doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com what ever happened to Hemingways...

Jack, Papa's oldest boy, has been dead for several years now. Although Papa hung around a few wars, Jack was the closest Hemingway to a real hero: Behind the lines in France in WWII with the OSS (he jumped with a fly rod!), one of the very early Green Berets after the war. Wrote an interesting memoir; also some hunting and fishing stories for Field and Stream. But as he admitted in his memoir, his fate was to be the son of a famous father, and the father of famous daughters (Mariel and Margot).

My English (and some Scottish, truth be told) stuff needed a frustrating amount of good quality gunsmithing to keep it running. It wasn't because it was poorly designed, or, of poor quality. I think it was just old. It all had a lot of use before it was mine, and the Piper came calling, more often than not, on my watch. I wouldn't have dared use it for serious clays work, at least not after my outlays taught me not to. One Holland, several MacNaughtons, several Powels. There wasn't an ugly gun in the bunch, but, beauty is much more appreciated when the damn thing works. I can't run with seven figure guys (I don't have seven figures in pennies, let alone dollars) so that might be it. I learned a lot along the way, and my high dollar guns all belong to someone else now, with just a few, well fitted (to me) lower end examples to keep me happy, and those are treated to only very occasional use, in better than good conditions. I'm not eager to buy replacements, or any more good gunsmithing.
If they make guys like JT Amber, or, for that matter, Hemingway anymore, I haven't met them. I did meet Zutz, and he was a heck of a nice individual. These days, that might be all you should hope for.
Best,
Ted

Believe one os Papa's Beretta O/Us is at the NRA museum (S3, I believe).

I consider all those old timers not as heroes of any sort but as guys who did what any normal guy would have done given the opportunity.

They lived at the right time - you could buy choice firearms new or used for relatively cheap, and you could hunt and shoot just about anywhere. The world was a much bigger place back then.

Actually, Jack was assigned to the OSS (General Bill Donovan's unit, later to become the CIA- He was jump qualified, the unit was known as the Jedburghs I believe- they later became (under JFK) the elite Green Berets, just as the Navy Frogmen of WW11 later became the UDT and then the elite SEALs.

Back when fly fishing and collecting cane rods and Hardy and Bogdan reels was a passion of mine, I read his most interesting book "Misadventures of a Fly Fisherman" and he did indeed have a 4 pc. custom fly rod and a Hardy reel in his pack. He was captured and escaped and made his way out through France into the Basque area of Northern Spain.

I believe one of his two daughters took her own life, tragedy seems to have haunted both the Hemingway and Kennedy families.

RWTF, Jack actually went back into the military after the war and served in Special Forces (before JFK gave them their green berets). Margot committed suicide. As a young actress, her sister Mariel made a movie called "Personal Best" (in which you get to see a LOT of Mariel!), playing the role of a female track athlete preparing for the 1980 Olympics (when Carter kept our team home). Initially, she's a lesbian in that movie, but gets "converted" from the Dark Side by a fellow Olympian, a swimmer--played by Kenny Moore, who was a REAL Olympian, but as a marathoner and not a swimmer.

Info on some of Hemingway's guns here http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/20113472

Very interesting, the fotos and the guns. My favorite of Hemingway's books is "Green Hills of Africa" and I have likened Karl in that story to Kurtz in my favorite of Joseph Conrad's books; "Heart of Darkness" set in Africa during the Boer Wars. There is also a great B graded movie based on that British Fubar Op- "Breaker Morant" and the famed "Rule 303" op. code--

I have read Patrick Hemingway's edited book "True At First Light" which may have been a re-write of Green Hills, but re-set in Africa 20 years later. In that saga, Hemingway uses his favorite 12 gauge M12 with No. 8 birdshot to dispatch a wounded leopard in a mangrove tangle. His description of that "twice burned up and restocked pumpgun as being 'The best friend a man gave have' speaks volumes to me- I am a lifelong Model 12 man.

Later in that book he writes about dispatching a favorite aging horse "Old Kite" in the American West, then leaving the carcass to bait eagles- and later dispatching a Bald Eagle (very protected species by the way) with a .22 Winchester- and running down the wounded bird, crasping it by the legs and smacking its head against a rock- and I thought Hemingway mistreated his wives- how did he ever get away with a Federal crime like that I wonder?

In the Hotchner book "Papa" Hemingway shot an owl in Idaho, then restored it and kept it as a house pet. Strange man--

Hemingway's fiction, and all his work is fiction, except perhaps, his writing on bull-fighting, "Death in the Afternoon", and "The Dangerous Summer", is loosely based on his actual experiences, but should not be taken literally as fact. He states himself that fiction is actually "truer" if it is not bound by the facts of the experiences that serve as its inspiration.

Hemingway's written works sometimes contain conflicting descriptions of the same event. He wrote two rather different accounts, for example, of an encounter with F. Scott Fitzgerald and his French chauffer during a visit to Fitzgerald's home in Maryland in the late 1920's.

"The Green Hills of Africa" is based on his 1930's African experiences. "True at First Light" and the later revised and expanded version, "Under Kilimangaro", are based on his mid 1950's safari. There is an open question as to whether some aspects of the books, his involvement with an African woman during the 1950's safari, for example, are based on reality. No one really knows.

Even Hotchner, who was as close to Hemingway as anyone during the last years of his life, writes that he did not know when details of Hemingway's stories, written or otherwise, were actually true. Hemingway's third wife, Martha Gellhorn, went on at great length about his mythologizing.

The eagles killed in "Old Kite", which may or may not be purely fiction, are golden eagles. In any case, I don't know if it was a Federal crime to kill a golden eagle many years ago when the story is supposed to take place

Hemingway's short novel "Islands in the Stream" published posthumously and later made into a movie starring George C. Scott as Papa depicts him running his boat out of Bimini, one of his favorite haunts in the early years of WWII. His weapon of choice in that movie was a BAR. He is estranged from his sons and wife, but "the boys" come to spend the summer with him there. It's a great insight into the man and also a very good movie.

I lifted a few in Papa's favorite bar there "The Compleat Angler"

George