Hemingway's guns
 

I am on a quest to own guns like those that Ernest Hemingway owned. I bought the new book about the old boy and his guns and it started me off. It was relatively easy to pick up a old, well worn, Model 12 and the Model 62 Winchester .22. I've got a Superposed like his. The Griffin and Howe 03 Springfield is going to be spendy (as we say in Oregon), but they are available. I've got a Mannlicher Schoenaur (sp?) carbine. The Colt Woodsman will be easy.

I cannot find any data that reports that Hem owned a Parker. Anybody out there know if he did?

I am going to make an exception with the Model 21. For the money I just don't like them, and anyway Hem gave those to his wives.

Not sure what I'm going to do about the 577 double rifle. I've always wanted to own one of those boomers, but I think, if I can find the scratch, I'll buy any double rifle in some kind of caliber that I can shoot comfortably, like a .303 and call it good.

BTW: I am already well over Papa's age when he blew his brains out, so I doubt I'll complete my task, but any reason to buy another gun is worth the effort. He killed himself with a W.C. Scott 12 gauge. I see those from time to time.

Please don't PM me with guns that you have for sale. I'm ammo minus in the $ dept today. I'm saving up.

No record of a Parker
http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/20113472

"When you have loved three things all your life, from the earliest you can remember, to fish, to shoot and, later, to read; and when, all your life the necessity to write has been your master, YOU LEARN TO REMEMBER and, when you think back you remember more fishing and shooting and reading than anything else and that is a pleasure."

Sad and prescient words.
Hemingway likely had bipolar disorder, and his father and two siblings committed suicide. In the fall of 1960 he was being treated for alcoholic liver disease and hypertension (some antihypertensives can cause depression) and had his first round of Electroconvulsive Therapy at the Mayo Clinic. Following a suicide attempt in the spring of 1961, he had more treatments at the Menninger Clinic.
With his body destroyed by alcohol, and his memories erased by the ECT, he committed suicide July 2, 1961.

For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) "The world is a fine place and worth fighting for and I hate very much to leave it."

Slightly off kilter geniuses interest me. (Are they all?) W.C. Fields, Groucho Marx, Dorothy Parker, Twain, T.R. and of course Hemingway. I ponder, that if we had met, if I would have liked the guy. Not sure; don't think so. Bob Ruark wrote that he ran into Hem in one of his favorite watering holes in Cuba. Papa was in a secluded rear table, behind some potten plants, working on editing. Ruark said he appeared to be deep in thought and he as so intimidated by the man's presence that he feared to go back and say hello.

Some wag wrote that all real men either want to be like Hemingway, or to be liked by him. He had demons...including demon rum which he imbibed copious like. Biographies of the man are compelling. It would have been exciting to attend a bull fight with him. He considered himself expert on such matters. Today we'd probably fix him up and he would have lived another decade or so.

Thanks, Drew, for the Hem attachment. During the past year several interesting books have been published about Hemingway: One is a redo of A Moveable Feast, much different from the one edited by Mary Hem after the man's death. Paris Wife a novel based upon Hadley, his first, and as he later said, best wife. There is also a bio of Valeria Hemingway who was Hem's secretary at the end of his life and who eventually married Gregory (Gigi) Hemingway. They met at Ernest's funeral.

Ernest's quixotic personality was inherited by Gigi. He became a relatively successful MD. He was a cross dressor and suffered from that ailment from his earliest days and it got worse. Hem disowned him. He married Valerie, Hem's loyal secretary. They had several children. Then Gigi had a sex changer operation and they divorced. Gigi died in a women's prison and sad, confused and broken man...er women. She went by Gloria. Of course Ernest's beautiful and talented granddaugher was bipolar and she too committed suicide. Many within the Hemingway family, both before Hem and after, have suffered from mental maladies.

I find the man fascinating. It would have been fun searching for errant U-boats with the guy in the Carrib. Might get in some fishing too.

anybody see the recent woody allen flick "midnight in paris"? hemingway and some of his contemporaries are in it...delightful little movie to watch with a lady friend.

Boss.

I watched Midnight in Paris twice. I'm sure that Woody Allen wrote the lines for the HEM character. I wonder what Hem would have thought about how he was portrayed.

A few things however. Gertrude Stein, and Alice B. Toklas lived in a studio apartment. In the movie it looks like a penthouse. I would have liked to hear more dialogue from her about writing other than, "Keep at it", or some such drivel.

Hem and Stein liked eachother for a while and he loved going over to her place. Some interesting people dropped by. Fitzgerald and Zelda, John Dospasos (sp?), Joyce, Picasso, Pissario (?) [sure wish I could spell], several artists of renoun. Even Calder I think. Papa bought one of his paintings and kept it for the rest of his life. Hem considered himself a great art critic. Don't know if he actually was however.

Hem dropped by Stein's apartment and over heard she and Alice doing what comes unnaturally; and they knew and he knew and both were so embarrassed that Hem and Stein never did get along after that.

Stein was a fan of the laconic, and she must have influenced HEM's writing style. I think Stein is/was over rated. Apparently Alice was the more interesting of the two.

Didn't Alice B. Toklas make cookies or somethin'?

yeah or sumpthun

:nono:

Read Paul Hendrickson's "Hemingway's Boat" and Christopher Ondjaate's "Hemingway in Africa-the last safari". EH was a member of my gun club. Some of the older members knew him in the 50's. (He first visited with 3rd wife, Martha G. and son Patrick in 1944 as a guest of his society friend, Winston Guest and became a member in the late 40's. Guest, quite the playboy and "sport", himself also brought the then broke baron, Bror Blixen to the Club) Unfortunately, none of the folks who knew him as young men have much nice to say about our only Nobel winning member. By the time, he reached his mid 50s EH was a very troubled fellow. Even Hotchner's somewhat hagiographic "Papa" show hints of that. I put up a plaque in the entrance hall a few years ago on the 50th Anniverary of "the Fight in the Foyer" when EH fought another member Ed Taws (CEO of Burlington Mills) to a draw one boozy morning after a night of hard drinking. Fame and reputation have their price and EH paid his bill in full.

Under the circumstances, his faculties gone, like an old samaurai he fell on his sword. I don't fault him for that; except for the noise and mess, almost an act of grace. I wouldn't have enjoyed his company. His writing, of course, was often peerless. Martha Gellhorn was a better reporter and better person. My father imbibed wisdom at Stein's on Rue Madame, and my Paris friends have an apartment a few doors away.

Put it down to chauvinism: his posturing was so insufferable to me that I take some pleasure from the Canadian writer half his size, Morley Callaghan, giving him a boxing lesson in Paris, knocking him on his ass. Hemingway blamed Fitzgerald, the timer, for extending the round beyond three minutes.

I worked in the company of Callaghan and his son Barry, now also a distinguished writer. But for all that, the No. 2 print of Karsh's famous turtleneck photo of Hemingway watches over my desk. He inspires still.

I wonder how the mythical Hemingway compared to the real one. He had an image of himself that he worked hard to create. I think, that when he saw himself slipping he just could not live with his new self and me made that mess in the foyer.

He was only 61 when he died, but he looked 80. Was it the booze, or the concussions that he had one after the other? He was nearly killed in two plane crashes and after one he butted the door open with his head. Dura fluid ran from his hears.

I enjoyed Valeria Hemingway's book about her relationship with him. I thought it more insightful into what made the man tick that either Baker's or Hotchner's bios.

Good, evil, talented, selfish or no; Hemingway lived a life to be proud of. Was he a good man? I don't know. But he's been kaput for 61 years and we're still talking about him, that says something.

Mr. Brown; your father was at Gertrude Stein's apartment in Paris! What interesting stories he must have told! Do you recall any of his pearls of wisdom that she imparted? When I ponder Stein's writing I think of the Rose times 3 and what a lousy place Oakland was. I can't recall reading anything that she wrote. Nor do I recall how she and her brother Leon made their money. Did they have a fortune? They were from SFO as I recall.

Hemingway, in the late 50's went back to his Parisian haunts and even found one of his favorite waiters, who recalled him and brought him to his old seat. I visited Sloppy Joes fifty years ago when the original owner still owned it and it was like it was when Hem knew it. He pointed me to Hem's favorite bar stool. It was to the left of the pass through. Today that place looks nothing like it did in the 60's.

The Pilar still lives, but sits on dry land behind the his Cuban home that is now a museum, but you can't go inside. Tourists have to peek through the windows.

Just this morning I was reading a collection of Hem's hunting stories. Yes, indeed he still does inspire.

". . . and Hemingway, whatever else he knew, knew for all time that the questions he had in a lifetime were answered, and those that remained were no longer of any consequence."

Last words of Hemingway, a life without consequences by James R. Mellon

Steve, conversations with Stein at the time often circled the failure of capitalism and the promised utopia of communism. My father engaged in spirited debates that included the anarchist Emma Goldman and Louise Bryant, widow of John Reed who wrote Ten Days That Shook The World. He returned to Canada as a Communist.

Any one who wasn't thinking that way at that time wasn't thinking at all.

King: I've been reading Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos. It's not exactly a page turner. He was one of Hem's cronies and was one of the reds who visited the Steins. Dos Passos however, while an avowd communist during his Parisian days switched and became an equally avid Nixon supporter. His relationship with the Soviet Communists had been an explicit one and turned him away from Stein's false utopia.

The movie Reds was based on Reed's work. And yes, Armond Hammer was a spy. So was Alger Hiss.

I read Ruark and Hemingway side by side and read the new remembrance of Ruark written by his secretary. I like to compare the two men and find much alike between them. Ruark lived in Hem's shadow and he knew it and he did not like it.

I'm not sure that Hemingway saw life as a problem to be brooded over, but rather as a challenge not to be conquered, but to become wrapped up with. He, and people in his family, before him and after, suffered bouts of depression. He drank his way through them, which made them worse, of course. Proper medication would have helped the old boy.

Was your dad Dee Brown?

No, my father was Kingsley Brown, same as mine. As so many others, he broke from CP before the war because of its anti-Semitism. Politics of the time were byzantine as revealed by Hemingway's Bell Tolls. Some things never change. It generally boils down to who's going to feed at the trough.

King: What is going on today in the political arena is not child's play.

I have always found Europeans shockingly anti-Semitic, and the Brits not far behind. It appears to me to be ingrained within their cultures. The Merchant of Venice is telling.

Hemingway was known as being anti-Semitic, calling himself Hemingstein as some kind of a joke. I catch the scent of growing anti-Semitism in the air, here, today. Strange.

King: I just googled you and find that you did extensive work on women in the military. I was "in" from 64 to 94.

I was a drill sergeant at Fort Jackson in 1981/2 when the Army decided to train women right alongside the men. It was a disaster! I complained to the colonel and he gave me some PC BS and I'm still riled about it.

Just a few comments: Training women in the infantry alongside men short changed the men and brutalized the women. Training women in infantry like settings was out of place for the girls and you never saw such a room full of long faces when you were instructing about the care and usage of hand granades, for instance. Men on the other hand loved being soldiers (most of them) and got right to it. Women and men are genuinely different and the military should cotton to that fact!

During the VN War I was an attack pilot in the Marine Corps. We were hard chargers. There were no women around, except in those places where one would expect to find them. Women in the fighting units cannot enhance the fighting spirit of men in combat.

I have to admit that I've been "out" for a long time and when I left active service in the Marines in 1980, women were just beginning to make inroads into the squadron, but not as pilots. When I later joined the Army Reserve there were quite a few women being trained in infantry type environs. In addition, all of the women, dolls or no, became pregnant in pretty short order. One just cannot put young men alongside young women and not expect nature to make its way. This caused all kinds of problems. Problems that we did not want to have to deal with, but we had no choice.

I believe, however; that there is a place for women in the military, but in more feminine roles. I am not being "sexist", but realistic.

One last thing. When I was a company commander in a training battalion in the army infantry we had a female regular officer who was part of our battalion. This young women was as pretty as women get. She was about 22 and had her uniforms taylored. This beauty could really fill her BDU's! Blond, blue eyed and one hell of a jock! She was a 90 lb bundle of energy. She was also the fastest soldier on the obstacle course in the entire battalion.

We had a young 2Lt fellow who was as good looking young man as the lady was female. He was the second faster GI on the OC. He was rendered unusable because he was so enamored by the lady, who was trying to be a "Soldier" and was trained to ingore all feelings of the flesh. It was sad to watch. I felt sorry for the young man. If I had been 22 and not 42 I would have been in the same place that he was.

Oh, I also had a female trainee die in my arms...almost, but I carried her to the ambulance. She died soon after. Women could not take the heat while humping heavy packs! We lost quite a few women as heat casualities. So what did the army do? Why they lightened the loads of course! So the men too carried less which reduced the effectiveness of their training.

When men are in combat their relationships with women should be in the abstract. When the bullets are flying having women around is a distraction that they do not need.

Speaking only from experience as a reporter covering mean places with mortar and directed fire all around, female colleagues did perfectly well and if truth be known may have been a calming influence to get our heads in gear. In Afghanistan, our women soldiers participated in the heat of battles, and Capt. Nicole Goddard, almost a neighbour, was decapitated while directing artillery fire against Taliban. I'd demean her by describing her looks. Just say you could take her anywhere. She would have been be an adornment in salons of the world.

With profound respect for your country and military, the US has been a slow learner in what works and doesn't, who can serve and can't serve their country. It has been isolating itself from the realities of war to the extent of now endangering its own survival. It is learning that technological superiority doesn’t necessarily convert into military success. It is coming to terms that the cost of wars of choice aren’t worth it. As Gates said on his departure, anyone contemplating another of these things "needs their head examined."

Canada, which paid dearly for choosing Afghanistan's most dangerous sector in Kandahar and which your country has now taken over, regards its women as equals in all branches of the services. The results speak for themselves. US elite forces welcomed us as partners in combined operations in Afghanistan, particularly sniping assignments. I also found that any notions of chivalry disappear under fire. Thank god yours and ours are coming home.

Thank you for your informative post. My experience in war and training for war ended when the desert wars opened up and I just barely was able to observe women in combat roles. I never saw any in actual combat (other than nurses. I was flying A-4's at the time.) Obviously your experience is more current and to the issue than was mine. During the VN War the only females that I recall where in S-1 or the nurse's corps. There were none in cockpits. That took another decade.

The felicity of war is beyond me. While compelling, the magnitude of the question is boggling.

Sad to hear about Capt. Goddard.

King, you might comment on Mr. McCarty's comment "I googled you and find that you did extensive work with women in military." I have a feeling he is trusting google a bit too much. I am a bit uncomfortable with this exchange on the PGCA site since we are dealing with a discussion about anti semitism and the situation in Europe and "dropping out of the Communist Party because of anti semitism". Some of us see even more important reasons for dropping out of the CP, like their record of slaughtering their own citizens and a few other minor transgressions like improper transfer of property. Let's explain our conversation here or delete it, which I will do when the time is right. I have nothing against ABT or GS, but we don't need to glorify them or their politics on a Parker gun website. If either one of you fellows wants to debate the politics of Toklas, Stein, Dos Passos, or, for that matter, Werner Von Braun, we'll meet somewhere, buy a good supply of whiskey, or whisky, and sit down for a long weekend. Not here.

The Kingsley Browne (with an "e") who writes about women in the military is from Detroit and professor at Wayne State. Mr Brown, the waterfowling Canadian double gun enthusiast and son of an apparent ex-Communist, is from Nova Scotia. This should not be hard to differentiate...in every one of his posts "our King" flys the Maple Leaf quite proudly. I am afraid I can not compete with tea with Alice and Gertrude. My late wife's maternal uncle, Cyril was a blacklisted Hollywood director whose "name was named"...he later went on to direct "Zulu". That's the best I can do in the lefty department althought for all the years I knew him in London, Uncle Cy wasn't too "lefty". He was Jewish however so Papa Brown might have supported him on two "fronts"...Bill- do these Jewish and Communist associations bar me from the PGCA? Please let me know...

Getting back to the subject of Hemingway and his guns,I have also been reading the book and as the book makes clear, Papa was a hunter and a shooter and not a collector. His guns, for the most part, were well used and well cared for. I did not find a reference to his owning a Parker although one picture in the book with him in the company of Gary Cooper it shows Cooper carrying a Parker (which could have been Papa's)

A great movie to watch is "Islands in the Stream" in which George C. Scott plays the role of Papa, although with a different name. David Hemmings plays the rummey friend who won a BAR in a poker game and uses it to kill a shark that was after one of Papa's sons.

Best Regards, George

I've no desire to stir things about CP or anti-Semitism. Steve wondered about those Paris days. It was a strange time when so many eyes were wide-closed to the dark sides of fascism and communism, both here and in the US. As for the Jews, my grandmother was a British Israelite who thought the British were one of the lost tribes of Israel. And I'm the great grandson of a full-blood Mi'kmaq whom the British tried to exterminate in the wars against France. An ancestor participated in the burning of the White House in retaliation for US destroying Toronto. The Americans of shared blood, kin and values made me a Canadian with Jefferson's invasion of Canada in 1812 which Canada is celebrating at great expense this year. For all that, the USA is my most admired other country as I've hitherto revealed. As for women in combat, let's not forget the gutsy guerilla of For Whom The Bell Tolls.

Don and King, I was just trying to redirect Steve to the "correct Mr. B" as Don has done. Google is a dangerous weapon in some cases, but this was obviously an honest mistake on Steve's part.

Bill, my father and I with same names worked the same craft. We decided there would be no Jr qualifier. Let the world think we had seven-league boots, appearing here and there throughout the world like the Scarlet Pimpernel. Our interests were so wide and varied there was confusion, of course. My son has the same name. Still no Jr which we consider a little over the top, an affectation. We let people think what they want to think, to hell with it. To keep to our sporting interests, I'm told Kingsley in Old English means King's Wood (of birds and animals for the monarch's pleasure). My grandmother admired Charles Kingsley. I imagine you've gone through the same with Bill Murphy. Regards, King

King, my Grandfather was William Murphy, who was a community leader, owned a couple of businesses, one a "cafe", one a distributorship of alcoholic beverages. He also ran a pigeon ring. I, as you, am not anything but the same name as my Grandfather, without embellishment. However, Steve mistook you for someone who is not related to you in any way, an error in trusting google.com as Don mentioned.

Thanks for the heads up. I never, ever try to ruffle feathers. I am just chatting and thinking, nothing more. I enjoy a free exchange of ideas and I yearn for discussion with people who have either "been there" or who know something. I find small talk drab. Mr. Brown's comments have been extremely interesting to me and have caused me to think and then re-think.

Hotchner in Hemingway's Guns which I read again last night said that Hem did not like overly fancy guns, but we've all seen that amazing O/U shotgun. According to the same source the W.C. Scott 12 gauge was not a very fancy gun, but a workhorse. A long barreled pigeon gun.

Hem had a fine collection of guns. It would have been fun to stand with him, G & T in hand, and listen to him as he took them down one at a time and told a story about each. None of us, I think, admire the man in a hero worship sort of way, but rather we find him compelling and for many valid reasons.

As for the appropriateness our discussions? I haven't had so much fun behind a key board for quite some time.

"Snows of Kilimanjaro" was probably the first movie I ever saw as a child. My mother was a fan of EH and took us when it came out.I read some of his books as a child also. I read "The Old Man and the Sea" when it came out and my mom bought a copy. I wonder if my early love of fishing was encouraged by that book.I suppose he "postured" some,many men do, and thought of himself as tougher than he actually was.Something else we are prone to do. "Everybody wants to be a bad ass" as we used to say in my outfit in Vietnam.The truth of combat,with enough of it, would have soon dispelled any thoughts of finding "glory" in it. I still like EH,I grew up with his books, but his reputation as a bully and "wantabe" put me off. I understand him some as we fought some of the same battles of family and emotional issues and am very sorry he could not find the help he needed.

As we sit around the fire, that the internet has created, listing to the stories told by men of varying experiences it certainly provokes thought and ideas and opinions....

I just googled the Hemingway Society. It takes Hemingway lore to another level.

My wife gave me my copy of Hemingway's Guns for Christmas. I rooted through my gun collection to see how many Hemingway guns I own. I had one Model 12, an early 20gauge with a Power Pac hung on its end. I have the three screw in chokes, Long Range, Mid-Range and Short Range so I thought it would be okay. Like many Browning designs old John liked to utilize the energy of recoil. Even the Model 12, a pump of course, used recoil to unlock the action after the shot. If one dry fires the shotgun you have to push forward on the pump handle, which mimics recoil and unlocks the action. Otherwise you can't get the pump to cycle. That Power Pac afixed to the muzzle of the little 20, which is like new, takes so much kick out of the gun that it will not cycle! That's why the gun looks so new. It wasn't used. I'm not sure what to do. That Power Pac has a one inch gap between the end of the muzzle to where the load enters the choking chamber. Will a plastic wad strip off as it makes the jump?

I'm not sure what I should do. If I chop the Power Pac off then the barrel will be 23 inches long. With the Power Pac afixed it's 28, which I like. I might removed the choke and thread the barrel, and screw in a choke device that extends from the muzzle and re-afix the Power Pac. This will reduce the gap the load has to jump, but it'd be expensive to do.

Since I read about Hemingway's model 12's I now own three 12 gauge guns, one a 1923 Nickle Steel full choke, a like new 1962 12 mod, and a beat up one that I've opened to IC. I have a 1938 16 full, that fits me like a glove. So I'm pretty well Model 12'vd.

EH owned just two model 12's. His first a 1928 gun that after thirty years of heavy use, he declared worn out. It was sent back to A & F to sell. The other he bought from a bell boy that had a choking device. I think he bought in 1958.

BTW: If any of you have a Model 12, 12 gauge that is worn the point that the barrel wiggles, Brownell's stocks a shim that will tighten up the gun like new. Same part works for a 97.

Sure I love my Parkers. But the Win Mod 12 with it's machined solid steel receiver is pretty darn neat too.

Steve, Other than my beloved Parkers the only other shotgun I own is a Model 12 two barrel set.

EH's first model 12 was a 1928 gun. I went out to locate one. This is the one I bought. It was cheap...$250. It is a 1923 gun marked Nickel Steel. I lengthened the chambers and eased the forcing cone just for grins. I like the wear on this gun. I seldom reblue a gun. If it works it's fine with me.
http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a...s/P1010576.jpg

Nice gun Steve. Like my Parkers and Foxes, my M12 ,2 barrel solid rib gun has character. I just love the machining and the work put into them. They flat out point with no effort. Thanks to a good friend it now sports a straight grip which makes it point even better.

steve leave that old kickin device alone on the barrel just buy another gun....they aint a handful of them barrel kick reducers left in this old world.... charlie

Mr. Delk:
As a young man, my goal was to live a life at least half as bold and adventurous as Papa's. So far, I can truthfully say I've fallen short. But not for lack of trying.

Best, Kensal

Steve, don't cut off the Pachmayr Power Pac. It is a great choke device. The wads do not get stuck in the chokes. I have the Power Pac on a Model 42 and it works just fine.

I suppose if you count the times I have been shot at and the adventures and misadventures with the opposite sex I have had a fair run but being an adrenalin junkie takes a toll and missing the rush puts you in much the same spot as EH:Wondering is there anything left worth sticking around for.