Written by J. Mitchell Brown
Photography by Donna Huffman

t’s about this time every year that I develop an itch that just needs scratching. Summer is winding down, the sound of shrimp nets hitting the decks of boats echoes off the river after dark, the cicadas are in full swing. I’m not yet ready for the cool weather, but I’m certainly over the heat. I’m redesigning the plans like “exercise” and “lose a few pounds” that I never did during the summer, using “it’s too hot” as my scapegoat. I’m ready to have one last big blow-out before I “settle down” for the fall. My itch gets more intense, tickling me from below the surface of my skin. Like a dog with a flea just behind his ear, I know the only way to get rid of this itch is to scratch it. Hard. Vigorously. Eyes-half-closed-satisfyingly. It’s time to travel.

There are two weaknesses I can admit to. Well, at least which pertain to this article. I have a weakness for Las Vegas and one for Key West. And when I feel the need to satisfy myself by a weekend of out-and-out debauchery and gluttony, these two towns fit the bill just fine. Both towns, in their own way, assault every sense your mind can appreciate with sights, sounds, smells, and tastes that you just can’t find around home. I could never live in either Las Vegas or Key West, but you’ll never hear me complain about having a plane ticket to go visit – as long as I have one to come home.

My dilemma now is I can’t do either just yet, as much as I want to. I mean, I guess I could go out to Vegas for a weekend…hop on one of those super-saver fares where they cram you in the back of a plane but you’re so hopped up on adrenaline that you would be OK with Delta agents strapping you to the tail fin with bungee cords and zip-ties as long as it meant you could hitch a ride. But it’s not an option if I want to preserve my marriage. We’ve got a lot going on with transitioning to a new house, business meetings in less-than-exciting towns like Rocky Hill, CT, and Sioux Falls, SD, and family events slated on all the weekends. I already have plans to do Key West on the horizon, but that’s not until Memorial Day and that’s waaayyyy too far in the future for me to get overly excited about. So as it is, I am a racehorse in the gates. But the gates won’t open. I’m kicking and stomping and snorting, but can’t do anything but just calm down. My wife is like a jockey, soothing me and petting me and offering me a carrot. Before I know what happens, I bet I’m strapped to some plow doing work-work until such time I can find another race, and that race probably not being until next Memorial Day weekend.

But I have this friend, a real prince of a man, who has given me a gift that allows me to have a slice of that tropical heaven that I so desire, whenever I want it. I ran into him at Scott’s one day and he asked me to stop by the house, that he had something for me. I was tired and on edge and hungry to boot, but I had not visited with my friends for quite some time. Filthy from yard work and with my mind on a bratwurst and a cold beer, I agreed to swing by to shoot the breeze, so to say, with my pals. When I pulled into their driveway, my mind was on admiring the new boat sitting in his side yard, than what he brought around and put in the back of my truck. In a little six-inch pot grew a branchy, stout Key Lime tree with velvety green leaves.
To know Ted Huffman is to know the definition of genuine. Short and stout, like a fire plug, with a thick pony-tailed mane and beard, there is nothing pretend about Ted, or his affability. After every time I visit with Ted, I feel selfish and mean about myself for not having – or making – more time to hang out with him, for every time I do, I leave feeling better than when I arrived. Nonetheless, Ted is about as Key West as Ernest Hemingway himself, and to know Ted is to be able to picture him sitting comfortably at the bar at Pepe’s or at Blue Heaven sipping a margarita or enjoying a cigar that probably came from an island 90 miles to the south.
But, this little tree was not just any lime tree that Ted picked up at Lowe’s or Home Depot. It’s not as though he said, as an afterthought, “Hey, that’s a good price on that thing. Let me get that and I’ll give it to somebody.”

Ted knows how much I like Key West. He knows about my itches and the glassy-eyed look that I get when we trade battle stories about long nights in the Old Town. Ted knows that we share the knowledge that Key West is so much more than Duvall Street, just as we know that Bluffton is so much more than just Calhoun Street. This tree was no ordinary lime tree, it was a true Key Lime tree, able to produce those perfect miniature limes that turn a margarita into a glass of liquid gold, and a pie into pure silk from heaven.
Ted grafted my tree from an original Key Lime tree that he brought back from Florida a long time ago. Even if he didn’t know what he was doing, and his graft was unsuccessful, the attempt in and of itself is a genuine gift. I don’t know if my mind would think that way. Maybe I’d think while I was down in Florida, “Man, I bet so-and-so would like one of these trees. But, since I can’t travel with a tree, I’ll just buy him a lime.”

But Ted is different. Months ago he thought of me. He cut his tree for me. He painstakingly nurtured a delicate graft over weeks and weeks for me. He watered, fed, protected a new plant for me. If it failed, I have no doubt he would have tried again…for me. It’s the gift of a plant, but I’m not sure the plant itself was the gift. For me, it was more what the plant promised, and its magical ability to place me in a town a thousand miles away just by looking at it. I know that I won’t be able to even look at that tree without thinking of all the laughs and smiles I’ve had in Key West, and I certainly won’t be able to look at it without thinking of my friend, Ted.

As he crushed one of the velvet leaves for my wife to smell the unmistakable aroma of a true Key Lime tree, I felt my itch begin to disappear.

And speaking of gifts of plants, last month’s article was on agave. Sure enough, my wife’s colleague showed up to work one day with a gift for me…an Agave Americana. All I need to do now is figure out where Triple Sec comes from and I’ll have my own margarita factory! Maybe next month I’ll write a feature on money trees and see who shows up with one of those….