Frank Miniter - This Will Make a Man of You: One Man?s Search for Hemingway and Manhood in a Changing World

Copyright 2016 by Frank Miniter

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Tom Lau

Cover photo credit: iStockphoto

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-1192-1

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-1193-8

Printed in the United States of America

To Ernest Hemingway for making the map
and to Juan Macho for guiding the way.

Table of Contents

The Hemingway man drew me in, as no transformative rite of passage can begin until you see the archetype you want to be, but he was altogether more than expected.

Fighting bulls were the rites terror and confusion. Whatever the rituals in a true rite of passage bring, they are there to rip away the walls around your ego and ready you for whats next.

My guide was Juan Macho, a veteran bull runner and a Hemingway scholar. In any rite of passage, a sensei, drill sergeant, coach, or teacher will confront you. If a guide isnt apparent, one must be sought, as no rite of passage is real without enforcers and mythmakers. (Beware: a poor guide can ruin a grunt, student, or plebe.)

Now came the trials of running with bulls. The gauntlets in a rite of passage can be as ghastly as gloves filled with bullet ants, as grueling as boot camp, or as heart-pounding as running in a packed Spanish street with bulls; but whatever it requires, its challenges are there to prepare you for a metamorphosis that will only come if you endure the tests of mind, body, and spirit.

All real rites of passage have moral codes as their foundations, because without them the change isnt lasting. Perhaps this is why Hemingway was obsessed with his code. Whatever the case, the basis of Hemingways code is surprising.

As you struggle and endure, youll get the first taste of being what youve been pursuing. If you accept this, youll be forever changed, still yourself but purified in a manly role.

If you pass the tests, you will be accepted among men of honor in a unit, team, company, firehouse, dojo, or, in my case, a pea. You are in a guarded society, a fraternity of men. But you also know the archetype youre trying to live up to will abandon you if you break the code, that to be all you can be, you must live up to something other than yourself. Of course it is much more than this, but that is why this is a book.

Use these codes to write your own.

INTRODUCTION

A SHINING EXAMPLE OF A MAN

Thank you, the old man said. He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride.

Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

F LOYD PATTERSON, THE FORMER HEAVYWEIGHT champ, lowered the red punching mitts on his hands as he settled his brown, caring eyes into me. I knew he was choosing his words. I didnt know he was about to say something that would influence the rest of my life.

I was a fifteen-year-old, 130-pound kid whod been training in the barn next to Floyds home in New Paltz, New York, with dozens of other boys and a revolving cast of pro fighters for a year. I thought I was getting pretty good and wanted to know how good. So Id paused between throwing a jab, right hand, left hook combination into those worn punching mitts and asked over the smashing clamor of the boxing gym if I had what it takes to be a champ.

Heavy bags were being pummeled around us. Their heavy chains were ringing. Someone was jumping rope, making its leather cord smack the barn wood planks under our feet. Another fighter was using his wrapped-up hands to make a speed bag go bang , bang then bang, bang as he shifted from left to right. Music was thumping Bruce Springsteen, and a round counter was ringing at one- and three-minute intervals.

Floyds brow had furled under that lip of hair he always kept at the front of his head. He straightened his back while keeping his eyes locked in mine. I knew hed adopted a lot of children and that he helped any who came to his gym. We all knew it didnt matter to him what our ethnicity was or whether someone had money or not. He just liked helping kids. So yeah, he was our role model, a giant among men.

Floyd knew this, so he carefully, a word at a time, said, Only a really great fighter should make a go at being a professional boxer. Boxing destroys a lot of good fighters.

I was young, but not so cocky that I thought I was the next Sugar Ray Leonard. My expression must have shown this because Floyd pulled his punching mitt off in his armpit and put his hand on my shoulder. He then said just loud enough for me to hear in the smashing rhythm of that boxing gym, I was younger than you when a teacher took me aside in reform school and told me to take a good long look at the people I thought were my pals. He said I should ask myself, really ask myself, if I wanted to be one of those kinds of guys, and not just right then, but all the way.

I glanced around the gym and back to Floyds brown eyes as he said, When I really looked at the guys in that reform school, I knew I didnt want to be one of those mugs, not all the way to prison. But when I got out and saw a fighter, I knew I wanted to be him all the way.

Floyd was a man of few words, and that was a mouthful of advice, so he slid his hand back into the punching mitt and raised the mitts up again.

As I again tried to perfect my technique, I knew I wanted to be like Floyd. He wasnt just a champ; in all the years I knew Floyd, I never saw him do an unmanly thing. He did everything with deliberate pride. He had the stoic strength and self-satisfaction of a man whod done what hed set out to do. There was no bully in him. There was no bravado. He was humble. He treated everyone with the same gentlemanly respect. If we stepped out of line, hed set us straight, but never with anger in his eyes. He was our shining example of what a man should be.

My favorite Floyd storyand he liked to tell thiswas when, late in his professional boxing career, a snide reporter asked him, So Floyd, whats it like to be the heavyweight knocked down the most times? Floyd politely replied, Pretty good. Because Im also the heavyweight champ who got up the most times.

That was the honorable nature of the man.

Still, as I took his advice and really looked around at the pros in the gym, I saw that I didnt want to be them, not all the way.

A few years later, as he signed a college recommendation letter for me, Floyd winked at me as he said, Remember to ask yourself if you want to be one of those guys, and not sort of, but all the way. That will make a man of you. The man you really want to be.

He didnt say any more, but like any great teacher, he was handing me the keys to a lot moreif Id only take them.