Be doubly forewarned: This book may shock you with reminders of how loose and free and high the '70s were -- at least in Key West, 128 miles from mainland Florida. You may miss the '70s -- or wish you hadn't missed them.
In "Mile Marker Zero: The Moveable Feast of Key West," William McKeen, a journalism professor who penned Hunter S. Thompson's biography, takes on the whole Key West scene in its glory days. (The word AIDS is mentioned only once in passing.) It was populated by Thompson, Tom McGuane, Jimmy Buffet, Jim Harrison, Margot Kidder, Peter Fonda, Tennessee Williams, the ghost of Hemingway, all of their groupies, and others whose names you don't know -- including Bum Farto -- but whose stories are vivid (vivid red, in Farto's case) and memorable.
Margot Kidder, brief wife of Tom McGuane, is quoted as saying: "As a group, they were embarrassing. One on one, they were sweet, gentle guys, lost, gentle souls."
McKeen is no Hemingway, but several of his characters are, or were, great writers and/or storytellers, which saves this book. The index does not include the F-word, perhaps because it occurs a thousand times. Thankfully, he includes a "where are they now" final chapter that reminds us that, unless we die young of our excesses, most of us do grow up and slow down, still cherishing, of course, those times when together we desperately sought, in alcohol, drugs and sex, the elusive comfort of confidence.
