THE OLD MAN AND THE SAND AND SEA

by John M. Floyd

Ever since I retired and made good my escape from Corporate America, I have been — when I’m not writing or mowing the lawn — teaching short-story courses in the Continuing Ed program at Millsaps College. It’s a lot of fun, and the best thing about the gig is the people I meet in the classes. My students (several hundred of them now) have included cops, chefs, bookstore clerks, mechanics, TV anchormen, physicians, limo drivers, nuns, lawyers, and folks in between. Especially interesting are their tales about past experiences.

One of my former students, Nick Adams, lives in Mendenhall, Mississippi, about 25 miles south of Jackson. Nick’s a great guy and a talented writer, but the thing that first comes to mind whenever I think of him is a true story he told me a few months ago.

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

One day that year he looked up from his duties and saw, standing there in the hotel lobby . . . Ernest Hemingway. The writer was there with his wife Mary and his old friend and fellow author A.E. Hotchner. Nick recognized Hemingway immediately. Since the bellboy was gone at the moment, the desk clerk asked Nick to take their luggage up to their rooms, and Nick — in a whisper — asked the desk clerk if she knew 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 stammered out the story, then said, “Go call him, right now.”

“What?”

“You work for the school paper, right? Ask him if you can have an interview.”

Nick realized that made sense. He phoned the room and, trying to keep his voice from shaking, made the request. He didn’t reveal his name, though. He was afraid if he mentioned his name they would think he was pulling some kind of hoax, or joke. (As a longtime fan, he was of course familiar with Hemingway’s Nick Adams short stories.) To Nick’s amazement, he was told, “Sure, come on up.”

Mary Hemingway let Nick into their room just as Ernest 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 brought him a towel to put on. For the next twenty minutes Nick asked questions and scribbled the replies in a notebook propped on the dresser. Hemingway — well known for his kindness to aspiring writers anyway — was gracious and helpful throughout the interview. When it was over he asked Nick not to let any of the local media know he was there until after he left the next day, and Nick agreed.

The following morning the three travelers had breakfast at the family restaurant. Nick was away, but Hemingway asked Nick’s mother what her son’s name was so he could leave a card. When she told him Nick Adams, Hemingway was stunned. The note he left said, “To Nick Adams, who will be a good reporter.”

Some years later Hotchner wrote a book called Papa Hemingway, and the incident is recorded there. He got some of it wrong — I re-read the book last week and easily found the account — but the essentials are there, right down to Hemingway’s reaction to hearing the boy’s name, and Nick was thus immortalized.

A funny thing about this is, I knew Nick for several years before finding out about his long-ago meeting with Hemingway. The information only surfaced when the entire class got together for dinner at a restaurant one night at the conclusion of our writing course, and everyone started talking about old times.

And the funniest thing of all is that Nick Adams (at least the one I know) never became a reporter. He became a successful businessman instead.

And a writer of short stories.