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KEY WEST

CAPTAIN TONY’S SALOON on Greene Street is shrouded in myth and mystery. According to local lore, it was constructed in 1852 and was an icehouse, which doubled as the city morgue. In 1898 it supposedly housed the Navy’s Naval Radio Station and reported the sinking of the USS Maine around the world. By 1912 it became home to a cigar factory and a few years later to a bordello and bar. When Prohibition shut down the bars and gin mills across the country, several different speakeasies occupied the building. As one was closed by the authorities, another soon opened up—the last being The Blind Pig, which specialized in bootleg rum, gambling, and prostitutes.

When the Prohibition Act was repealed in 1933, Josie Russell rented it and opened Sloppy Joe’s Bar. Ernest Hemingway spent many evenings there between 1933 and 1937, drinking with his friends. When the landlord raised the rent by a dollar in 1938, Russell moved around the corner on Duval Street, and the bar passed through several hands under various names.

In 1958 Captain Tony Tarracino, a charter-boat captain and the archetypical “Conch,” bought the bar and christened it Captain Tony’s Saloon. Tony owned the bar until 1989, when he sold it to run for mayor of Key West, but he was always a frequent visitor there until his death in November 2008.

The stories about Captain Tony’s Saloon are legion.

When the place was supposedly a morgue, bodies of unidentified people or those too poor to pay for a funeral were buried right next door where a pool table stands now. At some point when the area was just an open piece of land, a hurricane blew through, and the resulting water caused many of the bones to rise to the surface. Captain Tony decided to make a small cemetery and give them a decent reburial. Since so many of the residents of Key West were Bahamians and voodoo and Santeria practitioners—and staunch believers in ghosts—he had a small stone wall built around the area with bottles of holy water interspersed throughout it.

And there is the story of Reba Sawyer. Married, she had a long-term affair with a married man. They used to meet at the bar, knowing neither of their spouses would likely come near the place. She died in 1950. Her husband discovered her infidelity a few years later while going through some of her old letters and showed up at the bar one evening with a small tombstone that read “Reba Sawyer 1900–1950.” He had taken it from the Key West cemetery. He dropped it on the sidewalk outside and said, “Here. She liked to hang out at this place so much, she might as well stay.” Captain Tony brought the tombstone inside the saloon, where it still rests. Captain Tony didn’t want to leave Reba out on the sidewalk.

There is also Elvira. Her flat tombstone is part of the south floor of the building and reads:

“Elvira

Daughter of Joseph & Susannah Edmunds

Died Dec 21 1822

Ag’d 19yrs 8 Mos & 21 Days.”

Was this area a cemetery in 1822? No one knows.

A large tree grows in the middle of the bar area, which used to be an open patio. Legend says that a local woman murdered her husband and children one night and cut them into pieces. The residents of Key West were fairly openminded about almost anything. Some even figured that the woman’s husband deserved it, but they drew the line with murdering children. So a lynch mob seized her right from her bed—she was wearing only a blue nightgown—took her downtown to what served as the lynching tree, and hanged her.

A hangman’s noose is made with a large knot, which serves both to form a loop and also to break the prisoner’s neck. If the knot doesn’t do its job, the prisoner strangles to death, his or her face turning blue in the process. It was reported that is what happened to the “Lady in Blue.” The knot did not break her neck; she strangled to death.

Captain Tony was married three times and had thirteen children. He was said to have been a caring father and husband. But he always liked to keep his options open and maintained a residence for entertaining his various girlfriends above the saloon, accessible only through a ship’s hatch in the ceiling at the back of the bar. One night he heard the iron gate to the patio swing open and then close. He ran down to see who it was. No one was there. The next night the same thing happened. Again, no one was there. Tony had had enough. He figured someone had the key, so after the bar closed, he left his current paramour and sat in the patio behind the tree with the lights off.

The first few nights nothing happened. Then one evening he heard the gate creak open and looked around the tree. He was stunned to see a woman in a nightgown with a blue cast surrounding her. She walked right to the tree and disappeared through it. Captain Tony related the tale often in the years to come.

Tom Hambright, the Marion County Library historian, has some other ideas about these stories. In the first place, he doubts that Key West ever had a morgue until recent times, although there might have been some place used as a makeshift morgue during natural disasters or epidemics. When people died, they were usually prepared for burial right in their own homes and put in the ground fairly quickly, considering the heat and humidity of Key West. Having a hanging tree next to the morgue might also have been convenient, but there was a gallows at the courthouse, which a lynch mob may or may not have used.

He also questions the icehouse theory. It is doubtful that the building was used as an icehouse. Its walls are too thin, and there is sufficient evidence that the Shell Warehouse, which has thick stone walls, was probably the icehouse.

The date of the building is also debatable. There may have been something on the site in 1852, but there is strong evidence against that date. In 1905 Mr. Dee Forest built the Key West Naval Radio Station, the first in a chain of U. S. Navy communications stations extending from Cape Elizabeth, Maine, to New Orleans. Shortly after, he decided to compete with Western Union and built his own civilian radio-telegraph station on the site where Captain Tony’s is now located. He used the tree there as a base for his antenna.

What about Elvira? Captain Tony was a very kind and considerate person, even if he was promiscuous and eccentric. He loved to tell a good story, and he made up a lot of them about the saloon. If a story went over and interested people, he’d keep embellishing it, dragging it out as long as possible. After all, if people were in his bar listening to his stories, they also were drinking. It was good for business.

Allegedly, Tony found bones in a dry well next to the saloon. No one could identify them, of course. He felt sorry for whoever it was, so he made up a name, Elvira Edmunds, buried her in the bar, and put in the stone, believing that, whoever she was, she deserved to be remembered. No one knows for sure whether there is actually a body in the grave or not.

The same is true for Reba Sawyer and for the skeleton behind the bar, supposedly pieced together from three separate skeletons from the “graveyard” under the south floor. No one knows for sure.

Still, the saloon is no doubt haunted. Anita Pierce works at the bar and says that the pool room, which is located over an old cistern, is especially eerie. She won’t go in there by herself, nor will Trent Binder, a balladeer who performs at Captain Tony’s regularly.

One of Anita’s friends used to date the bar manager and would wait for him there while he closed up at night. One night she was sitting at the bar while he went “up the hatch” to lock up the evening’s receipts. After a few minutes, she thought she saw him come down and go directly into the women’s restroom. A moment later, he came down from upstairs again.

“How did you do that?” she asked.

“Do what?”

“A minute ago I saw you come down the stairs and go into the ladies’ room.”

“You’re crazy,” he replied. “I just came down from upstairs.”

They both went over to the ladies’ room. They could see light under the door and they called out. No one answered. Hard as they tried, they couldn’t get the door open, although they could see that the locking bolt was not in place. A little unsettled, her boyfriend told her to call the police. At that moment, a blast of icy air blew the door open and almost knocked the two to the ground. Completely unnerved, she went outside to wait. As soon as her boyfriend locked everything and started to leave, all the doors flew open and then slammed shut. When he walked around to secure everything again, all the doors were already locked.

Some people have supposedly photographed the Lady in Blue, and one woman reported an episode in the restroom. She, her sister, and her small son were walking by the bar one warm day and decided to stop in for a soda; during the daytime the bar provides an acceptable atmosphere for families. When they were finished, her sister went to the restroom while she and her son waited outside the door. When her sister came out, her son decided he needed to use the restroom also. Not wanting to send him into the men’s room alone, she let him in to the ladies’ room, knowing no one was there. A few minutes later her son came out almost in tears.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart? What happened?”

He replied, “There’s a blue lady in there. She told me to get out.”

Angry and confused, the woman rushed into the restroom. It was empty.

For color and Key West atmosphere, Captain Tony’s Saloon is a great place to pass the heat of the day or an evening. The entertainment is great, the beer is cold, patrons are friendly—and maybe you’ll get to meet the Lady in Blue.