The Key West citizen. [volume] (Key West, Fla.) 1879-current, 1949-04-21
Key West Given
Boost In New
York Paper
j. Donald Cook Write,
About Island City In
keeeni Sunday Issue
Of New York Times

Of New York Times
The New York Times Sunday
issue Of April 10 carried q story
shout Key West in j. Donald
Casks column Speaking of
books". The article appeared in
the Times book review section.
The article follows.
Before getting down 10 brass
larks. q few flash-backs Of Key
West: the strange and delightful
combination Of burning sun made
welcome by the fresh GOODNESS of
TIE steady blowing trades; the
annual Hover show, with its fine
display OF highly original shadow
boxes, Us wealth OF tropical
blooms, and the fascinatingly
woixied descriptions of the herbs
End simples and their uses, col
lected by the Negro exhibitors,
which ! regret not having jotted
down; the most dilapidated taxi
cabs stlll capable of motion that
I have ever seen, the dives of Du-
val street, each with its gambling
room In the rear; the little Puerto
kican strip teaser, with her Mari
juana dance, the like of which
was never seen al the old Irving
huriesque, the browsing patios
back OF the old houses; palms
rustling at night, with their gen.
tie surf-iike sound, and over all
the great night skies, with the
huge, slowly drifting cloud mass
es seeming so near that one
might climb a long ladder and
touch them-these are a little of
Key West.
And yet a few more; the
clear aquamarine of the Gulf
Stream, twelve miles off the Key,
where Commander Close took me
fishing in a Navy picket book,
and l caught my first shark; Ell
mer Davis, the caustically ur-
bane, complete with precise black
tie. reminiscing at his hard-earn-
ed ease over drinks at the Casa
Marina; the lovely Sarah Palfrey
Cooke, former women's national
tennis champion, playing on the
Casa's courts with that seeming
ly effortless ease which is the
poetry of motion.
Then the youthfully venerable
George A. Hough, most-painted
OF American newspaper editors,
who broke me In as a cub on The
New Bedford Evening Standard
more than thirty years ago, mix
ing his monday pink gin before
his evening switch 10 Bourbon,
while the tropics-loving Bob Thi-
ellen insistently shuts the window
to exclude the chilling Ito him)
Key West Air; mine host Harry
James Mitchell of the Hibiscus
as gifted in his sensing of his
guests wishes as he is in the re-
markable photographs for which
he will some day be better
known.
But down TO earth: once again
this department finds itself chas-
tened, due to this apparently in
corrigible habit of sticking out its
neck. AS a tail piece to my I'M
grateful proposal for the submer-
gence of large part of the Flo
rida mainland, | spoke of some
the Key West Cook Book was the
remarked that SO far as | know,
the Ke West Cook Book was the
first volume to be published by a
woman's club. Even sun cannot
conceal my bushes. Detroit, a
city TO which l recently referred
here an terms which will never
be quoted by its Chamber of
Commerce, was, / learn, Key
Vests predecessor by several
years, also by means of cook
book
"As If that were not retribution
enough, comes Professor w. 0.
Farnsworth of Northwestern uni
versity, reused from his lolling in
the sun at St. Simon's Island, Ga,
TO proclaim that a cook book
equally exotic and unusual
(terms which / applied to Key
Vests product) was long ago
produced by the members of the
cassina Garden Club of st. ST.