After my father graduated college with high honors he didn’t know what to do with himself. His minimal income was from a part time job as a barber who, three mornings a week, administered leeches to customers who needed them and wanted a light trim. Plus he worked as a postal clerk, sorting mail on week-ends. What he also had was a big out- go. Charles R. Bowman had a wife and two small children, aged four and two. They lived in two rooms on the third floor of his father’s house, sharing the bathroom on the second floor with his parents, getting to use the rubber hose that connected to the footed tub so his family could shower now and then. His mother, my grandmother, was in charge of the kitchen. I wasn’t one of his children yet but my time came soon enough. How many of the stories I heard were true, I don’t know, but my father told them over and over until they became reality. Surely, at times, he fantasized, exaggerated, but his way was always convincing.
To bring in a few dollars my mother, using a heavy scrub board in the cellar, washed clothes, mangled her hands. Her left one was scalded, scarred, when she burned it on the heavy iron that had a wooden handle and was heated on Grandma’s gas range. Still she labored, took care of the children and Dad’s libido. Dad found a job as a waiter in a little restaurant within walking distance of his family. The owner allowed him to take home what was left on the tables, including fresh bread. It wasn’t much but helped. Some of their meager earnings went towards the gas bill, sometimes, late though it might be, for a doctor’s bill.
After two years of getting no place, Dad realized he needed some time for himself, to do something of interest and began to write stories he had been told of the horrors his parents lived thru in Russia. The shtetels, the Cossacks riding thru poor struggling towns, slaughtering children. He saw, he felt, the blood mixed with mud on the unpaved streets. The raw, acrid odor of straw roofs burned eyes, burned people. He thought and he thought, had to preserve the past for his children. As poor as they were, he was grateful for what they had. And so he wrote, every spare moment he could find. Anger, hurt, love, real and imaginary, filled his soul. My mother didn’t believe her eyes and carried on like a wild woman when she saw him bring a typewriter home. ‘You didn’t, you didn’t really spend money on that machine, did you? How could you? Betty needs new shoes, you need new shoes, we all need shoes and you buy a typewriter that you don’t even know how to use! I hate you, Charles.’ Dad told me that particular story so many times that I can hear my beloved mother’s voice screaming at him. The yelling ended and the beginning began.
Dad sold newspapers on the corner to make enough to buy writing paper, typewriter ribbon. He sat on the only bedroom chair they had, hard, straight backed, cane seat. He clicked and clacked and clicked some more using only his index fingers, moving faster and faster every completed page. Mother told him to find a good job or move out. He did neither. When the first typewriter was worn out so was Dad. So was his first story. Excitement poured through his body as he titled it ‘Rich-Poorman’. Where could he get a large, strong envelope, free, to send his story to the Saturday Evening Post? Miss ‘old maid’ Dalton at the library knew him from the many times he took out reference books, a dictionary, and was kind enough to sell him one for five cents. Rich-Poorman was heavy, needed twenty five cents postage. My grandfather loaned it to him and wanted twenty seven cents back when Dad got a few dollars in his pocket.
Weeks barely moved. Dad was dejected, about to give up. One month had passed before a white envelope with his name on the front and Saturday Evening Post on the back, was slipped under the front door. Carefully Dad opened it, read each word as if it were molten gold. Editor, James L. Lewis was in capital letters. ‘Your submitted story ‘Rich-Poorman’ has been accepted and will appear in the March issue of Saturday Evening Post. Enclosed please find a check for fifty dollars.’
Yours truly, James L. Lewis.’ Dad ran in circles, up and down the three flights of stairs, waving his check, shouting to the walls, yelling as loud as he could out the window. ‘My story is being published!’ Mother came running, sure he had gone insane. As she came into their bedroom, he grabbed her, tossed her on their lumpy bed, kissed her long and deeply until she could barely breathe. They were both flying on air.
First thing in the morning the clicking, the clacking began again, and woke the family. Dad had thought it over and decided to have a more illustrious name and that he should look the part of a published author. He went to the Bureau of Statistics and changed his name to E. Hemingway. That name seemed to need a beard so he cultivated one, white and scraggly for a few weeks. And so he typed and typed, wrote about more current things, American places, France, Spain. His success was phenomenal. When Dad’s parents died, Dad moved Mother, my sister and brother to a new place, way down at the end of the United States, Key West.
We all lived happily together for fifteen more years. The Saturday Evening Post sent Dad checks monthly for ten years, until they too drew their last breath. In a special box I have on the top shelf of my bedroom closet are several cashed checks made out to Ernest Hemingway.
Dad’s old, old typewriter may soon be shown on Antique Road show, with a high value. After all, it DID belong to Ernest Hemingway.
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