History Lost to Today’s World
I did something recently that is a little unusual for me. At 53 years of age, it was only the second time in my life I've ever done it. Last year was the first. I took a spring break trip.
After such a wonderful time with my family in 2023, my wife and I decided to take a trip again with the kids for spring break. Nothing overly complicated, but incredibly worthwhile time with our preteen children. Quality family time.
This time we tried the Florida Keys. We finished the trip with a day in Key West, Florida. We had stayed for the five nights previous halfway up the Keys but thought it would be fun to see Key West as a place we probably will never get to again and that seems to have a cultural outcry as part of Americana. Plus, we could fly out of there (and that is another entire story—one of the oldest, least updated, unprepared airports in the US—I feel better having said that now).
Well, I was right and wrong—on it being “Americana.”
My definition of Americana is more historic. Maybe foolishly utopian. More like the 1950s in a time and place that doesn't exist anymore. My hope was that Key West would be a throwback to days gone by. Old buildings, almost untouched in some ways by modern society. I wanted lighthouses and the history of a distant location away from the mainland of modern society---museums, century old houses and a slowness of a Saturday afternoon.
That part I got totally wrong.
The reason that Key West fits “Americana” is that it is completely commercialized—all too much like many other parts of the United States and modern world. We parked literally 1/2 a block away from a cruise ship with 3,000 people that had unloaded into the community. It was the tourist traps of tourist traps. While there were some historic buildings and stories, they were in the incredible minority. What there was in mass numbers were T-shirt shops, overcrowded common restaurants, very little uniqueness, and a loss of the historic Key West that once existed.
I'm glad I went once. I can say I was there. But I doubt I'll ever go back. What I wanted, I did not get---and I am probably in the minority and flowing upstream. What I wanted was more of the way former president Harry S. Truman saw Key West when he would winter there in the 1940s and 50s. What I got was a similar tourist location that you can find almost anywhere else in the world.
