photo #6293956

This unusual ''fountain'' on the grounds of the Hemingway Home and Museum on Key West has an interesting story behind it. Hemingway spent so much time at his friend Joe’s bar [the original Sloppy Joe's] that when Joe was moving locations, Hemingway remarked that surely he’d spent enough money there to own a small chunk of it, and Joe laughed and gifted him with one of the bar’s urinals. [Hemingway's wife] Pauline, upon finding a urinal in her yard, was understandably unimpressed, but made the best of a bad situation by adorning the urinal with decorative tile. Hemingway had the urinal, along with a large decorative Spanish olive jar that he’d brought from Cuba, fitted with plumbing and converted into a self-refreshing water fountain for his pets. The cats seem to like it and you have to know the story or stare hard to realize there’s a urinal involved.