The Old Man and the Sand and Sea

Ever met anybody famous?

I suspect you have. Most of us, I think, have experienced--or know folks who have experienced--unique contacts with "well-known" people. Examples: When one of my writer friends was a child, his babysitter was Sharon Tate. (Seriously.) Another writer friend once did a major-movie love scene with Clint Eastwood. My former literary agent talked Robert Bloch into writing Psycho. My father's best friend flew missions with pilot Gene Autry in World War II. And so on and so on. I myself have sat next to several of my favorite movie actors on commercial flights during my IBM years, and pestered a few of them all the way to baggage claim.

Another memory is of a night when my vacationing family and I were eating dinner in my dad's brother's seaside restaurant in Pensacola, Florida. I was twelve years old, and because it was my sister's fifth birthday, my uncle (who had no children) secretly arranged for all the cooks and waiters to march out with a cake and sing "Happy Birthday" to her. As it turned out, two of the cast of the then-hit TV show Gunsmoke--Amanda Blake and Milburn Stone--were among the diners that night, and afterward the two of them came over to our table, wished my sister a happy birthday, and sat and visited with us for half an hour. This was long, long ago, but such a thing was unusual even then, and I still remember being thrilled.

My favorite story, though, of a chance meeting with a famous person came from one of the students in my writing classes.

Here's the background . . .

The student in question, the late Nick Adams, lived in Mendenhall, Mississippi, about half an hour south of Millsaps College in Jackson, where for many years I taught two night courses on writing and selling short stories. Nick was a good writer and an all-around good guy, and I grew to know him well. We worked together on a number of his stories, and he honestly enjoyed the process of writing--he wrote both fiction and poetry. 

The funny thing is, he never said anything, during all our weeks of classes, about the story I'm about to tell you. He revealed it to me only afterward, at a dinner held to celebrate the end of our two courses. (Celebrate is the correct word; my students were probably glad to be rid of me.)

. . . and here's the story:

In the early spring of 1959 Nick Adams was a freshman at Del Mar Junior College in Corpus Christi, Texas. He was a student reporter for the school newspaper, The Foghorn, and his family owned a restaurant in a Corpus hotel called The Sand and Sea Resort, on the Gulf of Mexico. After classes Nick waited tables, washed dishes, made room-service deliveries, mopped the floors, and did whatever needed doing at both the restaurant and the hotel.

One day that year he looked up from his duties and saw, standing there in the hotel lobby . . . Ernest Hemingway. The author was there with his wife Mary and his old friend and fellow author A.E. Hotchner. An avid reader, Nick recognized Hemingway immediately. Since Nick was in the vicinity, the desk clerk asked him to take the three guests's luggage up to their rooms, and Nick--in a quick whisper--asked the clerk if she realized who these people were. She said no--she'd never heard of them.

Nick took the bags up, they tipped him well, and he rushed back to the restaurant to tell his mother what had happened. She listened as Nick blurted out his story, then said, "Go call him. Now."

"What?"

"You're studying journalism, right? You write for the school paper. Call him on the phone and ask him if you can do an interview."

Nick realized that made sense. He beat feet back to the hotel lobby, phoned Hemingway's room from the front desk, and--trying to keep his voice from shaking--made the request. He did not, however, reveal his name. He was afraid that if he mentioned his name they would think he was pulling some kind of hoax, or making a joke. (As a longtime fan, he was familiar with all the Nick Adams short stories Hemingway had published, mostly in the 1920s and '30s.) To his amazement, he was told by the wife, "Sure. Come on up."

Mary Hemingway welcomed Nick into the room just as her husband was stepping out of the shower. He smiled and shook Nick's hand as he stood there naked and dripping, and in fact continued to stand there chatting until his wife fetched him a bathrobe. Then they sat together at a table, and for the next twenty minutes Nick asked questions and scribbled the replies in a notebook he'd brought along. Hemingway was gracious and helpful throughout the interview. When it was over, he asked Nick not to let anyone from the local media know he was there until after he'd left the next day, and Nick agreed to keep the secret.

The following morning the three travelers had breakfast at the family restaurant before leaving. Nick was away and in class, but his mother introduced herself to Hemingway, and he asked her what her son's name was so he could leave a card. When she told him Nick Adams, Hemingway was both surprised and pleased. The note he left said, "To Nick Adams, who will make a good reporter."

Some years later, Hotchner wrote a book called Papa Hemingway, and the Sand and Sea incident is recorded there. He got some of it wrong--I've read the book and found the account--but the essentials are there, right down to Hemingway's reaction to finding out the boy's name. 

Again, Nick never mentioned this during our many references to Hemingway's writings during the classes--he told me about it only at the final dinner, when all of us were sitting around talking about old times. And maybe the funniest thing of all is that Nick Adams (the real one, not the character) never became a reporter. He became a successful businessman instead. 

And a part-time writer. I still have a signed book of his poetry. Is that wild, or what?

NOTE: Last week I googled the hotel for the first time, and found this, among other info: In March 1959, renowned author Ernest Hemingway was interviewed at the Sand and Sea Resort Hotel by a college journalism student. 

My question for today is, have you ever met, either accidentally or intentionally, a famous writer--or, for that matter, a famous politician, actor, musician, etc? Was it a normal meeting, or unusual in some way? If it was an author, did that at all inspire or influence your writing? Did the meeting result in any fictional versions of it?

Before closing, I'll share one more story of my own. I once ran into the American pop singer Billy Joe Royal, just before one of his college concerts in the late 1960s. (Yes, I know--you younger folks won't remember him.) Anyhow, he and his group were turning a corner going one way and I was walking the other way, and I ran into him, literally--Royal was a short guy and I'm not--and knocked him flat on his back right there in the hallway outside the ballroom of the Student Union. His entourage went nuts, but I apologized and helped him to his feet and all was well. I still think about that every time I hear an old recording of "Down in the Boondocks."

Hopefully your celebrity encounters went better than that one.

Whatever it is or was that inspires you, find or remember it and keep writing! See you in two weeks.