SpoonerCentral.com
Title
The Knapps Lived Here
Description
Several years back when I first got wind of this story, I was on the phone with author / historian Ashley B. Saunders (History Of Bimini, New World Press) asking him everything I could about his uncle Nathaniel Saunders. Nat Saunders was an eyewitness to the 1935 fight between Hemingway and Knapp. That fight is now a part of Hemingway and Bimini Folklore thanks to Nat writing the song "Big Fat Slob" that will keep the legend alive long past all our times. I probably have published more about this story and studied it from more angles than anyone all , because of my interest in the party to it that no one else has ever paid much attention to ...that being one Joseph F. Knapp. Even Ashley was taken by surprise that the reason I was making inquirys was because of Knapp and not Hemingway. In our first conversation, I discovered though that Ashley's take on Hemingway was closely aligned with my own ...that all though he was a a great writer, he was a bit full of himself, which is amusing because Ernest reportedly according to his friends had a built in S _____ Pot detector. But I guess it only worked one way or perhaps he never turned it around until in a stupor he ended it all in July of 1961. From my studies the only one I have found to tell him he was pissing in the wind was Ben Finney, author of Feet First and another eyewitness to the fight that I have discussed in pages on this web sight.
Getting back to Ashley though, he told me he thought the fight didn't just start the night that it happened, but rather started brewing earlier that day when both Knapp and Hemingway were in the fishing tournament. That made sense to me even though back then I knew that Dodi Knapp was probably everybit as big a hellraiser as Hemingway was. I hinted back then about speaking with his uncle but perhaps I didn't hint strongly enough. I did study and publish Ashley's interview with his Uncle conducted in 1980 and like I said everything else I could find, including Hemingway's June of 1935 personal letter to his editor at Esquire and Ben Finney's eyewitness account published in 1970.
Ashley also told me about that the song Big Fat Slob was recently recorded (this was in 2001 and would be released in the future) which I definitly looked forward to and even went as far as playing it at Dodi's gravesite on the 51st anniversary of his passing October 24, 2003.
Contact
- Spooner, Ken
-
- Nashville TN
- United States 37209
-
- 615-469-7198
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