As I was going through my collection of old photographs looking for something to feature on a recent blog post, I ran across the photograph on the left that I took back in the late 1970s during a family trip to Key West. My sister Susan and I came down to Stuart, Florida from Chicago to visit our parents, Nelson and Mary, who retired there a few years earlier, and we decided to drive from there to Key West. I haven't been back since, although it was and still is a great place to visit. When I look at that photograph, I think of how Susan insisted on a hamburger from McDonald's instead of the sandwiches my mother had made, and we wound up at a park in Marathon, the mid-point between Key Largo and Key West, to eat lunch. On the other hand, Susan looked at the photo and noted it must be pretty old, since her hair was still it's original color - "ugh." Funny the things different people remember looking at family photographs.
Originally, Key West was a working class fishing village, and during the depression, when Ernest Hemingway lived there, most of the residents were on welfare. In the 1960s, it was a gathering spot for hippies, and later became popular with the gay community. Now, from what I have read, it is unaffordable for all but the rich, and many Key West natives (called Conchs) have moved to towns in northern Florida such as Gainesville, Lakeland, and Ocala, which are all far more affordable. And as I remember it, I took the photograph on the right of my parents around sunset at the Mallory Street Dock, where the crowd still applauds when the sun sets over the ocean. Are my parents not perfectly dressed for the 1970s, or what?
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