Hemingway’s "The Woppian Way or The Passing of Pickles McCarthy"

blog by Michael Federspiel

intro by Frank Boles:

This blog is one of several we are posting in connection with the PBS documentary, Hemingway, produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, which will air April 5-7. Be sure to join us on March 31 at 6:30 p.m. for a special introduction to Hemingway when we join with WCMU-Television for an online event featuring Lynn Novick. To register for the March 31 event visit WCMU at wcmu.org/hemingway.

The Clarke Historical Library recently acquired a significant fragment of a story Hemingway worked on while he lived in Petoskey. Known alternately to scholars as The Woppian Way or The Passing of Pickles McCarthy, the typed and heavily edited manuscript shows the young Hemingway, back from Europe and World War I, at the beginning of his career as a writer. Michael Federspiel, a member of the Clarke Historical Library’s Board of Governors and an expert on Ernest Hemingway’s life in Michigan, shared with me the story behind this item.

The latest addition to the Clarke Historical Library’s Hemingway Collection is a manuscript of a story he worked on in Petoskey in 1919. The four-page draft has many corrections to the typed text which are in Hemingway’s own hand. It was created at a significant time in the author’s life and has ties to another important document in the Clarke’s collection – a letter Ernest wrote to his father in October 1919.

In the fall of 1919, Ernest Hemingway was at a crossroads. He had graduated from high school in 1917, went on to spend a year as a Kansas City Star newspaper reporter, and then he joined the American Red Cross and traveled to Italy where he was severely wounded in July 1918. After recovering in a Milan hospital, he returned to America in January 1919 to further recover from his wounds while clinging to hope about a long-term relationship with a nurse who had cared for him. Then in March, he received a letter ending that relationship which sent him into emotional free fall. Suffering from post-traumatic stress, he spent the summer of 1919 healing physically and emotionally. That fall when his family returned to their Oak Park, Illinois, home he decided rather than go off to college or back to newspaper work he would devote himself to writing fiction. Using money received by cashing in an insurance policy, he remained in northern Michigan. As fall transitioned to early winter, he packed his typewriter and left Windemere, his family’s Walloon Lake cottage, and friends at Horton Bay and looked for a room in Petoskey. He found that room in a large white frame house on State Street owned by a widow, Eva Potter, who lived there with her son. Her daughter, a schoolteacher, worked out of town but returned on weekends. Potter must have welcomed the extra $8 a week Ernest would pay her to stay in the upstairs corner bedroom for two months.

We know something about his actions and thoughts at that time thanks in part to a letter already in the Clarke’s Hemingway Collection. It was written by Ernest to his father, Dr. Clarence Hemingway and dated October 28, 1919. He writes from Horton Bay that he has “a room located at 602 State Street where I wish you could forward my mail and anything else. It is small but heated and gives me a place to work…. Brought the typer [typewriter] and am departing with it and all my worldly goods to Petoskey on Thursday (November 1).”

Staying in Petoskey would be a new experience for Hemingway as his summers were typically spent almost exclusively at Walloon Lake and nearby Horton Bay with only occasional day trips to towns such as Petoskey, Charlevoix, and Boyne City. Additionally, Hemingway was a “summer person” and in Petoskey he would encounter year-round residents and businesses. During his two-month stay, he would meet new people, do public presentations about his World War I experiences, and work hard to write publishable fiction.

Some in Petoskey were wary of this unemployed unshaven stranger from Chicago who could often be seen walking around looking “rough” wearing old shoes a Mackinac shirt, and pants, but at the Potters he was warmly received. Mrs. Potter’s daughter, Hazel, remembered the boarder being “big and dark” and “typing away all the time.” Her mother, Eva, provided a pleasant home base for him. As Ernest told his mother in a December 4, 1919, letter, “My landlady here is awfully nice to me. Some days when I come in early in the morning I find a lunch laid out on my table with a Thermos bottle full of hot cocoa. Cake and salad and cold meat. And she sends up pop corn to me. Hot and buttered. She treats me great and in return I try to do things for her downtown and go around and pay her water, electric and telephone bills etc. She does any mending for me that I need too.” His Petoskey days settled into a routine of walks around town, meeting with new friends and, significantly, hunched over his “typer.”

Writing was nothing new to Ernest Hemingway. As a high school student, he had written both for the school newspaper and for its literary magazine and in Kansas City, he had experience as a professional journalist. But the writing which he now was practicing was different – his made-up stories had to appeal to the general public (and even more so, the editors to whom he submitted them). Hemingway had read popular magazines and had a sense of what they contained and tried to emulate the writers’ style and topics. It was tough going and frustrating as rejection notices were delivered to him.

Thirty-five-year-old Edwin Balmer, a future editor at Redbook magazine and publisher author, who lived in Chicago but summered at Walloon Lake agreed to help the aspiring writer. He agreed to critique what Ernest had written and on the back of one story manuscript, he wrote the name of several magazine editors who he thought might be interested in young Hemingway’s work. Abandoning his Kansas City journalistic style, Ernest focused on fiction publishable in popular magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post or Everybody’s Magazine and he valued Balmer’s opinion and his contacts.

One particular story, The Woppian Way, was getting a lot of Hemingway’s attention. Set in Italy during the War, it featured an Irish protagonist who gave up a promising boxing career to join the Italian army’s Arditi battalion. Hemingway likely started this story in Oak Park and brought it north with him as he struggled to get it just right. In that October 28, 1919 letter, he tells his father, “This afternoon I worked out the new front part of the ‘Woppian Way’ that Balmer wanted me to do and will have it in shape to start on its travels as soon as I am settled in Petoskey.” Hemingway even supported Balmer’s suggestion to rename the work, The Passing of Pickles McCarthy and it has since been known by both titles.

“Back in the days when we were eating of the fruit of the tree of watchful waiting, when people still cared where the Giants finished, before the draft had even begun to form the cave of the winds…there was a ringsman by the name of Pickles McCarthy. (Opening paragraph of The Woppian Way)

According to Hemingway biographer Carlos Baker, The Woppian Way / The Passing of Pickles McCarthy was an attempt by Ernest to follow the advice Trumbull Scott had given him in 1917 – write about things you have personally experienced. Hemingway tried to follow this advice as he bridged his high school writing to more sophisticated (and sellable) adult fiction. While the story’s plot is invented, the Italian people, places, and events were ones he knew firsthand. But, as Baker says, “He had not yet learned to discipline his prose, economize his dialogue, curb his powers of invention, or understand that scenes of carnage were not in themselves the ideal climax for the stories he had to tell.” Though completed, the story would remain unpublished.

Despite his serious effort and hard work, none of the stories Hemingway wrote that fall were accepted for publication during his lifetime. By January 1920, he was in Toronto where he was a paid companion for the handicapped son of a family he met in Petoskey and it was then that he began his affiliation with the Toronto Star newspaper. In September 1921, Hemingway maried his first wife, Hadley Richardson, at Horton Bay, and after short stay in Chicago the couple would move to Paris where famously Ernest would become part of the Lost Generation. Initially supported in Paris by his wife’s trust fund and money he made as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star, he abandoned trying to write for popular magazines and instead created revolutionary new fiction. This time he wrote about what he personally knew and had experienced and the settings for his new taut fiction were most often in northern Michigan. Nick Adams, his reoccurring protagonist, shared many of Hemingway’s own life experiences.

Now, 102 years after it was originally written, this draft of The Woppian Way has found its way to CMU’s Clarke Historical Library. How had it survived and how did it come to be at CMU? Most of those details are known and the story is an interesting one.

Hemingway was a borderline hoarder when it came to his writing. He kept virtually everything from complete early drafts of stories and novels to scraps of paper with story ideas or simple descriptive sentences. He mined these resources and often something created earlier was retooled and ended up in a published work later. After Hemingway’s death, his widow, Mary, initially had all his personal papers – letters, manuscripts, photos, etc. – boxed up and stored in a warehouse. When access requests from scholars became overwhelming, she donated the archives to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston where it remains preserved and available to the public. The collection there includes the evolution of many of his works – handwritten first drafts, typed with handwritten corrections drafts, and final drafts.

Two versions of The Woppian Way are included in the JFK Library’s Hemingway inventory. One is a 17-page typed, titled copy with no corrections. On the first page of it is written, “602 State Street, Petoskey, Michigan.” It is likely that this is what Hemingway considered the final version and was the one that was sent to potential publishers. The JFK’s other version is what the library considers “typescript fragments” and is nine pages of different sheets with pencil corrections and it is possible these are drafts worked on in Petoskey. If Hemingway kept these drafts, why isn’t the Clarke draft there too?

That Hemingway lived in many different places is well-known and scholars, and even those with casual interest, can identify Paris, Key West, and Cuba among his famous locales. With these and his many other moves, his possessions came along with him. When he married, the bulk of what he had remained at his parents’ house at Oak Park – likely including any correspondence or writing that he had. By 1931, Hemingway had moved back to America with Pauline, his second wife, and purchased a large house on Whitehead Street in Key West where he would live until 1940 when he moved to Cuba. In 1928, Hemingway’s father committed suicide and his mother struggled to support herself and maintain the large family home in Oak Park. In 1936, she sold that house and moved to a much smaller residence. It would make sense that at that time Ernest received his old things from Oak Park – including his earlier writings. In that they likely no longer seemed useful or relevant, they may have been put into storage. According to an article published at the JFK Library website written by Megan Floyd Desnoyers, in 1935, Hemingway left papers with Joe Russell, his friend and owner of Sloppy Joe’s Bar, in the storeroom behind the bar in Key West – a date that would fit that timeline of the Oak Park home sale. The Sloppy Joe’s website lists a slightly different version with the papers coming to Joe Russell in 1939, when Hemingway was preparing to move to Cuba. What is agreed upon is that after Ernest’s death, his widow, Mary Hemingway, consolidated his papers including those remaining in Key West. They were found in extremely poor conditions with rat skeletons among and in the boxes.

It is at this point Waring Jones, a skilled and determined Hemingway collector enters the picture. Jones, a Minnesotan, was a theatrical producer, newspaper editor, and book and art collector. According to his son, Finn-Olaf Jones, Waring went to Key West shortly after Ernest’s 1961 death to see what Hemingway material might be available. He discovered that boxes of materials had been left in a closet at Sloppy Joe’s and that Hemingway estate executors had sorted through them and had claimed what they wanted. They had then given permission to dispose of the rest and Jones took advantage of that decision and bought the remaining items sight unseen. It was likely at this time that those copies of The Woppian Way now at the JFK and the one at the Clarke parted company. It’s not known why the executors chose some things and not others, but some drafts went with them and some were left behind. After enjoying the Sloppy Joe’s material for many years, in 2001, Jones donated the bulk of it (along with additional material) to the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park where it became part of the Foundation’s larger collection. It is now stored and accessible at the Oak Park Public Library.

While much of Waring Jones’ Hemingway collection was donated to Oak Park, some items were held out and put up for sale by his family using New York bookseller, Jeffrey Marks. It was by way of a listing he posted that the Clarke became aware of The Woppian Way manuscript’s availability. Recognizing its significance and potential value as a part of its Hemingway Collection, the Clarke combined money from its Michigan Hemingway Endowment, a private donor, and Friends of Library to secure the purchase. This item, created by a new struggling writer in Petoskey, Michigan, is now on site and available to see and use.

 

 

 

 

 

Aquatic Invasive Species in the Great Lakes

by Frank Boles

 

On February 18, 2021, CMU Professor of Biology Anna Monfils and Chase Stevens, Invasive Species Coordinator for the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe, spoke about invasive water species. Specifically, they addressed the European frogbit (Hydrocharis morsus-ranae or EFB).

Professor Monfils, who spoke fist, talked about her research into the plant. It was introduced into Canada in the 1930s and quickly escaped from where it was being studied into the natural habitat. It has spread throughout the Great Lakes region, and is now widely found in Lakes Ontario, Erie, and Huron, as well as many inland waterways. Because much of the basic research to understand, evaluate the impact of, and ultimately control EFB has yet to be done, Professor Monfils is doing a great deal of original research. She shared her work, that is establishing the scientific foundation needed to understand the species, the impact it has, and the most effective means of control.

Professor Monfils also stressed the importance of public participation in the effort to understand EFB. Citizen scientists help track the spread of the plant. Individuals reporting EFB in various locations, often documenting the plant through photographic images that are uploaded through a smartphone app, have been essential in understanding where the plant exists and how rapidly it spreads.

Chase Stevens spoke about the Tribe’s projects to help control EFB and other invasive species that impact Tribal lands and culture. He spoke of several threats. EFB, for example, tends to grow in habitat also favored by wild rice. But this is not the only threat to traditional species employed by members of the Tribe. Green ash borers, for example, have so devastated the state’s native ash tree population that Tribal basket makers are finding it difficult to locate enough ash trees to create the raw material needed to weave baskets.

As part of the evening’s presentation, a fall exhibit created by the CMU University Library, “Big Water Creates Big Impact,” was announced. The goal of the exhibit to tell the story of how mid-Michigan has been impacted by water and water events in the words and images of those who have experienced them. The University Library encourages submissions to the exhibit by the public from March through May. To learn more about the exhibit visit library.cmich.edu/BigWaterExhibition.

The aquatic invasive species program was jointly sponsored by the Clarke Historical Library, CMU’s University Library, and the Saginaw Chippewa Tribal Libraries, and was funded in part by a grant given to the University Library by the American Library Association. “Big Water Creates Big Impact” is also in part funded by a grant from the American Library Association.

To view a recording of the program please click on this link to the Panopto version or the Youtube version. To learn more about EFB visit this blog on the University Library website. 

 

Yooper Talk

 by Frank Boles

On February 11, Dr. Kathryn Remlinger from Grand Valley State University shared with us her research on Finnish accents in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Yooper Talk was based on her years of linguistic research in the western Upper Peninsula, the “Copper Country.”

Finnish has had a particular influence on speech in the Upper Peninsula because of two unusual characteristics of immigrants from Finland. The first was their language itself. Finnish is unrelated to other European languages. Thus, Finnish speakers could not easily “borrow” parts of their language patterns and apply them to English. Second, unlike most European immigrants to the United States in the late nineteenth century, Finns had a very high literacy rate.

Most immigrant groups to the United Sates followed a very similar pattern regarding the loss of their native tongue. The Immigrants, or first generation, spoke the native tongue and would never really master English. They often learned some English words or phrases, enough to get by, but they would never rely on English as their basic way to communicate. Their children, the second generation, would usually be bi-lingual, speaking the native tongue to communicate with their parents, but English the rest of the time. The immigrant’s grandchildren, the third generation, usually only spoke English. Finns, however, because of their unusually high literacy rate, passed that reading skill to their children and grandchildren, and their continued reading of Finnish made the language more long-lasting within their community than most other immigrant tongues.

Dr. Remlinger also made the point that people who speak with an accent, Yooper or otherwise, often face discrimination. She recounted a story of a young woman who almost dropped out of college when a professor asked if anyone in the class was from the Upper Peninsula, and when no one admitted to such an uncouth heritage, breathed a visible sigh of relief, as “those people” always had difficulty with the oral presentation. As a result of this attitude, the student, who was from the Upper Peninsula (but wasn’t about to admit it that day!), felt like her chances of success in the class, and in college, were pretty much zero. Actually, Yooper talk, like most dialects, follows fairly precise rules, and one’s dialect rarely tells much about a person’s capabilities – just a bit about their background.

Finnish was not the only language to influence how Yoopers talk. Perhaps the most unexpected thing Professor Remlinger shared was that the ubiquitous “eh” that often ends a Yooper’s sentence does not come from Finnish. Rather, it most likely came into usage because of the linguistic nature of three other languages that influenced how English is spoken in the UP – Canadian French, Cornish English, and Ojibway.

That fact was a surprise, as was how the word “Yooper” got into the dictionary – a Scrabble game. Back in 2002, some Scrabble players, one a Yooper, got into an argument about whether Yooper was really a word. As Scrabble players do, they turned to the dictionary for a ruling, and “Yooper” wasn’t there. This setback led the defeated player to write the editors of the Merriam Webster dictionary asking that the word be included. They said no. This rejection began a more than decade-long correspondence, with examples of the word being used in printed sources regularly forwarded to the dictionary’s editors as proof that “Yooper” was a real word. Eventually, the editors relented and placed “Yooper” in the 2014 collegiate edition. Among the scrabble players, however, opinion was divided if the editors were really convinced about the validity of the word or if they were just tired of getting letters on the subject.

Our thanks to Dr. Remlinger for an informative and entertaining evening, and to the John and Audrey Cumming Endowment, which made the presentation possible.

A recording of the presentation is available on the Clarke Historical Library website.

The Green Book

 by Frank Boles

 

Americans travel, a lot. It is part of our national character. But in the twentieth century not all travelers were treated equally. People of color faced rejection and hostility based on racism when they sought services or accommodations in places such as restaurants and hotels. The problem was national, but the experience was local, very personal, and very much a part of Michigan history. To document how people of color coped with the challenges of travel during the era of segregated accommodations, the Clarke Historical Library has recently acquired several annual editions of “the Green Book.”

 

“The Green Book” was a travel guide for people of color, based on the racism even the most elite members of the community suffered. In 1932, for example, Dr. B. Pirce Hurst, one of Washington D.C.’s leading Black citizens and a man of financial means, was arbitrarily denied a room in New York City’s Prince George Hotel despite having confirmed his reservation. This was not uncommon. Clerks in many hotels frequently “lost” a reservation when a person with a black face showed up to claim it. Hurst later explained how he was rejected by four New York City hotels that night, before finally finding a place to stay in New York City’s Black district of Harlem. Unusual for the day, and thus gaining considerable publicity, Hurst sued the Prince George for violating New York State’s then existing civil rights law and won his case.

 

But Hurst’s legal victory was something of a one-off. Time did little to change the problem. Civil rights leader John Lewis recalled how his family prepared for a trip in 1951:

There would be no restaurant for us to stop at until we were well out of the South, so we took our restaurant right in the car with us…. Stopping for gas and to use the bathroom took careful planning. Uncle Otis had made this trip before, and he knew which places along the way offered "colored" bathrooms and which were better just to pass on by. Our map was marked and our route was planned that way, by the distances between service stations where it would be safe for us to stop.”

Uncle Otis was an invaluable resource for the Lewis family. Black travelers not fortunate enough to have the advice of someone experienced along a particular route often had to carry buckets or portable toilets in the trunks of their cars because they were usually barred from bathrooms and rest areas in service stations and roadside stops. Travel essentials such as gasoline were difficult to purchase because of discrimination at gas stations.

Victor Hugo Green became the “Uncle Otis” for many people of color who were traveling by automobile. Beginning in 1936, Green published what was commonly called “the Green Book,” although its official title was The Negro Motorist Green Book. The book listed accommodations, such as restaurants and hotels, where Black people would be welcomed. It quickly added barber and beauty shops as well as other services.

 

Originally centered on New York, the book expanding to include listings throughout the United States, including Michigan. The guides were printed more or less annually between 1936 and 1966. In his memoir, A Colored Man’s Journey Through 20th Century Segregated America (2000), Earl Hutchinson, Sr. described purchasing a copy in preparation for a road trip he and his wife took from Chicago to California. “The ‘Green Book’ was the bible of every Negro highway traveler in the 1950s and early 1960s,” he wrote. “You literally didn’t dare leave home without it.”

What the 1962 guidebook said about Michigan makes Hutchinson’s point. Only nineteen cities were listed. The largest number of listings in a single location is Idlewild, the Black vacation resort in remote Lake County. In Detroit, with a Black population of nearly one-half million, only twelve accommodations are listed. The only other locations with more than one accommodation are Flint (3), Jackson (2) Lansing, (2) and the small communities of Bitely (2), on the Lake/Newaygo county line, and Vandalia (2) in Cass County. Vandalia, which in 1960 had only 367 residents, was near the junction of two major Underground Railroad “lines” that “conductors” had followed to lead enslaved people north prior to the Civil War, a fact that seems to have influenced the community more than a century later.

“The Green Book” did not directly challenge segregation or the white racism that underlies that segregation. But it also looked forward to a day when the book would be unneeded. As the introduction to the 1948 edition states:

There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment.

Legally, that day came with the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a Federal law that banned racial segregation in restaurants, theaters, hotels, parks, and other public spaces. The law did not end racism, but it made the overt implementation of racist beliefs in places of public accommodation punishable by law.

Three years later, “the Green Book” quietly ceased publication because it did “not have to be published” any longer. America’s era of legal segregation had ended.

“The Green Book” compliments many other resources in the Clarke Historical Library that document a wide range of experiences recording the history of racism, segregation, and de-segregation in Michigan.

The New Family in the Neighborhood

Frank Boles 

America has a long history of segregated housing. Whether accomplished by law, social custom, or economic factors, America’s neighborhoods were, in the past, and often remain today homogeneous. Despite these persistent patterns, Americans have slowly come to accept first the possibility and then the reality of multi-racial communities. One of the landmark moments in this transformation that most people do not know about was when a minority family moved into the book that taught first grade children to read. 

Ask anyone of “a certain age” who Dick and Jane are and they will tell you. They were two extraordinary well-behaved children who lived with their baby sister Sally and their two parents, and who were described in grade school reading books used across the nation. The children first appeared in print in 1930 and, although the books are still widely available in reprints today, the final “new” edition featuring the children appeared in 1965. In the 1950s, at the height of their popularity, approximately 80 percent of America’s first graders learned to read from these books. Some 85 million grade school children are estimated to have used the book to learn reading between 1930 and 1970. Small wonder everybody “of a certain age” know these children. 

In the 1950s and early 1960s, critics of the Dick and Jane readers began to point out the volume’s many stereotypes and biases. Critics had many objections but one of them was that many first graders who lived in the United States could not relate to a white, nuclear family with two parents, three children, a dog named Spot, and a cat named Puff, and who enjoyed life in a house located in a prosperous and apparently all-white suburb.  

Responding to various criticisms, in the 1960s, publisher Scott Foresman heavily revised the book, and the series of readers for older children that built upon it. One of the biggest changes? In 1965, Scott Foresman became the first publisher to introduce a Black family as characters in a first-grade reader. The new family included two parents and their three children, Mike, and his twin sisters, Pam, and Penny. 

From the perspective of a half century later, this change might appear little more than tokenism, mixed with savvy marketing on the part of the publisher to retain a lucrative book market. But perhaps it would be wiser to view this change through the lens proposed by Ibram X. Kendi and his definition of antiracist 

One who is expressing the idea that racial groups are equals and none needs developing, and is supporting policy that reduces racial inequity. 

Using Kendi’s definition, Scott Foresman decision to place a Black family in their first-grade reader was anti-racist. The new family in the book certainly appears equal and has no need to “develop.” Mike, Pam, and Penny dressed as did Dick, Jane, and Sally. The parents of both families wore similar clothes and, as far as one can tell from a first-grade reader, enjoyed a similar income and a similar lifestyle. Furthermore, Scott Foresman’s change introduced into the perspective of every first grader who picked up the volume the anti-racist policy that people of every color could live anywhere and be welcomed everywhere, for example in Dick and Jane’s neighborhood.  

Mike, Pam, and Penny did not end racism in America, but they did represent a notable contribution toward changing attitudes about race in the United States. 

The Clarke Historical Library includes the Lucile Clarke Memorial Children’s Library, in which is found a large collection of historical K-6 textbooks. From this collection of books, insights about the values one generation has shared with the next can be learned. The collection includes Scott Foresman’s ubiquitous Dick and Jane volumes.