Hemmingway

Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway was born on the 21st of July 1899 in Oak Park, Chicago. He was the second of six children. He was born at eight o'clock in the south front bedroom of 439 North Oak Park Avenue (His grandfather's house). He weighed nine and a half pounds and measured twenty-three inches tall. At seven weeks old he was taken to Bear Lake, to the shorefront property that his father, Dr Ed Hemingway, had purchased the summer before. It was not until October 1st, on his parent's third wedding anniversary that he was baptized at the First Congregational Church. At three he had caught his first fish. His mother described him at three and a half years of age as:" Ernest Miller is a little man - no longer lazy - dresses himself completely and is a good helper for his father. He wears suspenders just like Papa. Is very proud to be a member of Agassiz (a nature study group organized by his father). He counts up to 100, can spell by ear very well. He likes to build cannons and forts with building blocks. He collects cartoons of the Russo-Japanese War. He loves stories about Great Americans - can give you good sketches of all the great men of American History" When Hemingway was six, his grandfather died and the Hemingway family left his grandfather's house and moved to a corner lot at 600 North Kenilworth Avenue and Iowa Street. It was an eight bed roomed, three-storey house, with an office for his father, where he could conduct his medical business. After Ernest graduated from High School, his father's desire was for him to go to college but Ernest had very different ideas. Ernest Hemingway wanted to join the forces or learn to write. Having been forbidden to join up for the First World War by his father, Ernest applied for a job as a journalist and by October 1917 the Kansas City Star employed Hemingway. Ernest had to leave home to take up his job. His father accompanied him to the train station and stood by the train until his son's moment of departure. Ernest remembered the departure for a long time afterwards and wrote about it in 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' relating the mixed emotions he felt of sadness, relief and adulthood. The Red Cross accepted Hemingway as an ambulance driver but recommended that he saw an optician and bought a pair of glasses. Hemingway ignored the advice. Ambulance