The key to paradise, a white Buick,
the Blue Marlin, and a pink submarine.
The stars of my summer of 1958.
Hot pink is the color of tropical Key West.
From the garish bougainvillea spilling over every fence
and wall, to the petunias and hibiscus in its lush gardens,
to the houses and buildings themselves,
gaily painted in every shade of pink.
Conch shells, flamingos, and pink fish motifs abound.
Even the taxi cabs are hot pink.
Half Caribbean island, half New Orleans,
Key West is not like any place else on earth.
Welcome to the Conch Republic, says its airport sign,
and you'll see their flags flying all over town,
from the backs of bicycles, to flag poles,
proclaiming personal freedom, happiness,
individuality, fun, love, and romance.
But there was certainly none of that going on
in the big, white tail finned Buick that my father
drove grimly into Key West on my first, and most memorable
visit to the island in 1958.
In fact, my parents were not speaking to each other,
and they had not been talking much to me, either,
for the endless trip down the eastern seaboard,
except for Mama saying things like, "Lee, will you please
"tell your daddy to stop for more cigarettes?"
Which I would dutifully repeat, even though he was
sitting right there.
Or me screaming, "Can't we stop at Weeki Wachee Springs?
"Please, please, please!" as the billboard flashed past,
for I planned to be a mermaid when I grew up.
Nothing doing.
We pressed on south in the smoke-filled car.
This was a far cry from the way they had acted
all of my life.
In fact, as a child, I was horribly embarrassed
by the technicolor movie style
of my parents' passionate marriage.
My mother, Virginia Marshall Smith, nicknamed Jeej,
was a beauty whose flapper looks had exactly fit
the ideal of her youth.
My father was sometimes mistaken for F. Scott Fitzgerald,
the jazz age icon whom he resembled, but whose life
was the exact opposite, just as Key West
was the exact opposite of Grundy, Virginia,
the coal mining town where we lived.
We traveled to Key West because Daddy had been
stationed there in the Navy, and now he was recovering
from a nervous breakdown, as they called it then.
He was much better, but his months in the hospital
had somehow caused trouble in the marriage, as I was told.
So his doctor prescribed this geographical cure.
So far, the cure wasn't working.
Each night, in a series of little tourist cottages
was gloomy, with Mama and me in one bed,
while Daddy took the other.
Several times I'd awaken to see his bent shadow
outside the window pacing back and forth.
What if he had another nervous breakdown?
What if the marriage couldn't be cured?
But I loved that final part of the long drive
with the shimmering sea and sky surrounding us,
and the Florida Keys with their wonderful names:
Key Largo, Cudjoe, Sugar Loaf, Saddlebunch,
Raccoon, Stock Island.
"We're almost there," Daddy said.
Mama reapplied her lipstick.
And finally, we arrived in Key West,
the scruffiest, wildest town I had every seen.
A bright buzz of noise and color.
We turned left off Truman Avenue onto Duval Street,
and I caught a glimpse of a glistening patch
of ocean just ahead.
Daddy pulled into a placed name the Blue Marlin Motel
with a huge fish on its sign.
Mama and I waited in the car as he headed for the office.
The motel was made of blue concrete, two stories,
in a U shape, around a good-sized pool with a diving board
and a slide perfect for a mermaid.
"Wow, this is nice, isn't it?" I said to Mama,
who didn't answer.
Still, I was hopeful.
The Blue Marlin Motel was nice,
but was it nice enough to cure a marriage?
Mama smoked a cigarette while I watched a green lizard
zip up a wall.
Finally, Daddy got back in the car with a funny look
on his face.
"Girls, you are not gonna believe this," he said slowly.
"What? What is it?
"Is it bad news from home?" Mama asked.
Her pretty face was an instant mask of alarm.
"Oh no, nothing like that," Daddy said,
really smiling for the first time on the trip.
"It appears that this entire motel has been taken over
"by the cast and crew of a movie that is shooting
"on location right now in Key West over at the Navy Yard.
"There are only four rooms here that they're not occupying,
"and now we're got two of them.
"They asked me a lot of questions.
"I had to swear we aren't journalists or photographers
"in order to stay.
"And Lee," he added in a no-nonsense voice,
"I promised that you would not bother the stars.
"Do you hear me, or the crew, or anybody else?"
"Which stars?" Mama asked, hardly breathing.
She was already in heaven.
"Well, there's Dina Merrill," Daddy said,
"and Tony Curtis."
"Tony Curtis!" Mama and I squealed together.
We pored over the National Enquirer every week,
also Photoplay, and countless other movie magazines
which we read from cover to cover.
"And that's not all," Daddy said.
"Who?" we shrieked.
"Carey Grant."
Daddy was trying to sound offhand.
Carey Grant?
We couldn't believe it.
The most gorgeous, the most elegant,
the biggest star in Hollywood.
"The man at the desk says he's a real gentleman,"
Daddy said.
I was not so sure of that, thinking of his recent
love affair with Sophia Loren.
Mama and I new everything.
We were on the second floor of the Blue Marlin
where I had the smaller, adjoining room to myself.
I put on my bathing suit first thing while Daddy
fixed gin and tonics for himself and Mama,
and they went outside on the balcony together.
I ran down the stairs two at a time
and took a running dive into the pool.
The movie, which was named Operation Petticoat,
featured a real pink submarine that was anchored
in the ocean off Key West.
Its flimsy plot involved a Navy lieutenant commander,
Carey Grant, and his con man executive officer,
Tony Curtis who had to take a damaged submarine
into a seedy dockyard for repair during World War II
picking up a crew of stranded Army nurses on the way.
The only available paints were red and white,
hence its pink color, and the only available bunks
for the nurses were down in the submarine's tight quarters.
The geographical cure worked.
Mama and Daddy would go home to Virginia refreshed
and stay married for the rest of their lives.
He would run his dime store for 30 more years.
Surrounded by the stars in Key West,
Mama pepped right up, and was soon wearing high-heeled
sandals and a pink hibiscus flower in her hair.
Daddy went deep sea fishing with a guy named Captain Tony
and played poker with the film crew.
Every evening around 7:00, Mama and I seated ourselves
on a rattan loveseat in the lobby of the Blue Marlin
pretending to read newspapers while we eavesdropped
on Tony Curtis' daily call from the public telephone
to Janet Lee back in Hollywood.
It always ended with Curtis' words,
"God bless you, my darling."
Mom and I rattled our newspapers emotionally.
One day at the pool, Curtis offered me a package
of cheese crackers.
I saved it for decades.
Toward the end of our second week there,
one of the directors asked if we'd like to be
in the movie.
"You bet!" I cried out.
"Oh brother," Daddy said.
But there we were, and there we are in the film
to this day in the giant crowd on the Key West dock
cheering and waving hello when the pink submarine
comes into port at the end of the movie.
For more infomation >> Documentário: Terremoto Aleppo / Earthquake. Teaser - Duration: 1:47. 
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