Horton Bay General Store where Hemmingway hung out as a youngster.
Day two of Oberon Up North had a lovely resonance for me. This year's Michigan Reads highlight was Hemingway's Nick Adams stories. Tom Hunter took us to the site of those stories at Horton Bay on Lake Charlevoix (Pine Lake to Ernest) where we visited Hemingway's youthful haunts, the birthplace of the great man's genius.Richard, Tom and Rosey sit on porch with Hemingway in photo on site.
We stopped at the Horton Bay General Store, owned by Chip and Claudia Lorenger, where we enjoyed their great hospitality for lunch that included my first Smithwick's (say smithicks) Irish Ale, Ireland's oldest ale now brewed by Guinness -- very good. Richard kept pointing out all the places that Hemmingway had sat or touched, but we were undaunted by his cynical references to another birthplace we all know -- at least Ernest Hemingway actually wrote the stories attributed to him.Red Fox Inn and general store are both on the National Register of Historic Places.
After lunch we walked across the yard to the Red Fox Inn where we spent time in the bookstore and I bought a copy of the Nick Adams Stories (Scribner, 1972) that shop owner James Vol Hartwell had highlighted by adding the names of the Michigan towns where each story is set. Both the general store and the Red Fox Inn are on the National Register of Historic Places, and are listed by the Michigan Hemingway Society in their "Hemingway Related Sites" in the Horton Bay, Walloon Lake, Petosky, Harbor Springs Area -- a compilation by society founder Ken Marek.Front porch of the Red Fox Inn and the Hemingway bookstore in Horton's Bay.
We returned to Torch Lake before the storm and that evening enjoyed a feast prepared by Rosie -- and a bottle of Smithicks!
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