Sloppy Joe and Hemingway were Friends?
Monday, January 27th, 2014Joe Russell, the famous owner of Key West’s Sloppy Joe Bar, was friends with Ernest Hemingway. Along with Charles Thompson, who was a hardware store owner, Russell would regularly go fishing with Heminway. In fact, Joe Russell was the inspiration and model for the character of Freddy in Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not. What’s more, after Joe Russell died, pieces of Hemingway’s original manuscript for To Have and Have Not was found in the Sloppy Joe Bar!