Hemingway Adventure (1999) (14 page)

The front of 339 Oak Park Avenue looks naked with its porch removed for Hemingway centenary restoration.

Marcelline, Madelaine, Clarence, Grace, Ursula and Ernest (still to come, Carol and Leicester). Oak Park 1906.

The Red Fox Inn, where Hemingway’s fishing mentor lived.

The public library on Mitchell Street, Petoskey. Here in 1919 Hemingway read the papers, borrowed books and gave speeches about his war experiences to delighted female audiences.

Windemere, the Hemingway holiday home today.

Horton Bay, Michigan, inspiration for Hemingway’s earliest published stories and very little changed.

Kewadin Casino, Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan - which earns 50 million dollars a year for the Chippewa tribe.

At a gun shop in rural Michigan I test drive a Wheatherby doublebarrelled over and under muzzle-loader and try to pretend I know what that all means. The array of weapons is fearsome, the people who sell them quite the opposite.

Picture postcard time. On Horton Creek, one of the shallow streams of north Michigan, Hemingway perfected his fishing technique and Palin abandoned his. You can almost hear the steelhead trout sighing with relief as my canoe comes towards them.

Crossing the Chicago River, leaving behind the glossy corporate skyscrapers on the less than glossy train to Oak Park.

Ernest and his first wife, Hadley Richardson. He was twenty-two when they married, twenty-eight when they divorced in Paris.

The oldest modern city in the world. Chicago at sunset from the ninety-sixth floor of the Hancock Center.