I was jogging down Whitehead St. in Key Weird when I heard, “Look honey, it’s another one of those cute, little, carved pineapples.” The sun-pinked, cruise ship, tourist lady looked at her beer-bellied husband who ignored her. He sat on a step in front of the Hemingway House eyeballing a local sun-bronzed hippie girl in a tie-dyed string bikini. The resulting “smack” echoed down the street behind me as I passed.
I stopped jogging when I reached my parked truck. I wasn’t doing any kind of fitness running, just trying to beat the notoriously fast, Key West parking meter timers. While I leaned against the fender sweating and puffing like a rookie angler on the losing end of a swordfish tug-of-war I looked over at a bubbling little fountain with a pineapple on top.
“Hmmm…looks like a blog subject.”
Here’s a little history regarding the significance of the welcome pineapple. Seems it all started with the Carib people way back when. Our boy Christopher Columbus picked up some pineapples and brought them back to Spain in 1493 and the King thought these things were just the best.
When other Spanish explorers sailed back to the Caribbean Islands they figured out that the Carib Indians looked on this fruit as a sign of welcome. If the Spanish set one out at the entrance to a village they would be welcomed in. All the better to swipe any gold the native people had laying around. Nice… real nice.
Anyway, this symbol spread back to Europe, then to the colonies, etc. Key West is and was very much a seafaring town. In days of yore when a Cap’n returned from sea he would impale a pineapple on the porch rail to signify he was back and ready to see visitors. Kind of a waste of good fruit if ya ask me.
Pineapple carvings, statuary, abound on our islands. This very traditional kind of garden art is still alive and well in a very, very untraditional town .
So, I plugged another few quarters into parking meter, spending my hard earned change just for you folks and wandered around Old Town snapping pineapple pix and dodging cranky tourists…by the way, I swear, honest... I never took any photos of good looking hippie chicks.
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14 comments:
Great example of ya learn something every day! Growing up in Virginia, we had loads of colonial-style pineapple decoration in the house, but never any fresh pineapple ;) Now i get it. (and i get fresh pineapple) thanks for the background info!
Liz
Interesting.
interesting story on the pineapple! I remember learning about it as a sign of welcome in South Carolina, but didn't learn the speared pineapple part - I can really picture that!
Funny story about the tourists. Bet you have lots of stories about them!
Great history on the pineapple.
Enjoyed your story! I have a stone pineapple in my garden. Maybe, I put it in a wrong place - it seems as it is welcoming deers to my garden! They pass it every time on the way to my roses and phloxes.
Scott, your posts are so interesting! I never know what to expect, but I had to look once I read your post title. You are a great writer!
Nice educational post, No Hippie Chicks but, interesting nonetheless
Really interesting background info! I always wondered about that but hadn't looked it up...now I don't need to;-)
Love them so much, do miss seeing pineapples and palms too, being in Tn. not much of them up in this area. lol.
Very interesting post... love all the various pineapple motifs.
Thanks for your nice comment on my blog (A Small Tucson Desert Garden). Hope the critter cages work for you. Great blog!
Brad
A very informative blog post.
Love your post and let us hope it cools down soon. We too are experiencing a heated October in the islands. I have added your blog to my blogroll.
So many pineapples! The part about spearing them on the gate is new to me too.
The unusual tropicals in your other posts may tempt me into some online ordering.
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