As one of the editors of “The Letters of Ernest Hemingway Volume 6 (1934-1936),” with Sandra Spanier and Miriam B. Mandel, I am reminded of the eyewitness account that the writer, then a resident of Key West, Florida, gave of the catastrophic storm that leveled Upper Matecumbe Key and Lower Matecumbe Key and took the lives of more than 400 people, many of them World War I veterans.
Then, as now, the aftermath of a natural disaster included political finger-pointing.
Back then, Hemingway had a different beef with the government, blaming the deaths of hundreds of World War I veterans on the failure to evacuate Upper Matecumbe Key and Lower Matecumbe Key ahead of the storm.
The calm before the storm
Hemingway was no stranger to hurricanes.
A serious deep-sea angler who fished the waters off Florida, he kept an eye on weather patterns. Hurricane season was an anticipated, if dreaded, annual event.
“Now the lousy hurricanes are starting,” he wrote his friends Jane and Grant Mason in June 1934. “Wish we would get lots of east wind and current … and then have a fine july and august without hurricanes.” Knowing that these conditions were unlikely, he jokingly asked the Masons “and what do you want for xmas Mr. and Mrs. Mason yourselves?”
As one of the editors of “The Letters of Ernest Hemingway Volume 6 (1934-1936),” with Sandra Spanier and Miriam B. Mandel, I am reminded of the eyewitness account that the writer, then a resident of Key West, Florida, gave of the catastrophic storm that leveled Upper Matecumbe Key and Lower Matecumbe Key and took the lives of more than 400 people, many of them World War I veterans.
Then, as now, the aftermath of a natural disaster included political finger-pointing.
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