The Key West Citizen

ELMER DAVIS, KEY WEST MAN, OPENS FLOODGATE OF MEMORIES

Every time Elmer Davis, Key West's oldtime chum comes to town he gets a write-up in The Citizen. Susan Anthony's article about him in Wednesday's Citizen was among the best, but a 18-word remark he made while here five years ago caused more stir than anything else he has said since he has been visiting the Island City.

On that occasion Davis was interviewed for The Citizen by John R. Vosburgh, and, in the course of the talk, Davis said:

"What Key West needs more than anything else is another Garden of Roses."

That assertion made a good many local churchgoing people squirm, but Key Westers generally smiled understandingly and approvingly. Two other famous men, Baritone John Charles Thomas and Novelist Ernest Hemingway would have applauded Davis' statement, for they also loved the geniality and quiet atmosphere of Pena's Garden of Roses, tucked in back of a house across Emma street from Jackson Square.

The Navy, in expanding in Key West, had swallowed up the Garden of Roses and Davis, Thomas, Hemingway and many another devotee of quiet sociability felt lost when they returned to town and wanted to take a friendly drink.

No drunks were allowed in the Garden of Roses; no noise issued from there, except informal concerts by artists who gave their services freely for what, in concert halls, they would have been paid thousands of dollars.

The writer was in the Garden one afternoon as a guest of John Charles Thomas, who, accompanied by his pianist, sang that stirring melody, "Kathleen." The listeners were spellbound, so much that Thomas had concluded 10 seconds or so before they, as though actuated by a single impulse, broke into applause. But man has the capacity of changing instantly from deep emotion to joyous laughter. While a group, surrounding Thomas, was congratulating him, he spied Hemingway in rumpled trousers, his shirt opened to the third button and his face bristling with a stubby beard, entering the Garden. Thomas broke through the crowd and hastened to meet Hemingway. Each put an arm about the other and, Thomas said, "The treat's on me."

"No, no, on me," Hemingway rejoined

As they walked toward the bar, Thomas resumed, "On me, on me, on me, on me," to the tune of the "Barber of Seville," a comic opera in which he had appeared many times before enthusiastic thousands. When they stopped at the bar, Pena raised his hands and, trying to imitate Thomas' tone, sang:

"Gentlemen, the treat's on me."

Though we may not agree with what a man considers a wholesome pastime, yet it is his privilege to view it as such. It was for that reason that Davis, Hemingway Thomas and many Key Westers regretted the passing of the Garden of Roses.