The 29th Annual Hemingway Days Celebration

Dateline: July 25th, 2009
Key West, Florida

To have or have not. That is the question.

We'll let me tell you, from my point of view at least, it is far better to have than to have not and living well they say is the best revenge.

One person that I idolize for living well is the immortal American author Ernest Hemingway aka "Papa." It is widely known that he did some of his best livin' here in Key West during the 1930's. Who can blame him? I myself have done some good living here as well, during the lost decade and hope to "Laissez les bon temps roulez."

Papa moved here in 1928 from Chicago, after divorcing Hadley Richardson in 1927, with his second wife Pauline Pfeiffer. They lived in a beautiful house on Whitehead St. in what is now known as Old Town Key West. The Grand Victorian rests stoically today as a museum and tropical denzien to the descendants of Papa's six toed cats.

The Hemingway House was a gift from Pauline's Uncle and Hemingway purportedly spent his last penny adding on a $25,000 swimming pool out back. It is a must see part of Key West's history and across the street from the Key West Lighthouse Museum.

In 1929, shortly after moving to Key West "A Farewell to Arms" was published purportedly making Hemingway financially independent and certainly enough dough to purchase Pilar, in 1934. Pilar was his magnificant 38' Custom Sport Fishing Yacht, his nickname for Pauline and the rest they say is history.

Enough history apparently, for Key West to host the 29th Annual Hemingway Days Celebration July 21st-July 26th, commemorating Papa's 110th birthday on July 21, 2009.

Unfortunately, Papa himself committed suicide in Ketchum, Idaho via a double barreled shot gun blast to the forehead on July, 2nd, 1961. I guess it was his "Farewell to Arms," so to speak or maybe his time "For Whom the Bell Tolls."

In any event, the Pièce de résistance of the celebration is the fictionalized, Running of the Bulls depicting Spain's most popular event in Pamplona, that Papa immortalized in his novel, "The Sun Also Rises."

There is also a Hemingway look alike contest held at Sloppy Joe's, the famous bar at the intersection of Duval and Greene streets, that bears the world renown likeness of Papa himself. I hope to live long enough to have the "gray beard" necessary to be considered a serious contestant someday.



In the meantime, Lady Luck has smiled upon me once again as I find myself cradled in the lap of luxury in the Master Suite of The Gardens Hotel Key West.

And that my friends is a story for the next time we meet over a MargaritaShack.Com Margarita at "The Sunshine State of Mind."