Over dinner tonight, my dad and I were discussing the horrible devastation and tragedy in Haiti. He recalled a trip he made to Port au Prince sometime in the late 1940's.
He was in the Navy and his ship had put into port. There was an old hospital in Port au Prince that had been turned into a beautiful hotel. Whoever created that hotel must have had a wicked sense of humor because what had been the morgue had been turned into the hotel's bar.
As my dad sat in that bar, who should walk in, but Ernest Hemingway and another popular author of the time. Soon the three men struck up a conversation. My dad had read and enjoyed books written by both these men so conversation was easy. Hemingway was, in particular, very interested in the Navy and asked my father a lot of questions.
During the conversation, Hemingway asked my dad if he and his buddy could use one of the landing crafts from my dad's destroyer to go fishing the next day. "Not a problem", was his reply.
Suddenly a very loud, drunk woman at the bar began exclaiming for all to hear that "All the papers are owned by Jews! That's why no one can get any real news anymore!" That brought his visit with Hemingway to an abrupt end as my father excused himself from the bar and returned to his ship.
That's my dad: a veritable Forrest Gump.
