Back in the late 1960's, when I escaped the concrete jungle of New York and came to Key West, I had the good fortune to arrive during the heydey of a terrific jazz club in a setting right out of a Humphrey Bogart movie. The club was owned by jazzman Danny Knowles (a.k.a. Captain Hornblower), who became a friend of mine and who commissioned me to make a replica in gold of his beloved flugelhorn, dents included.

Hornblower's was was located upstairs in a ramshackle old building on Front Street just a bugle blow from the waterfront. The jazz room was encircled on three sides by French doors which opened onto a balcony amidst the tops of the surrounding palms. The place was magical. It was like being in a tree house. In those days one really could expect one of the local wild parrots to try and steal a potato chip out of your hand; and when the wind blew, a palm frond could sweep your margarita right into your lap. Here in this storybook setting Danny electrified the tropical nights with his fellow musicians, one of whom, the terrific pianist Dave Burns, still lives Key West and only recently gave a concert consisting entirely of his own compositions. Dave's work, "Los Camellos", with its swaying gait was one of my all-time favorites.

The back room, where all the musicians camped out after the club was closed, was huge. The only illumination came from a few candles on a large round table in one corner of the room. In this smoky halo of light gathered a cast of local characters that could best be described as looking like the crew of a pirate brigantine. The lone ashtray, a big square glass receptacle surrounded by a forest of beer bottles, was filled with a mountain of stubbed out butts from every kind of cigar and cigarette imaginable. Why the place didn't burn to the ground every night is a miracle.

Danny Knowles reigned supreme in this lair as he did on the bandstand. He was a big man with a big heart and a pair of lungs that could blow a horn with the strength of a force five hurricane, then temper it down to the gentle breeze of a tropical night. Danny loaned me the money to get a safe for the little cubby-hole of a jewelry store I had back then. The safe was so small that it could have been hauled off by a puppy. But it made me feel secure.

When Danny asked me if I could make a miniature copy of his flugelhorn in gold, I felt like I had been commissioned by the royal court. Every day I would go pick up the horn around noon (when I was sure everybody at the club was awake) and return it around six in the afternoon. I did this over a period of a week, always having a friend of mine accompany me on the trip back and forth, so certain was I that somebody was bound to kidnap the baby. When the horn was finished, I went to the club around two in the morning and waited until the last set was over, then followed the band into the inner sanctum.

"It's finished," I said.

Danny grinned like a child getting a new bike.

"Lemme see," he said, taking the small velvet bag in which I had placed the gold miniature and going over to the candle lit table. The light was so dim, all I could see was a tiny glint of gold as he removed the little flugelhorn. Danny squinted at it, then put it to his lips.

"Toot, toot," he said.

I felt like a million dollars.

"Have you got a better light?" I asked. "I want to show you the dent."

"Over by the bed," he said, pointing to the dim silhouette of a big canopied bed in the opposite corner.

He turned on a lamp on the bedside table and sat down on the bed.

There was a scream and a scramble that made my heart jump. He had sat on a waitress and her boyfriend making babies under the covers.

Captain Hornblower's closed in 1994, and Danny and his wife Patsy moved up to the panhandle of Florida. Today, every time I pass by the old building on Front Street, I hear the distant sound of the flugelhorn high in the palms and shed a little tear for the days gone by.