Wondrous Birds—Our Keys Adventure

I must admit that until Audrey and I took a trip to the Florida Keys a few weeks ago, I had never seen a pelican up close. Then we went to an unusual tourist attraction called Robbie’s of Islamorada, where you could pay a fee to feed small fish to large hungry tarpon competing in an enclosed pool—if you could keep a flock of in-flying pelicans from trying to horn in on the food. Or you could save money and just observe the pelicans, which is what Audrey and I did. 

I don’t recommend Robbie’s very highly, but it is unique. And the pelicans are gentler and prettier than I thought they would be. Here are some I bonded with.

The scene was closer to one that involved Brett and some pigeons in Savannah when he was three. . .

. . .and less like Tippi Hedren’s ordeal in The Birds.

Before visiting Robbie’s, my total pelican experience revolved around a limerick that most of us have read or heard:

A wondrous bird is the pelican.

Its beak can hold more than its belican.

It can hold in its beak

Enough food for a week

And I don’t see how in the helican.

I pretentiously recited the limerick aloud to the birds and identified its creator—the humorist poet Ogden Nash. Wrong! 

I did some quick research and discovered that for oh-so-many years, Ogden Nash has been receiving credit for the work of another less acclaimed but well deserving comic poet and newspaper columnist named Dixon Lanier Merritt. When I discovered my error, you could have knocked me over with a (pardon the expression) feather.

Birds seem to be a big deal in the Florida Keys. In Key West, our next destination after Robbie’s, we encountered dozens of chickens roaming free on streets, sidewalks, and restaurant porches. What’s the story with these fowl, known as “Gypsy chickens”? No one knows for sure. But the chickens are allowed to roam free, and the crowing of the roosters not only greets the morning in Key West but all hours of the day. They fit right in with the Key West lifestyle. One island native explained the noisy chickens this way: “They’re like some of the people down here – they don’t know when to quit.”  

The pelicans and chickens were just two of the unusual things we encountered in the Keys. Some of the humans were pretty outrageous too!

My Uncle, the Mystery Man

Audrey and I took a trip to Key West two weeks ago. It was our first visit there, but it turned out to be a trip back into my family’s history at the same time. And it put truth at last to a family legend.

My father was the 11th of 12 children. Which means that if we had ever held a family reunion on my father’s side, there would have been a pretty big crowd. We never did. In fact, I never even met most of my father’s siblings. That makes me pretty sad because the ones that I met were friendly and funny. And the men all looked and sounded a lot like my father, as do my brother and I.

My Aunt Libby was noted for making the best fried chicken and biscuits in East Texas, according to my father. I got to sample them when I was eight, and they were great.

On the same trip to the Deep South, I met my Uncle Aaron in Greenville, Mississippi, and he and several other cousins let me win in a game of penny-ante poker. I was even allowed to keep the 35 cents I won. These are strong memories.

I saw my Uncle David several times over the years, and I am still close with his three children—Jake, Larry, and Sara Hannah.

But I have perhaps the strongest affection for my father’s brother Sam, whom we called Uncle Bookie. I am not sure why, but I am pretty sure he never took bets from anyone. It was probably the way his twin sister Stella or one of the younger children muddled the word Brother. Or maybe not.

That is only one mystery connected to my Uncle Bookie. He came and went into my life many times during my childhood. During the spring, he and a friend named Jeri, who was his travel companion and may have also been his girlfriend, would often drive to and from Florida from their home in Washington, DC. Many years, on their return trip, they would arrive almost unannounced at our house in Savannah. Actually, they did give us a brief warning. One or two hours from Savannah, they would call to say they would soon be passing through. My mother would act annoyed by the short notice, but she would always invite them to dinner and to stay over for the night.

I shared this memory with my cousin Sara Hannah recently, and she echoed it with one of her own:

Uncle Bookie would just blow in to Oil City [Louisiana] unannounced also...Mama and the rest of us were delighted. My favorite memory (or, at least, one I can remember) is when he blew in driving a new blue (maybe a Chevy) convertible.  I was in high school and lived about ten miles from school. Uncle Bookie insisted that I gather my friends and drive to North Caddo High School in his new vehicle.  Coming home, I passed a car and blew my horn. The horn would not turn off for miles and all the way into our driveway.  I was so anxious about a 'rebuff.'  Not sure, but I have no memory of any reprimands. This wonderful, somewhat of an enigma, uncle remains one of my favorites. 

Which brings me to the Key West mystery. Uncle Bookie spent many years in the super market business. He was in charge of purchasing for a large chain in Washington. My father said that Uncle Bookie had gotten his start in the food biz working as a purchasing agent for President Harry Truman’s yacht the Williamsburg. I wondered how true the story was, and I now had a chance to find out.

The Little White House in Key West

The yacht had been based at the Naval Air Station in Key West, a part of which was set off as the Truman Little White House. President Truman and his military and political entourage would spend several weeks each spring and fall in Key West, where Truman could be informal with “the guys.” Bess and Margaret were not invited, as far as I can tell, though Harry would call them most evenings.

Audrey and I toured the Little White House, and I asked the guide if there were any records of staff of the Williamsburg. He directed me to the site’s website which contained detailed logs of each of Truman’s 11 visits to Key West. I scanned the logs and found one small entry in the ninth log—March 2–22, 1951. The entry lists the Williamsburg staff who embarked with the president on a Key West fishing trip. One of them was "Chief Commissaryman S. Goodman," my own Uncle Sam.

If that weren’t proof enough, I remembered a picture that had been sent to me by a cousin from Mississippi several years before. Here it is:

Harry Truman and my Uncle Sam (plus a big fish)

Truman looks pretty relaxed in his bright island shirt, but the man behind him in uniform is a little more formal. That’s my Uncle Bookie. I know because he looks so much like my father.

I am guessing that the large fish on the dock was either caught or purchased and will become the President’s dinner that night. I can even let my imagination go wild and hope that the fish was caught on my uncle’s line. Why not?

So we found a little family history at the Little White House in Key West and another reason to have special feelings about a mysterious uncle.