Lovely day for it

It was a glorious day, clear and breezy, so I napped.

Because it was the first day in about a month (which felt like a year) that I had:

-- No campaign.

-- No Fantasy Fest.

-- No houseguests.

-- No dinner guests.

-- No one coming for drinks.

-- No state funeral.

That last one was just yesterday, the all-island sendoff for Capt. Tony: fishing- boat captain, bar owner (his saloon was the site of the original Sloppy Joe's on Greene), raconteur, skirt-chaser (at least 13 children by his four wives and a few others), gun-runner, gambler, chain-smoker, onetime mayor -- literally, one two-year term, because everybody figured he could screw it up just about as well as anyone. (He said the hooker vote put him over the top.) And, until Nov. 1, living legend.

He packed an immense trove of experience into 92 years, and his saloon was one of the first gay-friendly bars in Key West, which may be why the Navy put it off-limits for a while. But his orientation was definitely elsewhere. Even into his early 90s, long after he'd sold the bar, he'd show up there to smoke, drink, tell how he discovered Jimmy Buffet and sign body parts for gleeful women.

So the Conch Republic declared a holiday, and held a street parade down Truman after his funeral at St. Mary's, which turned up Duval and into Greene into the street in front of Capt. Tony's Saloon, where there were bands and songs and a dove-release and much revelry.

Nothing like it since Captain Outrageous, a bird of a decidedly different color, was piped out early last year.

There was the police horse with empty boots in reversed stirrups. There was the full CR Navy brass in dress whites. There were the Defenders of Ft. Taylor, with the mounted cannon they fired. There was the CR Marching Band, complete with banjos. There was the Hon. Sir Peter Anderson, Secretary-General of the Conch Republic, sounding a shell and driving a pickup with a likeness of the captain in the truck bed.

We watched the parade and went to Mangoes for lunch, and I lifted a mojito to the guy.