To get a good background of any place I visit, I always try to find a
native to learn from. The natives have stories and insights that can add
an extra perpective and unique point of view to a story. Like I always
say, it pays to be inquisitive.
And then there's Maude...
I
had the good fortune of interviewing Maude Lowe Thompson, a Key
West resident for 83 years. She is the aunt of a friend of mine and I
was thrilled to meet such a long-standing native.
Maude Thompson was born and raised in Key West and has never lived anywhere
else. She grew up with five sisters and two brothers and has seen the
many changes time has brought to her tiny island.
Maude has lived in her present home since 1947. Her grandfather, Joesph
Lowe, from Green Turtle Bay in the Bahamas, worked as a cabin boy on ships,
saved his money and in his early 20s bought his own ship and started a
fishing business. Maude's father Joseph, worked in the same business and
once appeared as a character in one of Hemmingway's letters. Maude's father
Joseph later drowned off Islamorada in the epic 1935 Labor Day hurricane.
But Maude remembers her childhood fondly and reflects how times have changed:
"Growing up, we never locked our doors. We didn't even have a key!"
she says with a laugh. "Besides, everybody knew everybody; at night
we'd all sit on our porches and talk. We didn't have TV. We talked or
we played outside."
"And
we walked everywhere," she continues, with a wave of her hand, "Movies,
church, Sunday school. Oh, my dad had a car, but we didn't always use
it and in those days you didn't even need a license to drive."
Maude recalls when her older sister Eloise, at 16, took the family's Ford
out for an 
unauthorized
drive and didn't know how to stop it. "That Eloise, was always getting
into trouble," Maude recalls. "One New Year's Eve our father
caught her wearing knickers
and told her if she didn't take them off and wear something decent she
couldn't go out for New Year's. She never did take them off."
Maude tells
me about the movie theatres on Duvall street that used to cost a dime
to get in. And how if somebody had a car, she and her friends as teenagers,
would all chip in a nickel for gas. (Can you imagine? Nickels for gas?
Today that would get us, about oh, a half a foot down the street.)
Maude
knew the Swamp Gang, too (remember them from a few pages back?) "They
used to kill cats and sell them as raccoons," she recalls. "One
time my husband Si brought home what he said was a raccoon for me to cook.
But I wouldn't cook it. It looked like a skinned cat to me. I gave it
to my neighbor, she cooked it; made like a stew from it with carrots and
potatoes." I asked Maude if she ate any. "Not me," she
says making a face, "No, sir."
Maude tells me how people used to buy ice from the iceman for their home ice boxes. "He'd come around, and sell us big blocks of ice. Of course, you couldn't keep things long in the fridge in those days--only as long as the ice would last. You'd have to go shopping for your fresh food every day."
Maude Thompson is a sharp, energetic and busy woman. She had to fit me in between her luncheons with the "Conch Ladies" (a group of local women who meet weekly for lunch) and her Bingo games.
I ask her what she thinks of all the changes that have occured in Key West since she was a girl. "I don't like it. Things are different now," she says with a sigh, "But I wouldn't live anywhere else."
(My heartfelt thanks to Maude Thompson for this interview.)
And
finally, I decided to choose one store to feature as a unique place to
shop...more>>
