Coconut Mary and Telephone Hill
Back In the 70’s the street that crossed the island at the south end was “Telephone Street”, it ran from Queen Street to King Street and located there was the telephone transmitting office and just north of the old cemetery. At this point there was a microwave tower about 20 feet tall because it was just “shooting” the telephone signal from the island to Miami across 50 or so miles of the Atlantic Ocean.
Here is where “Coconut Mary” had her enterprise, under the coconut trees on the end of the island. If you wanted a coconut on Bimini you could just pick one up any where, but if you wanted it opened, that is to have the husk removed, you could find something to hack it off with and possibly do harm to your hand or fingers, of you could just go to “Coconut Mary”. There was a piece of iron, a three or so inch angle iron sticking out of the ground about 3 feet, it was probably from some construction project, who know when? Mary would take the coconut and deftly “bash it’ on the iron a few licks and then peel the coconut and viola it was ready. She had a knack and this was her only talent as far as I knew. Give Mary a quarter or whatever and she was happy.
The Bimini Dog
The origin of the “Bimini Dog” is unknown as far as I know, I do know that the gentry of the island wanted them gone, but, alas there were there and knowing the work ethic of the “Biminites” they are probably still there. The belief is that someone on a boat, some time in the distant past had lost or abandoned their “pooch” on the island and then another of different gender was abandoned and there you have it. The most inbred breed of canines in the known world. There were probably a few “kept” pups, kept by the locals prior to the arrival of the first abandoned, but now there are hundreds of “Bimini Dogs” a mixture that is probably genetically unique, similar to the “folks” on Spanish Wells and the smaller islands of the Abacos, such as “Man O War and Green Turtle” cays. The gene pool doesn’t run very deep n the sm smaller islands due to inbreeding so as to not mix the races, however in the larger islands, mixed race marriages are more than common they are the rule in some cases rather than the exception. 
No trip to the Bahamas was complete with out a visit to the “Compleat Angler Hotel and Bar. This was not Izaak Walton’s “Compleat Angler” I doubt that old Izaak ever visited the Bahamas, but if he had he would have found himself in good company, literarially speaking, it was a favorite hangout of “Papa” Hemmingway and many others of the literary bent,
“Papa’s” rooms was just up the first flight of stairs, a short flight at that, about only 4 or 5 risers and then stumble or tumble as the case may be into the first door on the left, just over the bar. I guess that if I had been drunk enough the night I spent in Ernie’s room I could have gotten to sleep, but as the case was I tried to retire at about 11 pm and the party was still going on down below. After tossing and turning for about 45 minutes I gave up and returned to the party.
The “Ring on the String” game was going strong, and some unknowing tourist was being taken by one of the “Local boys”, The “junkanoos” a local band were playing their version of “calypso rock n’ roll” and everybody was trying to out talk of out yell the guy next to them, compleat din in the Compleat Angler. The drinks were good and strong and the rum flowed freely.
One night back in the late 70’s I danced with the governor of Minnesota and I danced with his wife too, I must have had at least one too many “Goombay Punch”.
The Compleat Angler Hotel was a modest three-story hotel on the island of Bimini in the Bahamas. Built by Mr. Henry Duncombe and his wife Helen in 1935 following destruction by fire of their first house, "The Dower Hoouse" on 18th November 1934. The hotel was then damaged by the 1936 hurricane but quickly repaired. Mr. Duncombe had been the Island's Commissioner during the American Prohibition Era. It was during that initial Dower House period, when there was no hotel on the island that the Duncombes, with their two daughters, Patricia and Barbara, would take in visitors such as Ernest Hemingway. The hotel became famous due to its association with Ernest Hemingway, who regularly visited the hotel between 1935 - 1937. It is also claimed that he worked on the novel To Have and Have Not. Hemingway drank at The Compleat Angler between fishing trips in his vessel Pilar in search of marlin, wahoo and sailfish in the pristine waters around Bimini. He almost always stayed in room number 1. Henry Duncombe died in 1949 but the hotel continued under the proprietorship of Mrs. Duncombe until she retired and sold the hotel to family friends, the Brown Family, in 1973. My first visit was in July of 1959 after sailing from Ft Lauderdale , on a 19' O'day Mariner, we welcomed the stay even though it was expensive ($25 per night, back then), because I had been sleeping in the bench seat of the sailboat or on the beachs for a week when I checked in to the "Angler".
The hotel became a major tourist attraction for Bimini and housed a museum of Hemingway memorabilia including signed copies of his work and numerous photographs. Generations of anglers followed in the novelist's wake to crack open a beer and play a game of ring-toss after a long day on the water. The Angler was an unofficial museum, with one room devoted to Hemingway's exploits and most of its pine walls decorated with decades' worth of fading photos and news clips of assorted anglers and trophy fish. The lodge, with around a dozen rooms, drew plenty of non-fishing tourists as well, including some infamous ones; Lucile Ball, Zane Gray, President Nasser of Egypt but most memorably, Colorado Sen. Gary Hart's presidential aspirations sunk in 1987 after an overnight trip there aboard the yacht Monkey Business. A grinning Hart was photographed with Donna Rice, an attractive young Miamian who was not his wife, sitting on his lap on the hotel's pier. A less famous photo of Hart in the hotel's bandstand circulated among political reporters of the day and a Hart photo was displayed prominently in the lodge. From 1973 the hotel has been owned by the Brown family (a very warm and friendly family), a clan marked by tragedy. Harcourt Brown, who died in 1997 at the age of 83, had five sons. Three died working for their father -- one was electrocuted, one was lost at sea when the family cargo ship went down and one was bludgeoned to death while doing the accounting for the hotel, friends said. The fifth son also died young, of natural causes. On January 13, 2006, the hotel was destroyed by a fire and the owner, Julian Brown perished in the blaze after leading a guest to safety. Brown's father, Harcourt Brown, bought the inn in 1973. The hotel was constructed in 1935 by Helen Duncombe. Police said they did not know the cause of the fire.
King Street is the westernmost street on the ocean side of the island but some day it may be the easternmost. as local legend has it the main street, the one on the harbour side is called King or Queen Street, depending on who is the monarch at the time, we’ll just have to wait and see if they change the name of the street when Elizabeth II gives up the throne to Harry,
My God, I hope Charles never gets to wear the Crown.
