Peter Applebome has been a reporter and editor for The New York Times since 1987. He was born in New York City and grew up in Great Neck. He graduated from Duke University in 1971 and received a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University in 1974. After working at Texas newspapers in Corpus Christi and Dallas and at Texas Monthly magazine, he joined the New York Times as a national correspondent and then bureau chief in Houston. He moved to Atlanta as Southern Bureau chief in 1989, served in that job for five years. Since then he has covered education and culture and is now Deputy Metropolitan Editor.

     His work has appeared in numerous publications including the New Republic, the Washington Monthly, the Wall Street Journal, the Nation and the Texas Observer. His interests

include Duke University basketball, tennis, alternative country music, and the novels of Thomas Pynchon. His favorite achievement was winning the annual Bad Hemingway competition with an epic about Hemingway in the singles bars of Dallas. He is also the winner of the annual Scoutmaster Challenge at Camp Waubeeka of the Boy Scouts of America, about the least likely honor he ever expected to receive in his life.

     He is the author of two books. In 1996 he wrote "Dixie Rising: How the South is Shaping American Values, Politics and Culture.'' His new book, "Scout's Honor: A Father's Unlikely Foray into the Woods," published by Harcourt, comes out in May. He lives in Chappaqua with his wife, Mary Catherine Bounds, and two children, Ben, 16, and Emma 12. Despite three years of inept Scouting activity, he still can't tie his knots.

 

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Peter Applebome's "Bad Hemingway"

 

     In the late summer of that year we lived in a condo in North Dallas that looked across the tollway to the discos and honky-tonks of the Rue St. Bubba. We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength. But there was a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle Haggard song at a French restaurant.

     "The Great Landry says the Cowboys will be back,'' said the girl.

     "Then it must be so," I said, though I knew it was a lie.

     "When football season comes, then it will be cold. Like Switzerland. But not now. The cold will come later.

     "Pass the Doritos,'' I said, and her eyes shone like the stars

over Amarillo.

     I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of

her milk white BMW and her Jordache smile. There had been a fight. I had punched her boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls. Everyone told him, "You ride the bull, senor. You do not fight it." But he was lean and tough like a bad rib-eye and he fought the bull. And then he fought me. And when we finished there were no winners, just men doing what men must do. And the pain was washed away, but the image of the woman stayed with me like a blessing and like a curse. We went that summer to many clubs. We went to the Longhorn

Ballroom and the Palm and to a honky-tonk in Fort Worth that was what Harry's Bar would have been like if it had eighty-five cent Pearl Beer and a barmaid whose peroxide hair could damage your eyes as if you had seen an eclipse. That night we visited them all, but as we drove home I did

not think of the Pearl Beer and I did not think of the peroxide. I did not think of the girl who sat beside me. I thought of the woman of the tollway and I could feel my heart pounding in the heat of the summer night.

     "Stop the car," the girl said. There was a terrible look of

sadness in her eyes. She knew about the woman of the tollway. I knew not how. I started to speak, but she raised an arm and spoke with a quiet peace I will never forget.

 "I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the

tollway belle's for thee."

     The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was a lie.  Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I poured whiskey onto my granola and faced a new day.

 

Peter Applebome

International Imitation Hemingway

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