Certain locales just naturally come to mind when you think of Ernest Hemingway. Oak Park, of course. Paris, where he started his writing career. Africa, where he hunted. Key West and Cuba. Idaho, where he died. Petoskey.
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In the late 1890s, the former lumber region around the bay was remaking itself as a tourist destination. Oak Park physician Clarence Hemingway and his artistic wife, Grace, were among those who vacationed “up north,” and they were so taken with the area that they bought land on what’s now called Walloon Lake and built a cottage they christened Windemere. Ernest was only six weeks old on his first visit, but he spent every summer there for 22 years of his life.
Most of the images in the book are typical family vacation shots, interesting for their sepia-toned period flavor and remarkable only in that some of them depict a future Nobel laureate as a boy. There’s one of the children playing dress-up, with Ernie wrapped in a bearskin. There he is again with a Prince Valiant haircut, roasting marshmallows over a campfire. In another photo, he’s about three feet tall, standing on a log with a ten-foot fishing pole in his hands. More than a few pictures show him proudly holding up a string of fish.
