Key West is a place that can only be explained by the people who live there.
It is sometimes a state of mind filled with junk stores, good food and lots of colorful people. It is all those things, but so much more, you could write a book about it. Which brings me to another book, which I wrote with Clay Greager, one of those colorful people.
When I met Clay he owned a t-shirt shop on one of main streets in Key West. It was called “Last Flight Out" and there was lots of Vietnam and airplane stuff in the window. There was no way I could stay outside, so I went in. There were people milling around and I noticed that the owner was telling interesting and insightful stories. There were no chairs, so I sat down in the corner where I listened to Clay’s stories, and took some political calls - probably from candidates or their staff people. What I didn’t realize was that Clay was listening to my call at the same time I was listening to his stories.
When all the customers were gone he turned to me and said, “Who the hell are you?” Over time we started to talk almost every day. It was often about politics and his poetry which was beautiful and unforgettable. He told me he wrote the poems for his daughter, but put some of it on Last Flight Out t- shirts. The poems were so inspirational that Tony Robbins -- the life guru stopped me on the street to ask me where I got the shirt.
Here’s one of my favorites:
CLOSE YOUR EYES WHAT DO YOU SEEYOUR LAST FLIGHT OUT WHAT WILL IT BE
AN ENDLESS ROAD AN OPEN DOOR
YOUR LAST FLIGHT OUT
WHATS IN STORE
SEARCH YOUR SOUL
AND YOU WILL FIND
YOUR LAST FLIGHT OUT
IS A STATE OF MIND
He also did some t-shirts of things I said like, IT COULD ALWAYS GET WORSE. We also wrote texts that made us laugh, often about politics or the state of the world. I saved all the texts and after a few months I said that what we’ve written so far could be a book about who should be the President. And who should run the government. The book is a civics lesson, but uproariously funny and not political. One day when I was in the store I met a couple who had been married for years. They might have been celebrating their anniversary. She was seriously fat and he was a normal size. Clay asked him to come close so he could ask him a question.
Clay looked the guy straight in his eyes and said, “so you made a deal with your wife didn’t you. You told her she could get as fat as she wanted, as long as you didn’t have to talk about Vietnam.”
The shopper just shook his head and asked Clay how he knew. Clay told him to talk to her. Their lives didn’t have to be lived separately. I saw him do this a number of times and it always ended with “welcome home brother."
We had almost nothing in common, he was a two time helicopter door-gunner in Vietnam, while I was in the streets, protesting the war. But we both had serious concerns about the direction of the country, democracy, and civil liberties. I loved him like a brother, and I think he felt the same way about me. He was such a talent in so many things. Writing, thinking, and helping people- which was a real talent. He made friends easily. When we were asking for blurbs for the book he asked “the naked cowboy” ( the Times Square singer who has a degree in psychology) to write one for us. They met in the store and got to be friends. Claysie, as I called, him was a jewel of a guy. Kind and generous. He had his faults, who doesn’t. He adored his wife and kids and was sad that he couldn’t express his feelings the way he wanted to. That surprised me since the poems he wrote for his daughters were so genuine, and he admired the strength Maxine, his wife, had to put up with him. I called him today just to check in which we often did and left a message. His beloved wife, Maxine called me back to tell me Clay had died in October, she apologized and said that she thought she sent me a text, and she probably did but I didn’t see it. She said he died peacefully in his sleep. I think I know where he went on his last flight out. Rest in Peace my dear friend.