An Icon in a Tropical Paradise--A Hometown Hero

Look-Alikes Gather with Bulls

 

The weekend of July 22, 23, and 24 in Key West was filled with Hemingway Days Festival activities, including the Running of the Bulls featuring Hemingway look-alike candidates riding the bulls down Duval Street. This whole wacky event starts in front of Sloppy Joe's, Hemingway's favorite bar hangout during the 1930s. Every year Sloppy Joe's hosts a Hemingway Look-Alike Contest.

All the art and crafts tents as well as the many food tables that lined the blocks at the end of Duval Street reminded me a little of the Crab Carnival festivities in our little town of West Point that takes place each October.

The Hemingway Days Festival started me thinking and wondering if the folks in Key West, back in the years the Pulitzer Prize-winning author was living and writing there, appreciated his talent. Or did they consider this man an eccentric who enjoyed fishing, socializing, and imbibing in alcoholic beverages?

Hemingway is surely an icon now, revered in Key West where visitors flock to the house on Whitehead Street that was the home of the author and his second wife, Pauline. They also head to the Museum of Art & History at the Custom House which features a broad display of Hemingway items as well as an interesting and informative video about his life.

Do many little towns find a hometown hero who wasn't always so heroic? Richmond, VA claims Edgar Allen Poe. Our little town has Chesty Puller, the most decorated U.S. Marine in history.

Does your town have a hero to go along with a festival or some other event? Do they revere their writers and artists of the present day? I'd like to know about some of these events and who the heroes are.

Monti
Mary Montague Sikes