein.

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Reef Perkins learned his Key West lessons
BY MANDY MILES Citizen Staff
mmiles@keysnews.com
Nearly 40 years ago, Paul Sawyer, a former county attorney, taught Mark “Reef” Perkins two crucial lessons about life in Key West.

“Number one, Key Westers will forgive you for anything — unless you cheat them. That they’ll remember for generations. And number two, if you’re getting run out of town, get in front of it and make it a parade,” Perkins said Monday, sitting in his pickup in the dust and gravel of Robbie’s Marina on Shrimp Road.

He was reflecting on his 46-year tenure in Key West. Well, 46 years minus the four months and 17 days Perkins spent as a guest of the federal government.

“From 1974 to ‘84 I was on the water, trying to make enough to buy Miami, as the song goes, but I pissed it away so fast,” he said of his pot-smuggling days. “And it was only pot, ever. And I never got caught in a boat. When I did get caught we were in a plane. And it was the real deal. We had the plane and the bales when we landed in Savannah, Georgia — then we had DEA agents all over us.”

Perkins remembered his attorney, who worked for the nonprofit group NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) representing people arrested on pot charges.

“Everyone else in my group was launching these big defenses, and my attorney basically told the judge, ‘Look, your honor, my client is sorry he did this. He just got back from Vietnam, which messed him up a bit, and basically he’s sorry about the decision he made.”

The judge handed Perkins a sentence of four months and 17 days while his “colleagues” got years.

“They all thought I’d rolled on them for a reduced sentence,” he said. “But it turned out, the judge had lost his son in Vietnam and when he looked at me, he knew it could just as well have been his son getting home from over there.”

Perkins spent four years in the Army, doing jobs in Southeast Asia that don’t get public citations.

“I was in a group called Special Warfare,” he said. “We didn’t really exist.”

By the time he made it home, Perkins was ready for something easier. Yeah, right.

So he became an experimental diver, jumping out of helicopters to recover nuclear torpedoes.

“Any job title that starts with ‘experimental’ attracts a serious bunch of crazy sons of bitches,” Perkins said laughing. By 1970, when he sailed into Key West with his friend, Bob Lehman, Perkins was ready to relax. He and Legman founded Ocean Charters, offering sailing excursions and other charters.

“We were right down at the Pier House, back when David Wolkowsky owned it,” Perkins said, nodding to most of the workers and boat captains who walked or drove past on Shrimp Road.

One of his old boats was on a trailer there — one of the original red-and-white Towboat US towboats, which Perkins started in Key West and operated for 25 years.

“I had Key West Harbor Services doing open ocean tows and that sort of thing before Towboat US did any of it,” he said. “They used to send their captains down to me to learn how to do open-ocean tows, so when they started a franchise in Key West, I became Key West’s Towboat US for 25 years.”

“Oh, and we had the ship’s chandlery, Perkins & Sons, shop on Fleming Street for years,” he remembered fondly.

Perkins has done nearly everything one can imagine on, in and under the water — and lived to tell about it, barely.

He published several of those high-seas adventures in recent years in a memoir called, “Sex, Salvage & Secrets.” Perkins also just released a second work of fiction called “Deep Air.”

“I was supposed to head to New York City, not Florida,” he said, starting up the truck to head to his next appointment. “But I was hitchhiking and the guy who stopped was heading to Florida. I said, ‘Then so am I.’ “

And Key West hasn’t run him out of town.

mmiles@keysnews.com

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1855: William Hackley recorded in his diary: Rose at 4:30 and walked on the beach. Returned home and bathed. At 8 a.m., barometer 29.47.5, thermometer 80, wind northeast 3, clouds 5. Several soldiers were put in jail by the magistrates for rioting, they threatened to burn the town down. A large patrol was sent out.

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Jeane Porter and Capt. Bra Suanders on right with the large ray in 1938. The Heritage House Collection, donated by the Campbell, Poirier and Pound families.