My Husband Looks Like Hemingway (Or A Mistake in Bearded Identity)

I’m thinking about the 31st Annual Hemingway Days Festival coming up this next week in Key West to celebrate the literary achievements of Ernest Hemingway … and of course the ‘Hemingway Look-Alike Contest’ held at Sloppy Joe’s Bar. Some of the guests staying in our vacation rental properties come to Key West specifically for the events, and some discover the festivities once they arrive. As the days grow closer to the look-alike contest there is a collectively acquired sensitivity to Ernest Hemingway’s appearance in his older years, and suddenly it seems like there’s a man with a silver beard nearly everywhere on the island. To me it’s sort of like ‘seeing’ Santa Claus everywhere as Christmas approaches.

I can’t tell you the number of times strangers come up to my husband M. Scott, and tell him how much he looks like Hemingway. And you know what … he really does look like him in his older years.  So much so, that our best friend Benjamin (Dink) Bruce (and artist and photographer in his own right), who grew up knowing Hemingway, says he definitely looks like Hemingway and even lovingly calls him ‘Papa’ sometimes.  Dinks’ Dad, Toby Bruce, was Ernest Hemingway’s dear friend and lifelong personal assistant.

So every year, as Hemingway look-alikes begin to arrive on the island for the festivities, it’s common for people to approach my husband to tell him how much he looks like Hemingway and to ask him if he’s going to enter the contest.  For many years now, I’ve observed this interaction and his resounding reply is always the same, “No, I’m too young to look like Hemingway!” This response always makes me laugh and I chide him a little.

By now he’s definitely old enough, but as the saying goes ‘You’re as young (or old) as you feel.’ And despite the fact that we’re all getting older in M. Scott’s mind he’s still too young to look like Hemingway. This year, he’s off the island for the month of July so he’ll get a reprieve from the questions about his Hemingway persona, while others arrive to compete for the attention.  But I’m still here, and now everywhere I turn I think I see my husband when I first notice a man in with a silver beard who is in Key West because he thinks he looks like Hemingway.

One of my favorite things about living in Key West, and helping people stay in authentic vacation homes, is the variety of Key West events and festivities that are staged to celebrate the history and authenticity of the island and the people who live and have lived here. Key West’s “One Human Family” constantly finds ways to invite visitors from everywhere to ‘come as you are and be who you are.’ And even though my husband denies his Hemingway resemblance, I think it’s fantastic that other silver bearded men gather on the island every July to compete for who looks the most like Ernest Hemingway, while we simultaneously celebrate his literary virtues and achievements that continue to inspire us all.

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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By Cindy Rhoades

http://vacationhomesofkeywest.com