I left Tim another phone message today, letting him know I began vacationing in Key West in 1975 -- before I moved there in 1980, visiting the artist Bill Brockway (who summered in Cape May where I was in business), and we would eat at his ex-wife Gail Brockway's "Las Palmas del Mundo" restaurant, named for the palm collection Peter Whalen (a Whalen Drug Store Heir) planted.
Gail, a self-taught Chef from northern New Jersey, made the BEST HEALTHY FOODS, and got NATIONAL ATTENTION from food magazines. There were lines to eat there off season, and the restaurant was NOT in a tourist section!!!
Of course, Bill Brockway (who later came out GAY and eventually died of AIDS), knew everyone, including Nancy Forrester, who owned a great old house on Elizabeth Street and the whole actual forest in the center of the block. People started anonymously leaving unwanted Parrots there, so Nancy PROTECTED THEM.
She even briefly married her pathetic cousin Ron (about 1979), a ginger who drove a pink Cadillac convertible and destroyed antique books to individually frame the engraved illustrations, to make money. They both had HUGE TEMPERS and chased each other around the kitchen THROWING KNIVES at each other, and deeply gouging the industrial butcherblock table.
Ron was also Gay, so she kicked him out after a year, and found a VERY HOT OLD BLACK GUY who specialized in Wildlife Care, so she took HIM as her PERMANENT LOVER.
She and her sister, Dee Dee, came from a wealthy Coal Baron family, about 100 miles north of Pittsburgh, PA, and when Nancy's mother discovered that Nancy was ALSO fucking the parish priest, Father O'Boyle, she had a FIT, and sent Nancy to live in the tropics on enough money to never have to work again. Her sister Dee Dee went too, and they BOTH invested in Gail Brockway's Las Palmas restaurant.
And yes, Peter Whelan was their first cousin -- how INCESTUOUS!!!
Nancy Forrester, today:
Now, here is ONE customer review of my Memoir that gives you an idea of HOW I WROTE IT:
Being a life-long admirer of the work of Tennessee Williams, I thought this book may bring a particularly different insight into a man whose life was mainly shrouded in secrecy. To my delight, the author was able to take me back in time and put me in the "room" with Tennessee Williams. This book is extraordinarily well written and allows the reader to "see" or be a "fly on the wall" during the final years of Mr. Williams life. It is remarkably candid and appears to be an unbias telling of the real story of the great and often eccentric and manic author/playwright. And even though I now know some of the secrets Mr. Williams tried so hard to keep, the writer does not damage the character of the author but leaves you with a broader understanding of just who penned some of the most remarkable stories of the generation and gives you the hunger to read everything ever written by Tennessee Williams.
And AMAZING is that while I worked for Tennessee Williams, I had NO IDEA of how wealthy my distant Kenan cousins were -- the Casa Marina was not even renovated from being a RUIN until right before I left Key West. Who KNEW was Tennessee Williams's CLOSEST (and I am now completely convinced, BEST FEMALE) friend, "Texas" Kate (Schweppe) Sharp, Moldawer, and later McNamara!!!
Kate had a charming (if smallish) house on Elizabeth Street -- next-door to one owned by Steve Rubell, an owner of Studio 54 in Manhattan, and we partied with Steve and his Key West guests, too!!!
continuing . . .
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