My family relocated from Long Island to Cape Coral (SW Florida) in 1970. I was only 5 years old but I’m one of those odd ducks who has clear memories of my early youth.
I remember details of things that happened in our home on Arbell Drive in Bayshore, NY. Loose crabs in the basement when my dad was a crabber in Long Island Sound, how I got a stitch in my upper lip, and running to the brick wall in our front yard when I heard sirens because my dad may have been hanging off the back of a fire truck, are all memories prior to age 5.
In 1970 we rented a house on Delido Court near the Cape Coral Yacht Club where my mom would let me fish all night long on the city pier. My dad was one of 7 cops in the city while the past Chief, Jay Murphy, was a volunteer officer at the time. I’m still in touch with some of the people I knew back then.
In the late 70's, cocaine was starting to gain popularity as the recreational drug of choice, so smuggling in south Florida shifted from the everyday marijuana imports to cocaine. Florida’s Governor asked President Carter for funding to recruit 50 officers, and they needed “cowboys,” which were officers who didn’t follow the rules.
The badged outcasts were offered jobs in the Keys including extra pay for a home on the water with what was known as the “Florida State Marine Patrol” at the time.
The plan was to station an officer every two miles from Key Largo to Key West with one task; to put pressure on smugglers. This was perfect for my dad, he wasn’t exactly the poster model for responsibility, and I got to grow up on the water in the Keys.
Charlie Rowell, owner of Rowell’s Marina in Key Largo, taught me to build custom fishing rods, which was my first business. I even learned to fish right in my back yard, something else Charlie had a hand in. I wrote a book about my memories and experiences from growing up there.
When I was about fourteen I worked at the boat rentals at Pennekamp State Park for Howard Curtis, my all-time greatest mentor. We lived in Taylor Creek Village which was a short boat ride across Largo Sound from where I worked so dad often came to Pennekamp by boat for coffee in the mornings.
One morning in State Park’s marina an officer from the Florida State Marine Patrol raced into the park, jumped into his patrol boat, and left the marina on a full plane with sirens blasting and lights flashing.
That officer was Ed Sharpe, who ran a 48’ Cigarette offshore race boat as a patrol boat, a gift to the state from smugglers who were one day in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The scene was an attention getter, especially for tourists, yet Pennekamp had law enforcement action a couple times a week back then so we quickly kept getting the park ready for the day’s tourists and visitors.
A couple hours later I found out that while my dad was crossing Largo Sound on his way to Pennekamp for morning coffee, he noticed a shrimp boat grounded in the flats. He approached to assist and could smell Marijuana, aka Pot, Ganja, Bud, Reefer, plain old Dope, or if you were a sophisticated, Mary Jane.
He boarded the boat, saw the load, and as he escorted three guys onto his boat, he got shoved into the water and they attempted to run him over with his patrol boat.
He unloaded his sidearm their direction as they stole his boat which was found in mangroves later that day. The three guys were never found, but there was blood in the boat.
A lady enjoying a waterfront breakfast on her porch overlooking Largo Sound had a story for her grand kids. She saw the whole thing happen and called the police.
Later that day, the Infante, Pennekamp’s Snorkeling Flagship, was going to have to find a new dock for the afternoon. US Customs, with guards and a couple snipers, was using their space to unload and stack more than 400 hay-sized bails of, well… “South Florida Hoochie.”
It was quite a sight, especially for visitors from all over the world visiting Pennekamp that day.
For evidence, each bail had to be cut open for a sample which went into a smaller bag, then both the bail and sample get assigned a number for proof each bail was contraband.
It was windy and each bail cut open had a small amount blow into the water. This caused a weed-line to form on the water which collected in the corner of the marina. It disappeared by the next morning, which oddly enough remains a mystery to this day….
After they were processed, those bails were eventually delivered to the incinerator plant on Card Sound Road just north of Key largo where two kids I knew from school worked.
A couple weeks later, those two kids showed up at school with new matching Pontiac Trans Ams. Apparently Customs loaded bails into the incinerators, but never bothered to see if the incinerators were lit.
This all happened prior to the attention Margaritaville created in the Florida Keys, before the population boom and the pollution that came with it, and long before all of the red-lights and shopping malls came in.
It was quite an exciting time to be in the Florida Keys.
I was up in Key Largo on what was called "the shallow end" of the 100 mile long island chain. Further down in the Keys life got even more exciting. There were several bars the police would not enter because they were the least armed in the building. Cops had an agreement with one bar in Key Largo and another on Boca Chick Key back then; "If you send him out, we wont come in."
Around this time a local smuggler started a rumor that my dad was “skimming” and had bags of money hidden in the walls of the trailer we lived in. I knew better. We were broke.
A couple of hired thugs came to tear the walls apart not knowing I was home skipping school that day. I ended up hog-tied with a gun in my neck being asked where the money was. They tore apart the trailer, but there was no money.
When they left I was able to knock the phone off the wall and dial with my nose, so I dialed the number to my job at Pennekamp and Sgt. Gene Gray, my dad’s sergeant, was there when the call came in. Minutes later there were a dozen cops in my yard.
My dad got home as this was unfolding and saw all the cops in our yard and wondered what I did this time?
I described to the police what I could remember of the guys who paid the visit, and a deputy found one of them a few blocks away. They brought him to the trailer for a visual ID, and a dozen cops turned their backs while my dad did much more than what a cop would go to prison for these days.
Dad eventually left the Marine Patrol to work for the Florida City PD, the last city south of Homestead as you’re headed to the Keys. Knowing what to look for on the roads from experience working in the Keys, he often sat on the side of US-1 with his drug-sniffing dog watching vehicles come north out of the Keys.
An RV only a cop would think was suspicious went by, and he followed to pull them over. He let the dog out who proceeded to tear the spare tire off the RV as 2 guys ran into the woods. He didn't bother with the guys running, dad wanted what was sure to be inside.
When he opened the door to the RV he found about twenty large green military duffle bags all full of high-grade pure cocaine. It was the largest cocaine bust in the nation at that time.
When dad moved into the city I stayed in the Keys. As a fresh high school drop-out I joined the Coast Guard but got kicked out after only 2 weeks into Boot Camp, apparently I wasn’t ready for discipline at the time. So I pointed my compass south and headed back to the Keys.
While illegally drinking at Holiday Isle in Islamorada I saw a Bon Jovi video with all the hair flying, girls tossing cloths on the stage, all the flashing lights, and that was it, rock star was the next thing to cross off my list.
Within days of seeing that video around age 17 I found myself in California with no clue how to play any instrument, but I had a dream and long hair… what could go wrong?
I was enjoying the life in a garage band while working at a local music store, but within a couple years I found my talent levels to be in the minus factors, so I quit the rock scene and commercial fished for a couple seasons in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, to make money to come back to Florida…. where I started publishing Nautical Mile.
Don’t all Coast Guard flunkies and washed out rock-stars end up writing books and publishing magazines in Florida?
Dad disappeared in the 90’s, he never could “fit in” and I don’t know where he ended up.
It was 1977-1982ish and I sure had a great life as a young teen in Key Largo with him.
A couple years ago (2023) I was playing with my dogs while a TV was on and I heard my dad’s voice. The show playing was the documentary “Cocaine Cowboys” where dad earned a 30-second interview with his Florida City bust.
I was a runaway and a drop-out, and luckily I had great mentors, who was usually a boss at a job, who looked after me and tried to guide me the best they could.
Hal Chittum (Chittum Boats) was one of them. Hal had a retail store in Islamorada at the time and hired me to build custom rods for his customers.
I ran into Hal at the Stuart Boat show a couple years ago, we both agreed we lived in the Keys at its peak. If not for the mentorship from people like him, I could have ended up smokin’ pot working at a marina in the Keys and living in a trailer on the ocean. HEY... WAIT A MINUTE!
Jim Griffiths
Publisher, Nautical Mile
