Hemingway's guns

[Stepmac]

Originally Posted by Andy Kelley

Steve, you make many thoughtful remarks and I'm glad we're still friends..I think my clinical impression about the PTSD diagnosis comes mostly from my experience with VN vets in the Tucson VA hospital when I was doing an internship there. One common thread among the vets was a seemingly normal life prior to the war and then living a nightmare when they returned. Speaking about war experiences or not speaking about them really wasn't a hard and fast measurement of sound mental health. I think that it is very telling that in The Sun Also Rises the narrator, a war vet, has been emasculated due to a war wounding. Maybe that was Hemingway trying to tell us how he felt about his own war experience ....Aren't we supposed to be discussing Parkers.

Ahhhhh, yes; Parkers, a finely made shotgun....As for PTSD you are obviously more qualified to discuss the condition than I. I take the lead from a post and run with it and therefore am guilty of jumping off thread. I enjoy discussing interesting things and thus my journey back to Ketchum, Idaho and its quirky writer.

[charlie cleveland]

reading this makes me want to cut a hickory switch and give himmingways momma a good thrashing... charlie

[Mills]

It is hard to believe, but a lot of people who like to shoot don't care about having fine guns. I have two great uncles who were great shots and avid hunters "back in the day" and who had the means to acquire fine shotguns, but who preferred Model 12's, Auto 5's etc. My Dad swears by his Winchester 101 and 870.

[Stepmac]

Originally Posted by Mills Morrison

It is hard to believe, but a lot of people who like to shoot don't care about having fine guns. I have two great uncles who were great shots and avid hunters "back in the day" and who had the means to acquire fine shotguns, but who preferred Model 12's, Auto 5's etc. My Dad swears by his Winchester 101 and 870.

Interesting thought...I suspect that if people love the hunt and have a place to hunt, a well made and reliable shotgun is plenty. Engraving, after all, is merely cosmetic.

When I was young I considered owning "fine" shotguns as an affectation and an indication of snobbery. Now I consider it an appreciation of the fine art of gunmaking.

Most shooters cannot afford fine guns. I recall when I considered a Superposed as way, way out of reach. No one who I shot with owned one. We all shot 870's and Rem model 11's or something we bought at Sears. If Ted Williams said it was a good gun, that was good enough for us.

In addition, the owning of fine guns is generally a pursuit of the wealthy. I am not wealthy, so I don't own many fine guns and those I do own I had to save for.

One last thought, if one has one exceptionally fine shotgun, a Purdy, a high grade Parker, graded Ansley Fox, that gun becomes the Alpha Male of one's collection. It is the one you show last, the one that gets the ooohs and ahhhs. If one has two such guns doesn't it somehow take away from the Big Dog? While I understand that what I'm about to say is sacrilegious; one really fine gun just might be enough.

[Mills]

And while we are talking about great writers and great hunting stories, let's not forget my favorite . . . The Bear by William Faulkner.

[Stepmac]

Originally Posted by Mills Morrison

And while we are talking about great writers and great hunting stories, let's not forget my favorite . . . The Bear by William Faulkner.

I have never heard of The Bear! I'll have to give it a read. In Oxford, Miss. they just celebrated Faulkner's centennial. One of my favorite short stories is a Faulkner tale and for the life of me I can't recall its title. It is the story of the torpedo boats that ran across the English Channel during WWI to attack German shipping. When the captain of those little boats spied a German ship he would shout "beaver!" and ran at the ship releasing his torpedo and passed so close to the hull that the enemy guns could not depress enough to get in a shot. Then they high tailed it for home...if they were lucky; many, as the story goes, were not.

Hemingway is easier to read than Faulkner IMV. I have tried many times to read Joyce (like his short stories) but have not been able to get very far into Ulysses. I plan to die with it lying on my chest, opened to page four.

I don't know if Faulkner shot a Parker or not, but I've been to Oxford and it looks like pretty good bird country so I suspect that Faulkner would have shot one.

[Mills]

The Bear is a chapter in Go Down Moses. A loooong chapter, but very readable by Faulkner standards. Apparently, someone asked Faulkner if he had advice for people who had read his novels 3 times and still could not understand them and Faulkner replied "read it a fourth time" I suspect the firearms of Faulkner's Mississippi were muzzleloaders from the frontier days or Sears/Roebuck double guns. There was not too much money around Mississippi in his time.

[Stepmac]

Originally Posted by Mills Morrison

The Bear is a chapter in Go Down Moses. A loooong chapter, but very readable by Faulkner standards. Apparently, someone asked Faulkner if he had advice for people who had read his novels 3 times and still could not understand them and Faulkner replied "read it a fourth time" I suspect the firearms of Faulkner's Mississippi were muzzleloaders from the frontier days or Sears/Roebuck double guns. There was not too much money around Mississippi in his time.

Faulkner had a highly developed love/hate relationship with Southerners which is the thrust of his novels. I've read only one, but it has been fifty years and I can't recall which one I read. I recall it not being an easy read.

[Grantham Forester]

Originally Posted by Steve McCarty

Faulkner had a highly developed love/hate relationship with Southerners which is the thrust of his novels. I've read only one, but it has been fifty years and I can't recall which one I read. I recall it not being an easy read.

--IMO, both Faulkner and Hemingway were heavy drinkers, but between the two, Hemingway had a solid work ethic and did not drink while working. His usual working routine both at Key West and later in Cuba at the Finca was to awake at 6 AM, swim, have two glasses of grapefruit juice, maybe a poached egg and toast, and to be at work by 6:45, work solidly until 12:30, and if the work went well, lunch was a glass of red wine or a small scotch with lime juice on the rocks, and his favorite sandwich- toasted wheat bread spread with peanut butter and with a big slice of raw onion on top of the spread. Then-- fishing, shooting live pigeons, or drinking at Sloppy Joe's in Key West, or at the Floridita in Havana. The later spot is where the Margarita was rumored to have been first created, suggested to the barman by Hemingway, who was divorced from Pauline and with (but not yet married to) Martha Gellhorn.

[Stepmac]

Originally Posted by Grantham Forester

-- Then-- fishing, shooting live pigeons, or drinking at Sloppy Joe's in Key West, or at the Floridita in Havana.

In the summer of '71 I flew a TA4J Skyhawk on my last dual cross country before my wings and landed at NAS Key West. My instructor had been there many times and he ushered me to Sloppy Joe's which was still pretty sloppy and was just as Hem left it. Today it is not.

The bartender showed us Ernie's favorite bar stool, which was left of the pass through. He also described the Hemingway Daiquiri. It carried three double shots of Bacardi rum. Hem would show up around noon and stay until closing and drink over a dozen of them. At the time I was there the place had a green (or was it red?) lanoleum bar, rickety bar stools, concrete floors and floor to ceiling shutters usually left open to the elements, often wind driven rain.

I've never been back, but I understand the place has had a makeover. How sad, because when I was there it was a very pleasant place to get bombed.