Author: reweidman50

The Wheels of Routine

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“To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise, you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen who play with their boats at sea … ‘cruising’ it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.

‘I’ve always wanted to sail to the south seas, but I can’t afford it.’ What these men can’t afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of ‘security.’ And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine – and before we know it our lives are gone.

What does a man need – really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in – and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That’s all – in the material sense, and we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention for the sheer idiocy of the charade.

The years thunder by, The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed.

Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?” – Sterling Hayden, Wanderer (1963)

A River of Grass

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“There are no other Everglades in the world. They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth, remote, never wholly known. Nothing anywhere else is like them; their vast glittering openness, wider than the enormous visible round of the horizon, the racing free saltness and sweetness of the their massive winds, under the dazzling blue heights of space. They are unique also in the simplicity, the diversity, the related harmony of the forms of life they enclose. The miracle of the light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and of water, shining and slow-moving below, the grass and water that is the meaning and the central fact of the Everglades of Florida. It is a river of grass.” —Marjory Stoneman Douglas, The Everglades: River of Grass, 1947

Caribbean Club, Key Largo

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According to its official website, the Caribbean Club was opened in 1938 by legendary automotive and real estate promoter Carl Fisher “as a poor-man’s fishing retreat.” It later became a gambling den. The bar served as a filming location for exterior shots from the classic 1948 film Key Largo, which was directed by John Huston and starred Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Edward G. Robinson. The photo above was taken by legendary commercial photographer Joseph Janney Steinmetz (1905-1985). The Caribbean Club is the oldest bar in the Upper Keys. Today, the bar offers “live music, daily happy hours, waterfront sunset views and a dog-friendly atmosphere.” Ideally located at Mile Marker 104 bayside, it is open 7 AM to 4 AM “every damn day.” Note: The Caribbean Club is a cash-only bar with an onsite ATM. The bar served as a filming location for the Netflix original series, Bloodline. According to Jimmy Buffett, “It was a bar like many others and then it wasn’t.”

 

An Inexhaustible Well

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“Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.” – Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky (1949)

Ham on Rye

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“I wasn’t a misanthrope and I wasn’t a misogynist but I liked being alone. It felt good to sit alone in a small space and smoke and drink. I had always been good company for myself.” According to Charles Bukowski’s fourth novel, Ham on Rye (1982), he had a miserable childhood courtesy of his father, a sadistic tyrant who regularly beat young Henry and his mother over the slightest infractions. To make matters worse, Bukowski suffered from a rare skin disorder, diagnosed as acne vulgaris, once he reached his teens. His only refuge was the local public library, where he voraciously devoured the writings of “The Lost Generation” school of American novelists such as Ernest Hemingway (whose later works he despised), Sherwood Anderson and John Dos Passos, as well as the works of European writers, including Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground, Knut Hamsun’s Hunger and Louis-Ferdinand Celine’s Journey to the End of Night. Nikki Sixx of Mötley Crüe once called Ham on Rye “an education in rebellion.” Who can argue with that? Pick up a copy today and enlighten yourself!

Donn Pearce

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By Rich Weidman

Donn Pearce wrote the 1965 novel Cool Hand Luke, which was loosely based on the two years he spent on a prison road gang. This fact alone makes him cooler than any of us. After Pearce sold the movie rights to Warner Bros. for $80,000, the novel was turned into a classic 1967 film of the same name directed by Stuart Rosenberg and starring Paul Newman in the title role of “Lucas ‘Luke” Jackson” (his signature role in my opinion). The film also starred Strother Martin (“Captain”), Harry Dean Stanton (“Tramp”), Dennis Hopper (“Babalugats”), Ralph Waite (“Alibi”), Wayne Rogers (“Gambler”), Anthony Zerbe (“Dog Boy”), Richard Davalos (“Blind Dick”), Joe Don Baker (uncredited as “Fixer”), Jo Van Fleet (Luke’s mother, “Arletta”) and Joy Harmon (“The Girl”). Pearce himself made a cameo in the film as a convict known as “Sailor.” Although he co-wrote the script (for an additional $15,000) with screenwriter Frank Pierson (Dog Day Afternoon), Pearce absolutely hated the movie. “I seem to be the only guy in the United States who doesn’t like the movie,” Pearce told the Miami Herald in 1989. “Everyone had a whack at it. They screwed it up 99 different ways.” For example, Pearce thought that Newman was totally wrong for the part. In addition, it was actually Pierson who added the famous line, “What we’ve got here is failure communicate,” to the script. However, Pearce argued that the “redneck” Captain would never have had such a word in his vocabulary. The line later turned up in two Guns N’ Roses songs: “Civil War” from Use Your Illusion II (1991) and “Madagascar” from Chinese Democracy (2008). George Kennedy ended up winning a “Best Supporting Actor” Oscar for his amazing performance as “Dragline.” Newman was nominated for a “Best Actor” Oscar, but lost out to Rod Steiger for In the Heat of the Night. Pearce and Pierson were also nominated for a “Best Screenplay” Oscar, but lost out to Stirling Silliphant for In the Heat of the Night. Most of the filming itself took place not in Florida but in Stockton, California. The infamous boxing scene between Luke and Dragline took three days to shoot. Stanton taught Newman how to play “Plastic Jesus” on the banjo. Believe it or not, Telly “Kojak” Savalas was initially tapped to play Luke, but he was filming The Dirty Dozen in Europe at the time (Jack Lemmon also briefly considered for the role!). In addition, Bette Davis turned down the role of Arletta that went to Jo Van Fleet.

Donald Mills Pearce was born on September 28, 1928, in Croydon, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. After dropping out of high school in the 10th grade and serving in the United States Army during World War II (he lied about his age to join up and then went AWOL), followed by a stint in the Merchant Marine, Pearce got involved in counterfeiting, safecracking and burglary. In 1949, he was arrested in Tampa for attempting to rip off a movie theater and served two years hard labor on a Florida chain gang, mostly at the Tavares Road Prison in Lake County (which he labeled “a chamber of horrors”). It was here he heard about the legend of “Cool Hand Luke,” who was killed during a prison escape attempt. In a 2005 interview with the Sun Sentinel, Pearce remarked, “I never knew Luke … He was a legendary con, famous for escaping. I did know the walking boss who shot him. I put all these stories together. I mixed legends and used myself as a model. The real Luke never bet the guards he could eat 50 hard-boiled eggs. That was me. They called off the bet after they saw how much I could eat.” Pearce later lived in Fort Lauderdale and supplemented his writing efforts over the years with work as a bail bondsman, private investigator and bounty hunter (AKA “skip man”), as well as freelance journalist, writing for the likes of Playboy, Esquire and Oui. Pearce was also friends with literary outlaw Harry Crews (A Feast of Snakes). He and his wife Christine raised three sons in South Florida. Pearce’s other works include Pier Head Jump (1972), Dying in the Sun (1974) and Nobody Comes Back (2005), a novel about the Battle of the Bulge during World War II. According to Pearce in the 2005 Sun Sentinel interview, “The world really isn’t evil, it’s just dumb … There’s no cure for dumb. Dumb will outsmart you.”