Hemingway and Venice

The waiter walked over and said, "May I take your order, sir?" (He was speaking very quickly in Italian, so he might have actually said that I was the son of a motherless iguana, but judging from the context clues - he being a waiter and all - I'm going with the former.)

"Si," I replied, both of us wincing at my imminent butchering of his native tongue. "Posso avere la botigglia de Brunello, por favore," which is supposed to mean, "I'll have a bottle of Brunello, please."

As he walked away to get my wine (I hoped), I rested my hands on the table - Papa's table.

I had been an Ernest Hemingway fan, ever since reading "A Moveable Feast", his diary of the years he spent in Paris. People go to Pamplona to see his statue, and I was now at Harry's Bar in Venice for the same reason. I was here to catch a little of Hemingway's aura.

This restaurant, located at San Marco in Venice, has served everyone from actors to queens. The Harry's regular I was interested in, however, was the novelist Hemingway, who was particularly fond of the Martinis here. I was more partial to the Bellinis.

I sat at that table - maybe not the exact same table where he dined, but metaphorically close enough for me - and was struck by a feeling of history. It wasn't the "isn't that neat" kind of history feeling you get when you see an old battleground, but a much more tangible one. While my traveling companions had wanted to spend the evening at a local disco, I had chosen to venture, alone, to this restaurant for the sole purpose of soaking in the ambiance.

And soaking it up I was.

For the next three hours, I savored course after course, every now and then looking out over the Grand Canal. Along with all the pasta and seafood, memories were also being tossed around and netted. Moments came flooding back to me as I tried to divine what Papa might have been thinking as he sat in this chair, ate this food and looked at this view.

Did he, as I was, try to verbalize the staggering beauty of it all?

If he did, did he come up with something better than the cliched "staggering beauty"?

Looking around at the other patrons, many of them obviously jet setters, I wondered why so much of this was staggering for an American such as myself.

I came up with several explanations.

In a country that has so little relative history to speak of and doesn't respect - as the recent closing of Tiger Stadium in Detroit demonstrates - some of the history it does have, the history of a place like Venice is hard to take in. The ability to vicariously share in that history is almost more than we Americans can stand.

After dinner, I paid my check and left Papa's table - my table - to this family from Texas who had not an inkling about the sanctity of that space. And then it was over.

But for a brief time, I had been Ernest Hemingway. It was a feeling I have never, nor will I ever, forget.

That feeling is not one that is limited to Harry's Bar.

Rather, it is one that can be recreated throughout the country of Italy. You can go to John Keats' house at the foot of the Spanish Steps in Rome and see a lock of John Milton's hair - if either of those two writers are particular favorites of yours.

Italy is awash in those moments - moments when you feel like you are with someone who had had some vicarious impact on your life - such as Milton or Hemingway.

If classic literature or poetry is not your bag, Italy can make even pop culture inspire the same feelings and memories.

Cine Citta in Rome, where Federico Fellini made many of his classics, can arouse similar sensations to movie buffs.

The first time I landed in Rome, I couldn't get the Bob Dylan song "When I Paint My Masterpiece" out of my head.

One stanza still rings true and stirs the same type of memories that my evening at Harry's Bar does.

"Oh, the streets of Rome, are paved with rubble. Ancient footprints, are everywhere. Well, you can almost think that you're seeing double. On a cold, dark night on the Spanish Steps."

To this day, the hours we spent on the Spanish Steps -- drinking wine and talking with Italians -- are precious to me.

The memories of Harry's Bar and my meal there are also precious.

You, too, will have memories that make chills run up and down your spine when some place you visited on your trip is mentioned in passing conversation. Someone might be talking about, say, Hemingway, and you can pipe up:

"I was in Harry's Bar in Venice, which was an old haunt of Hemingway's, and the waiter walked over and said, " "...