As David Marks is fond of saying; "Welcome back!" When we finished handing all the spare change over the rail in Biscayne bay we were so exhausted we decided to anchor out overnight and try the whole thing again the following morning. Actually as you will remember, since it was only a page ago for you, the tug captain said "Just forget it and get the hell out of here!" Well, that turned out to be a fine thing for our heroes because it left them with about thirty five dollars that the frustrated and indignant tug captain didn't have the patience to wait for! Thirty five dollars in those prehistoric times was enough for another evening at Monty's. Today it isn't even enough for one round. So the intrepid crew took heart and headed back across the bay to Dinner Key, once again dropped the hook and rowed the dory in to the dock. After a few rum runners we were feeling pretty chipper again. Life is good! Naturally we had a great time at Monty's and after the place closed we went out to the Borey and passed out... excuse me... I mean went to sleep.
As unlikely as it may seem we had an uneventful and pleasant sail to Vaca Key. It was to be, unbeknownst to us at the time, the last pleasant sail we would ever have. All future sails would be fraught with interminable hours of being bored rigid punctuated by moments of complete and uncontrollable panic... but we digress.
Before leaving for our great adventure to the keys Lonnie had arranged a job at a swanky resort in Marathon on Vaca Key. Said job was a Monday night gig at the world famous (really) Anglers' Lounge at the lovely Faro Blanco Marina and Resort. You used to be able to rent a room at the top of the lighthouse for a couple hundred a night or something... unless, of course, you knew somebody. We didn't.
Anyway to make a short story longer the job was one of those "percentage" deals musicians do if they are 1.) Very desperate or 2.) Very broke or 3.) Very stupid and last but by no means least 4.) a combination of the foregoing. The deal worked like this: When Lonnie started performing the barman would take a reading from that 
shrine of all shrines, the cash register. At the conclusion of the evening the barman would "Z Out" (thats a term known to those of us in the business meaning to count the total taken in by the aforementioned register. The smaller amount is deducted from the larger (imagine that!) and the resulting remainder forms the pool from which the musician's paltry 10 percent is calculated. Many unpleasant things can go wrong as a result of this type of deal. Unfortunately the wrongness of these things is always visited on the performer. Very few restaurants will let an entertainer audit their books for the obvious reason.
So with the exuberance (and of course the abyssmal stupidity) of youth Lonnie continued on the sure trail to stardom. Lonnie was in his third month of making around $35 a night and had developed an undying hatred for Monday Night Football when a fortuitous ocurrance ocurred (my apologies to my English Prof.) One fine Monday the barman was laid low by an intestinal infection. Of course he had to be replaced by a replacement. Things looked bleak at first because the pinch hitting bartender was unaware of the arrangement between Lonnie and the management so Lonnie did not get paid that night. As a result he had to go the the office on the following day to collect his precious pittance. The owner of the resort said; "You've been doing really well up there on Mondays. No one else has ever made as much as you." Lonnie answered that he didn't see how it would be possible to do much worse than thirty five bucks for playing 3 hours without a break. The resort owner handed Lonnie $190 for the previous night's work. Yup, You got it! The barman was doing really well on Monday nights. For some inexplicable reason the barman never returned. We concluded he just couldn't stomach it! Faro Blanco turned into one of Lonnie's favourite gigs in the keys.
At the time Wendy was not involved in the music business. She took a job working for a veterinarian in
Marathon. We thought when we sailed to the keys that we would work a couple of nights during the week and be able to "hang out", to use the
colloquial term, the rest of the time. After all, as any true resident of the Conch Republic knows. there are only three legitimate approved activities in the keys. They are; Drinking, Fishing and Making Love (to use the polite term). One major factor ruined this lovely philosophy. In a word; Borealis.
The Borealis as we all know is a wooden boat. She fastened her bony hands around the collective colloquial throat of our heroes and began reciting the litany which continues TO THIS VERY DAY: Give me money... give me money... give me money... give me MORE money. Those are the words to her song. The music says; work on me unceasingly or I will fill with water and drop into the depths never to be recovered. In my belly will be EVERYTHING YOU POSSESS!
As you will come to understand it took a great many songs to satisfy the Dear Old Dowager. Lonnie is the thirteenth owner of the Borey. ALL of the others are DEAD.
Soon Lonnie was working seven nights and two afternoons. They never had a day off for the entire time they lived in the keys. A list of the places they worked is available elsewhere on this site so we'll only mention a few here. Now mind you the fact that we worked seven nights and two afternoons in no way got in the way of our having fun. As we said earlier Wendy was in the employ of a local veterinarian. In spite of the fact that Lonnie and Wendy were (and still are) married they liked to spend a lot of time together. Lonnie worked every night and Wendy's job at the vet was a "day job" as they say. Wendy had taken guitar lessons before she met Lonnie and she played the guitar pretty well. Since the music was going so well (and since they needed a LOT more money to satisfy the Borey's habit) it was decided that Wendy would play the bass with Lonnie. That, my friends was the beginning of what became known as Island Thyme. Lonnie and Wendy were much happier because they could now spend 24 hours a day together!
Wendy C and Lonnie D founded Island Thyme, now known as Heart Of Oak, in 1985. They
lived and traveled on the Borealis and played throughout the Keys and Florida.
The Quay belonged to a really teriffic chap named Gus (Konstantinos) Boulis. some of the more astute readers will doubtless have heard of him. Soon we were playing at all the Quays... the one in Key West, the one in Key Largo and occasionally the one in Marathon. 
Gus treated us truly well and formed the backbone of our customer base in The Conch Republic. Not only was he great to work with, he was a hell of a lot of fun as well!
Another of our favourite "gigs" was Holiday Isle in Islamorada. We worked in the Horizon Lounge. That was the fancy restaurant on top of what was then the tallest building in the keys. We got that job through another lad of Greek decent named John Trepas. Although both Gus and John have left this world they are fondly remembered by many keys musicians.
Due to all the practise resulting from working 365 days a year Wendy and Lonnie were getting much more proficient at plying their trade. Their repertory continued to grow very rapidly in response to the requests made by their audiences. The music of Jimmy Buffett was and still is extremely popular in the keys. Wendy and Lonnie both want to thank Jimmy most sincerely for lending them the material to make their business such a success in the keys!
There is a dock fronting the ocean in Key West called Mallory square. We played at The Quay in Key West five nights per week... Tuesday through Saturday. Sometimes on break we would walk down to Mallory Square which was just a block from The Quay.
We always enjoyed the buskers who worked there. There was all manner of entertainment from "The Cookie Lady" to "The Cat Man". The cat man was cool. He had six or so common house cats he had trained to act like circus lions and tigers. He would crack a toy whip and the felines would jump through hoops, do somersaults and sit on their stools exactly like the big cats in the circus. The cookie lady was interesting too. She would ride up and down Mallory Square on her bicycle selling cookies. We wonder if she could get away with it today.
Another interesting lady was the fortune teller. She would drive down to the square every afternoon in her "keys cruiser" ancient station wagon. She always drove by the Quay where we were working. She would turn left on Front Street and go park by Jan McArt's Theatre where she would unload her props then walk to Mallory and set up. Then until after sunset she would dutifuly tell the tourists their future... she was, after all, a fortune teller who could clearly see into the future. One afternoon she came tooling down Duval Street on her way to work. This particular day she was behind a large GMC bus. We could not beleive our eyes. The fortune teller drove directly into the rear end of the bus! No one was injured except, we beleive, the fortune teller's pride. How could she see into the future when it was clear she couldn's see the rear end of a bloody bus?
On one day when we went to the square on break a cruise ship was tied up to the wharf. This had two interesting effects. First it really pissed off all the tourists who had come from the ends of the earth to be part of the sunset celebration on Mallory Square. After all the only thing they could see was the slab like side of the ship. It had a bit of a different efect on us. We both got the idea at pretty much the same instant.
Follow the footsteps to Chapter 4