she spoke out on abolition. a look at the personal and political partnership between frankland and eleanor roosevelt. exploring the american story. watch this weekend. places, but the familiar and comforts of home or private getaways often brings out their best work. coming up, stories of famous american writers and places fostering so much of their creativity, occasionally providing outlets away from the writing. we begin with ernest hemingway in key west. >> i have had the privilege of not only working here at the hemingway home, but actually live on the property.

this has been one of the greatest honors of my life. i have the enjoyment of walking around the property when everyone is gone, they can see the serenity of the property, inspiration that hemingway probably felt. he once had a line that said if you really want to write, start with one true sentence. for a true writer, each book should be a new beginning for something that is beyond. he should always try for something that has never been done, or that others have tried and failed. how simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. >> ernest hemingway was definitely a very unique and self-made man. his grandfather ran away from farm life, joins the civil war because, fought in the civil war and later worked for a cutlery company in chicago. hemingway's mother was an opera

singer and performing artist. his father was a pediatrician. it came from a very well off family. they settled in oak park illinois. hemingway is not being -- being hemingway is not easy if your father is a doctor. you could imagine what his mother wanted him to become. after haskell, he did not attend college. he went off to work at the kansas city star and the toronto sun as a newspaper reporter. he told his mother when he was challenged that he was going to be a writer, and she said that is a really fine hobby some, what are you going to do to make money. he very much wanted to accomplish something in life. he felt that he wrote what he experience that would do it. suffering from manic-depression, especially better in life, his high highs and low those gave him that drama. if you read about it more time and love stories, you realize the differential styles that he does. they can express something very

violent or something very bless. that is really what is interesting about the character of hemingway, because he went across the board. his manic-depression helped him do that. anyway when as a reporter to kansas city, then to the toronto star. he convinced the toronto star to allow them to go to paris to write about world war i. when he was in paris, he witnesses wife. -- he went with his wife. they met in chicago, both working for newspapers. she had a trust fund income of several hundred dollars of month, that afforded him to be able to live and basically do nothing but write and socialize. people highly criticized him for those years, when all you are doing is writing and socializing, you do not really work. but, who he socialize with, pablo picasso, escott this gerald.

he had the instinctive knowing who to hang with, when. he is in paris, and his wife befriends a lady named pauline, a fashion editor for vogue magazine. they become best friends, and pauline seals are most hemingway. he divorced his wife after having his son john and married at a catholic church in paris, france. they come to key west via an ocean liner and come on board in march of 1928, on the shores of key west, florida. here, he fell in love with fishing, fell in love with the clarity of writing, how fast he was producing. he knocked out the first rough draft of a farewell to arms in just two weeks. he thought at that time, i need to live here, i need to write here, i need to fish here. and they did. they found this house for sale, and bought it at $8,000.

pauline converted this hayloft into his first former writing studio. prior to that time, he wrote on tabletops, coffee tables, dining tables, startups. -- bar tops. hemingway was a very disciplined writer, regardless of us -- his indulgences. he woke up every day at 6:00 a.m. in the morning. he walked across an iron cap walk. he would write for virtually, from 6:00 a.m. until noon. at noontime, there was only time to do one of two things. either fish or go to sloppy joe's. he had a very strict agenda. again, he is watching the characters at the next table. he is assessing their movements, their phrasing, what they are saying, their occupations, vocations. he is documenting these in his mind to later be typed onto

paper, the next they are following week. he actually pulled characters out of his daily life. his settings are places he lived and/or visited. but he would do here in key west, is he would travel extensively, amanda lived out of a suitcase, had a lot of world war i but here, especially when he was working on the novel "to have and have not," that was about the great and characters in key west. he would go out to local pubs and bars and write about people's characters. he would use them and change their names. in the book, freddie's saloon we all know sloppy joe's, and that was his best friend jim russell. hemingway was always the leader of the pack. when he lived in paris, he had a group of people he hung out with , public picasso, f scott

fitzgerald. when he moved to key west, nothing changed. he still assembled that group of minds and intellects and pull stories and experiences from. charles thompson was the owner of a local hardware store who took him out on his first fishing trip in key west and became part of a group known as the mob. it was a local police chief in charles thompson, but on the spring months, he would bring members of the original lost generation to key west and then meld the two groups together, which you have to think for hemingway had to be the height of his experience of having that group of intellects and experience he pulled and would later write about. especially in books like "a farewell to arms," where jake barnes is the one who had

problems with relationships with females, a character in his life who was upset about him revealing his personal characteristics. lady brett ashley was another one who made it to that book who was not happy with hemingway's characterization of her. they actually took revenge on. agnes carrasco was a nurse in the them a lot hospital where he was hospitalized for a shrapnel injury, and she was his nurse. he fell in love with her. he proposed to her. she turned him down. she wrote agnes into the book as the character catherine and killed her off. we call that writer's revenge. he was an ambulance driver for the american field service, and that is where he became injured with the shrapnel injury. that's exactly the storyline of "a farewell to arms."

though you think hemingway is writing fiction, you have to rethink it again. if you know his biography, you are going to know his books better. ernest hemingway was probably the most prolific writer of the 21st century. he's probably even more popular today. although he only wrote 14 novels, 44 short stories, and a slew of poetry nobody knows about but me, hemingway's reads are very different as you mature and age. what you read when you read hemingway at 20 is very different when you read hemingway at 50 years old. his writing is very, he's an old soul, and he writes that way, and you don't know it until you become old, too. that's maybe why he live life -- lived life so fast, why he

fished and hunted and boxed and chased and went after everything he could go after as fast as he could. the boxing is something that is even more interesting. the fishing and hunting, i understood. he actually was aware of boxing as a sport as a young man, and he requested on his 14th birthday when he was asked what he wanted for birthday present, he told his father boxing lessons. his father bought him boxing lessons. he went down there with an amateur prizefighter who was going to teach him how to box. the first day he was at the boxing lessons, if you know hemingway, he's got a big bravado. he's a little extra sure of himself, slightly egotistical, slightly cocky, if you could imagine ernest hemingway being all of that, and this boxing

instructor knew he should take it easy on this 14-year-old boy. he gave him a good punch in the face that broke his nose. hemingway went home, got his nose patched up, and the next wednesday at the next scheduled lesson, he showed up with a taped up nose. the instructor looked at him and said, i want my next lesson. the instructor was very impressed by this. if you get your nose broken by a prizefighter at 14 years old, you probably aren't going to go back. that was not hemingway. hemingway would not give up. when he has something on his mind, he was going to finish it. that's one thing he did well. there are very few unfinished works we even know of. when he finished, he was not

finished. he despised being edited. there was one person he would invite to edit his works, and that was gertrude stein. he loved her feedback. one of my favorite stories is when his publisher wrote him back about a couple of lines in one of his books where he used the f word, and next perkins wrote, the world is not ready for this. he said, that is what describes the character i'm writing about most. they went back and forth about this fword being omitted from the book. through hemingway's frustration, he's working on other books. it's not he just doesn't care. he is just like, print, publish. next perkins wrote him back and thanked him for allowing him to change the f word, and he wrote

a note back. thank you very much. you can f word yourself. he's solid. he's a boxer. he's a fisherman. he's a writer. he is someone who has an ego that is larger than his own life , but that is sometimes what people believe what you tell them about yourself. if he was to talk about himself, which he wouldn't need to, you would think you are with a larger than life character and one of the most famous writers in the world as self-proclaimed already, but probably wouldn't have any problem telling you that, as well. this is something that followed him his entire lifetime. he played football, while still working on the school newspaper. hemingway had that ability to be

all things. in no way, that is what makes his writing so great is he can touch many different levels of life and relate to them all. in key west, he walked out of here barefoot, fish blood on his shorts, unshaven. he's not a tux and tie going out for a formal dinner because he's rich. that's just money. the most valuable thing in hemingway's life where the words on the paper. there are probably many people that have an explanation or justification for why hemingway committed suicide on july 2, 1961. i have a personal perspective, knowing what i know about him. he was suffering from manic depression. he was being treated at the mayo

clinic. he was undergoing something very experimental called electroshock therapy. at that time, we had no fda controls on this, so it was experimental. you get shocked for five seconds this week and 10 seconds next week. his wife mary thought he was being used as a guinea pig for this kind of treatment and later sued and did settle. hemingway lost his capacity to write. he would sit before a sheet of paper for hours at a time and could not think of one word. he was suffering from the shrapnel injury in his legs from the time he was an ambulance driver and was starting to work with a cane. castro had taken over cuba, and he was unable to return to his home in cuba and his boat.

his love of the ocean, his love of the latin community. hemingway saw himself, six foot tall, 200 pounds, with a 1200 pound marlon at his side, he was not going to be photographed publicly in a wheelchair. his bravado would not allow it. july 2, 19 61, 10:00 a.m., he took that opportunity to clock himself out. do i feel bad about that? yes. do i blame him? no. i understand his character. i understand his mind, and i understand his ego. he will always be six foot tall, 200 pounds. hemingway wrote because he loved to write. when my favorite quotes was from another reporter interviewing him.

what age did you realize you wanted to be a writer? he simply said, i've always known. what does that mean? i was born to be a writer. >> "the call of the wild" and "white fang" make jack london one of the most successful writers in the early 20th century spending his last 11 years in northern california's sonoma valley. his ranch cottage is the backdrop for his writing as well as a growing interest in developing better farming practices. >> jack london was one of the most famous authors in the world at the time. he was the highest-paid author in the world, getting $.10 to $.12 per word for his writing. while he's an american, he was one of the authors who was red throughout the world, including the soviet union, russia, japan.

he was translated into language after language. he was deeply concerned about the human condition, and much of what he wrote about, while it may have seemed like stories about dogs or the yukon or the state of humanity. we are on jack london's beauty ranch, also known as the ranch of good intentions. the entrance to the college provides people with sort of an overview of jack's life. there are a lot of pictures on the walls. there's is a video available. so they can get a sense of jack london in the 1905 to 1916 period. woke they will see our mementos of his trips to the south seas when he was sailing with his wife.

they will see the original study he worked in and then this room you are in now though much larger study he created after the wolf house, his dream house, burned to the ground. that burned to the ground just a few weeks before he was supposed to move in. workers were finishing the work with oil. they threw the rag into the fireplace, and on a hot august night, spontaneous combustion caused a fire and burned it to the ground. once that happened, jack london, once he talked about rebuilding, he was aware he was not healthy and decided to work on his farm and to work on the cottage we are in today, so he added this particular room, which became a much larger study for him. initially, his most famous book

and most famous book today is call of the wild. he also wrote one called "white fang," which was a sequel. both are about his experiences in the yukon searching for gold, but he wrote a myriad of stories about a number of different subjects. for a while, he was a vagrant. he wrote a book called "road" about his life on the road. he wrote a book about the poor called "people of the abyss." if you want to talk about his socialistic period, "the iron heel" is a fascinating book about the revolution that would come after he died. it was written in the future. many of those books are still readable. "call of the wild" until recently was read by most schoolchildren. his writing spanned a wide variety of different styles of writing. he even wrote science fiction.

jack london probably would've been right in longhand. the typing was done either by his wife or by his manservant. he was surrounded by books. you would also see technological innovations, things like a dictaphone, which was used by jack london because it allowed him to dictate responses to letters without spending the time to write those longhand. he, his wife, and his manservant could all work in here at the same time, whether it was working on books, correspondence, or farm matters. he was very productive. two thirds of his writing was published after he moved here. "white fang" was published in 1906, a year after he bought his property. "valley of the moon" was published while he was living

here. check london claimed he spent two hours a day writing. he was trying to build the beauty ranch so that it could be a model, and that took a lot of his time. one of the elements that he saw two perfect in order to help people was to create a much more productive ranch, a much more productive farm so people could be fed, people could have jobs, and people could be more successful. a lot of what he was doing was experimental. he was trying things that he expected would be written about, and people could learn. historically, americans believe firmly and manifest destiny. they believe america had the god-given right to own the entire country from coast to coast. if you were a virginia planter and you wore out your land, you

could move west. you could move south and start another plantation. you had to figure out ways to reuse and make the land sustainable over time. jack london believed he could do that. he worked to learn as much as he could by reading everything he could find written about agriculture. he worked with the university of california to understand the most common techniques. this is what check london built in 1915. when he built it, the scribes from san francisco were making fun of the fact that he spent $3000 to buy the pickering.

-- piggery. it was designed for over 200 pigs, and one man could handle the operation. this was one of the things he did as an example of his entrepreneurship. after his death, the family tried to keep the farm going. eventually, they converted it into a guest ranch. before and during world war ii, this was a place for people from san francisco to come to enjoy a weekend of horseback riding or enjoying the scenery. jack london park is operated by jack london park partners. we are a not-for-profit organization that helped the state when the state of california was in financial trouble and looking to close 25% of the parks.

we volunteered to take this over because we believed we could make it exciting and sustainable. today, we've got about twice as many visitors, about 100 thousand people visit us every year. i think this is a great model for some facilities. we have historic buildings. we can support horse men. we can support bicyclists. i think the combination of that with local community involvement can make for extraordinary success. >> writing from her home in jackson, mississippi, the south served as the inspiration for much of eudora welty's work. next, the writer's niece talks about the life and writing process of her pullets are prize-winning aunt. >> as a writer, i would say,

what is the essential? i take what i know for granted, so i see the new as the new and the old as the old, and i feel like a judge because my eye has been trained by experience. i know where i am. i have a base to see people moving in their true light. >> we are in jackson, mississippi, at the home of eudora welty. eudora welty was a writer who died in 2001. she won just about every literary prize there was to win other than the nobel. she studied throughout the world.

she wrote some short novels. she's probably best known for her short stories. >> that was the form she's probably best known for. some of which are not so short. totaling just under 50 stories in those four collections. >> and then there is another book, which is a short -- it is actually eudora's life from the time she was growing up in jackson to the time of the publication of her first story. it's very entertaining. i love that one, but also "the optimist's daughter" is the one that won her the pulitzer prize. >> she wrote anywhere, but most of her writing she did here. >> this home was designated as a landmark in 2004, and the house

open to the public for tours and 2006. i haven't been here two years, but i can't tell you how many times people have said to me in a tour how they would come down here just to hear her typing, and they did. of course, she would have the windows open upstairs. >> this is much like her room when she was here writing. she would make notes on anything available. she would jot down names she heard. she could be on a bus or grocery store. she would think of a name or here in name, and then jot these names down. some of the names she has, "real," so she would know not to

use the full name in the story. >> she loved jackson. she felt like she could write anywhere, but she knew the people here. i think she liked writing here because they respected her and gave her her privacy. she could go to the grocery store, and they would not bother her. they really liked her, and you would go into a restaurant and see the heads turn as she headed to her table. if you read her stories, you see how smart she was. the way they said things. she never wrote about anyone in jackson. she was invited to go to a writer's colony in new york.

she really didn't like it. they expect you to go to her room and right, and that is not how she wrote. she happened to walk into a post office, and she saw an ironing board and thought, huh. the story developed. "the whistles," which is a story about people burning everything they own to save their crops, and in the middle of the night, she hears a whistle. she asked her friend, what was that? she said, there's going to be a freeze tonight. that's what farmers use. she was just observant, and then a story would develop. >> when she wrote, she would

type it out, and then she would read it, and she would decide to edit it. she would read it, and much like a seamstress, she would cut out a strip and say, it goes better here. she would change a few words and pin it around. eudora saved everything she ever wrote. we have every draft in the archives of history, which is wonderful for research. they can go back and decide, why did she change this to this? of course, it's a nightmare for the department of history because all of these things get hand sewn in. unlike today where writers do it on a computer and do the next version and the first version is wrong, we have all the edits and

copies. >> i can't say what her legacy is, but to me, just her mastery of the short story form, particularly as it relates to dealing with the internal life that people often don't talk about, but it is there. her powers of description are amazing, not only the physical description of nature, but also the interior drama going on within the individual, but also between close individuals. it's extraordinary. >> the southerner is a talker by nature, but not only a talker. we are use to a listener, and that does something to our narrative style, i think.

>> montgomery, alabama represents both a beginning and an end for f. scott fitzgerald his wife zelda. it was here in 1918 where they meet and fall in love, and over a decade later, where they return as their marriage unravels in their final home together. >> currently we are in the last of four houses that scott and zelda lifton. this is in montgomery, alabama. when you come to the fitzgerald museum, the first thing you're going to find is a house that has been saved from demolition. this couple averaged about five months a stop for about 14 years. this house we inhabit has been significantly expanded after f. scott and zelda lived here. we still use the downstairs as a museum, and you are going to

find artifacts that date back to the mid-19th century, family bibles, baby shoes, an audit assortment of books from the 19th century. as you continue through our museum, we are going to take you all the way through the 1970's where scotty their daughter moved back to montgomery, and she lived here the last 16 years of her life. the things that are most important to us are our direct artifacts from scott and zelda. we showed you a house that was the turning point for f.scott and zelda. we have photos of zelda right after she moved here sitting on top of her trunk, almost like a princess on top of the spoils of war, and this trunk saying 99 felder avenue. the idea was to regroup. zelda had just gotten out of the hospital.

the most prominent hospital in the world in switzerland. she had been diagnosed as schizophrenic. when they get here, she's told she is cured of schizophrenia. what this house was was a landing pad. it was a regrouping stage, and it wasn't the type of place you would see scott and zelda engaging it was the sort of place where they were going to be planning their next move. montgomery enters the story of f. scott fitzgerald in 1918, after he dropped out of princeton, where his grades were so bad, the administration was not going to let him stay on for a 50 year. during world war i, when he came to montgomery, fitzgerald was probably remembering stories about how his father would help

confederate spies sneak behind enemy lines during the civil war. even though he was from saint paul, he considered himself a southerner. he gets here, he is 21 years old, has a rejected novel in his knapsack, is a second lieutenant, the bottom of the totem pole and he is staying at a post called camp sheridan, two miles north of the capital in downtown montgomery. that was a camp that about 20,000 men came through between 1917-1918. the war ends in november 1918, so fitzgerald gets here six months before his opportunity to become a hero in battle ends. during that time, he meets a young woman and there are two stories. we at the fitzgerald museum believe he met zelda at windsor place, i mentioned in downtown montgomery, a lot of fancy party used to happen there -- parties

used to happen there, but only officers were invited to parties there. if you were a grunt, you weren't going to make it to an invitation. and there was exchanged apparently between scott and zelda a bit of flirtation and it ended with them saying, let's meet at montgomery country club next weekend for a dance that is going to be held there. that is where the ledger comes forth, scott and zelda at a country club dance in montgomery, alabama, falling in love following publication of scot's second novel, "the beautiful and the damned," the couple needed new horizons, so they moved to europe. during this time, there was a firestorm of interest in zelda because after scott's second novel, she wrote overview that she wrote a review of the novel saying he had been pulling lines from her diaries and using them as dialogue for the main characters. this ended up with zelda being declared queen of the flappers

by " first international magazine." that summer, they show up in france and spent time on the french riviera, and during this time, zelda finds out that being the world's first flapper does not ingratiate you with people like gertrude stein, cole porter, ernest hemingway, edith wharton and a plethora of other serious artists working in france were visiting in france during this time. so she begins painting. early pastorals are her initial foray. these are being done as scott is finishing edits is a 28-year-old boy for "the great gatsby." fitzgerald believes the best vehicle for bringing zelda's painting to the public is to have a joint press run with the of his new novel and zelda's

first paintings being sold on exhibition in new york city. scott's novel is not well received by the critics, it only sells 2000 copies, and zelda's paintings are rejected as being the work of an amateur playgirl sort of painter. the tension in the marriage is the result of zelda's quitting painting professionally, but continuing to dedicate many hours to artwork at home. for example, in the museum, and these are from a collection at yale university, we have the earliest known paper doll zelda ever produced. these were multimedia paper dolls and were done as gifts for children, or just for their daughter, scotty, to play with. however, the new it girl of america by 1926 and 1927 was no longer the flapper, it was the

actress. and when they get to hollywood, scott tells zelda, more or less, you need to be more like women like lois moran, a 17-year-old girl when they met and already had a career, in which she dedicated her artistic mind to making money with her artistic production. zelda does not find this flattering. she has a huge fight with fitzgerald in which she burns all the art work she had been producing in hollywood, and the couple, very much tail between legs, head to leave hollywood soon after they arrived and moved to a country house, where hopefully, they would be better at damage control in terms of their public reputations. we find out zelda soon dedicate herself to ballet, under the tutelage of a woman who had been a prima ballerina in paris in the early 1920's and was now

acting as an instructor at the russo parisian ballet school. the relationship between the madame enter student, zelda, would be the equivalent of a modern celebrity such as miley cyrus retiring her career and taking up the life of a professional athlete. today, modern scholars see this as a first major showing of zelda's bipolar nature. for the next two years, zelda practiced ballet as if she was meant to be a prima ballerina. however, she was 28 years old when she began this endeavor, and it ends two years later with a mental breakdown in paris, in which she tries to take her own life. for the next 14 months, she is at a clinic in switzerland. and after her time there, she moved here to montgomery, to this house.

at the clinic, they diagnosed zelda as schizophrenic. they also pronounced her curative schizophrenia. and when she moved to the house, the first thing she wants to do is write a novel about what happened, with a girl in her late 20's who decided to become a ballerina. that is what she is working on here in this house preacher works very hard for about six weeks, writes a majority of the novel, and when fitzgerald comes back from his second trip to hollywood, he reads the novel and it becomes the major spot of their marriage. fitzgerald feels like he is the one who is the novelist and is the one who should get all the accolades for writing and zelda, feeling she failed as a painter and failed as a ballerina, this was the last resort for her creativity. now, we are in the great room, or receiving room of the house when scott and zelda lived here. their time here was to mull to us not only because of -- was

tumultuous, not only because of zelda wanting to write a novel, but because her father died here. scott got a contract in hollywood at $750 a week and got a raise that he could not refuse to $1200 a week at mgm studio. during that time, zelda finishes her second novel and has a breakdown, leading them to leave montgomery and go to sheppard pratt hospital, and antics of john hopkins -- johns hopkins in baltimore. that summer, zelda finished her novel of this photograph was taken of the famous couple shortly after the novel was released. this was a shot of scott and zelda, a picture that would have been postwar. the expressions are unmistakable. there is an unhappiness in the marriage that is becoming difficult to overcome, fitzgerald looking nervous and zelda looking very unhappy that she is the subject of attention.

the reason is, these photographs are appearing beside reviews of the novel, which are calling her a third rate writer, a woman who is only being published because her husband is scott and zelda -- husband is apt scott fitzgerald. her mental health continued to deteriorate. for the rest of the 1930's, she spent over 90% of her waking hours in mental institutions, leaving the great writer f. scott fitzgerald along with his only child, a doctor who was coming-of-age. in 1933, scott sent scotty to boarding schools. scotty was going to be in boarding schools or college until the day fitzgerald died in 1940. for sterile -- fitzgerald was not a man to leave no vestige of family life behind, so he continued to work earnestly on a collection he had begun in 1928 when they were living in paris. in 1973, scotty wrote a preface

for a collection of the last uncollected short stories are father and mother had written. in the preface, she lists the collection of one of only five artifacts interposition that belonged to her family. that is indicative of the transience of this story, scott and zelda never making a place scotty could really call home. these stamps are taken from postcards and letters the fitzgeralds had sent to friends during the 1920's, when money was easy, short stories paid fitzgerald a lot of money and were easy to sell, and the family was able to travel at will. the 1930's were a much different ballgame for scott and zelda, but one thing remained true, and that was scott's dedication to maintaining a family life scotty at a time and her mother was nowhere to be found, when her mother was living 100% of her

time in mental institutions and fitzgerald was struggling to find work. as the 1930's wore on, fitzgerald began to despair that zelda would ever be curative or mental illness and indeed, she was never cured. however, his income is dropping at her hospital bills were rising at scotty's boarding school bills were breaking him. by 1936, he was $40,000 in debt and had nothing to show for it. so when hollywood came calling in 1937 for the third time and offered fitzgerald a $1000 a week contract, fitzgerald had no choice but to leave zelda behind in north carolina at a hospital and travel across the country to begin life a new as a 41-year-old man. he spent the next three and a half years working in hollywood. during that time, he had one film credit, for a film called "the three conrads." he had a girlfriend who was

every bit of his second wife, but he would never divorce zelda . so he and sheila's relationship remained clandestine nine. the night before he died -- clandestine nine. -- clandestine nine. -- clandestine. he had one more film to his credit, and by all accounts fitzgerald enjoyed it immensely. however, when he stood up at the theater to get out of his seat, he expressed a fainting spell believed to be a heart attack. it would be his fourth heart attack of the year. sheila wanted to call an ambulance and have its gerald taken home. however, because was a premiere of the movie and theater was filled with a listers, and the highest paid actors, fitzgerald did not want to be seen carried out of the theater on a gurney. he had sheila graham wait until

the theater was empty and helping to the car so he could go home. the next morning, he woke up, they had brunch, and he died of a heart attack. he was 44. in the end, montgomery is the beginning and end of the fitzgerald story. it is where they met in 1918, when they tried -- where the consulate when they were pregnant with their first child, is where they came when the leaves began to fall off the relationship because of zelda's mental state in 1931. the part of the story visitors find most poignant is that their doctor, a girl who grew up without a home and grew up on the road for 13 years of her life, when she needed a place to call her home, montgomery is where she planted. if you come to the fitzgerald museum, you will find out that f. scott fitzgerald is more than just a writer he is not a genius who could come up with every thing on his own.

he needed a partner. he needed someone to give him a life full of enough of ideas that you could write rate american novels. that woman was zelda, i montgomery and by birth -- montgomerian by birth and who fitzgerald felt exemplified the age in which they lived. >> in 1945, author and poet carl sandberg moved to a farm in flat rock, north carolina, to get away from his life in busy chicago. now a national park service site, visitors can hear about sandberg's life in the mountain town in the writing he was able to complete while living there. [birds chirping] >> where i may sit for a few casual callers, and offhandedly, this is where i dirty paper

the eternal hobo asks for a quiet room with a little paper that he can dirty carl sandberg came to north carolina when his wife and children arrived with boxcars full of books at the property in 1945. mr. and mr. sandberg were in their late 40's and living on the shores of michigan that were very cold. misses sandberg was really the force behind finding a warmer, gentler lime it for them to spend their later years, as well as a better climate for her dairy goats. in the 1940's, he was in demand, had just won a pulitzer prize for his abraham lincoln biography, and there was a lot of interest in him with a variety of writing project. his editor was throwing writing projects at him left and right. his neighbors were a little concerned he might get out, and

he refocused his attention. it was successful and paid off because five years after they moved here in 1945, carl sandberg one another pulitzer prize for his collection of poetry. carl sandberg had grown up in illinois, born in 1878 and he was the product of an immigrant childhood. his parents were swedish immigrants. he was the first of their sons born in america. he moved in this american melting pot at the time. the industrial revolution was going to take place shortly and he met people from all over the country, through his neighborhood and his childhood running around the streets of the town, which was a suburb of chicago. carl sandberg grew up learning about who made america, the working class that made and built america, and when he first started taking jobs, a lot of them had to do with newspapers, starting as a delivery boy.

moving on, he did odd jobs working for a mayor and was a journalist at "the chicago daily news," and his observations of early america captured his attention and became the focus of his writing. his most famous when -- his most famous poem was "chicago," and it talked honestly about what was happening in chicago during the industrial revolution, the city of tall shoulders talks about chicago being the greatest place in american history and industry at the time, and its development both good and bad. and that problem put him on the map to become a world or nationally renowned poet at the time. later, sandberg, having met veterans who fought in the civil war, people who met abraham lincoln, with illinois being

where abraham lincoln had a political career, he was captivated by the story of abraham lincoln and sent out to write a children's book, and later wrote a six-volume biography of abraham lincoln which won a pulitzer prize in 1940. we are 35 miles southeast of asheville. the family moved here in 1945, mr. and misses sandberg, their three children and their two grandchildren, john carl and paula. the home was adequate for a family of that size. the home is 6000 square feet the family was able to use recycled wood to line the house with bookshelves to house carl sandberg's collection of 60,000 books. he was hesitant to leave his home in michigan. the family built the home, mr. sandberg designed it, it perfectly fit his work schedule. there was a room for him upstairs to work quietly from the rest of the house and not be

disturbed by his wife and children in the dairy farm operation. auntie wanted to make sure his books and everything arrived just as he had it in michigan. he was in the middle of a big project and wanted to make sure all his materials arrived and that he could find them and family arrived. misses sandberg and her daughters meticulously pulled every book off the shelves, put it in a marked crate, and when he arrived a month later after the books were loaded on a train car, he was able to sit in his study with the same furniture at the same books in the same location, and that he felt settled. he was quite pleased with his new home. carl sandberg's daily schedule was that he never took a day off. even on a holiday or family gathering, birthday celebration, was not caused to stop writing. he was a dedicated on hard-working writer. he worked every day.

he talked about writing thousands of words with his lead pencil, sitting upstairs around here on the property, but he wrote every day. he wrote millions of words in his lincoln biography alone. it was that volume of collections that carl sandberg had was that was -- that was very substantial. when he moved here from michigan, he was able to publish a third of his works here, as well as his own autobiography. he worked on the screenplay for "the greatest story ever told" and also included his first novel, which was contrasted by mgm to become a civil war movie. in the surrounding community, a handful of people did figure out that the carl sandberg that moved to flat rock was the carl sandberg, but that connection

often came through his wife's dairy operations. people picked up on that. she was selling at a local farmer's market and people would come out to the property and she always billed herself as misses carl sandberg, but it wasn't until later that they figured out this was the carl sandberg. one thing that changed that was the advent of television. carl sandberg became good friends with edward r. murrow and traveled across the country in the 1960's to be on talk shows and early game shows. and people started to recognize his photo on tv as a resemblance to their neighbor down the road in flat rock. and it became more apparent that was who he was present for was very famous by the 1960's. through connections with a broad american audience in radio and television, he had a large fan base and some people even traveled to what was considered this out-of-the-way place in western north carolina.

thurgood marshall visited sandberg, to reminisce and talk with the great american poet. and alfred stieglitz, famous american photographer, visited here. a famous encounter he had in the 1960's was with bob dylan. and bob dylan eight up everything folk music at that time -- bob dylan ate up everything folk music the time and came across carl sandberg's collection and found out carl sandberg lived in flat rock, north carolina, will where he and his band were driving through. so he pulled up unannounced, walked on the porch, knocked on the door and met carl sandberg for the first time. sandberg was in his late 80's, hadn't kept up with more modern music in popular culture, and disappointed the young opulent greatly -- the young bob dylan

greatly. he was very respectful and bob dylan had a conversation but was disappointed that carl sandberg didn't recognize him. after carl sandberg passed away in 1967, the department of the interior came to visit misses sandberg, the secretary of the interior, stewart udall, and the national park service was looking for homes from iconic americans, particularly in arts and culture field. carl sandberg was very well-known at the time that he was a good fit. when meeting took place, misses sandberg was open to the property and family belongings becoming part of the national park service and within a year, it was designated in 1968 is the carl sandberg home national historical site, and misses sandberg moved to asheville but continued to have a relationship with the national park service. park was established in 1968 and

opened to the public in 1974. we have been having house tours ever since. we are wrapping up a restoration project that began in 2015 -- we approach the anniversary, we are excited to begin refurbishing the house. but visitors today will only stamp to bookshelves and am empty floor -- and an empty floor. collections were put into storage for us to accomplish necessary work. the house was built in 1838 and just general deterioration and maintenance issues developed. the walls were painted, the floors were refinished, so we are very excited that by fall of 2018, all of the furnishings will have been returned to the house. one thing about being able to show the property where the original owners's property is

intact, misses sandberg wanted it to remain as intact as possible. >> looking for a better way to appreciate nature, in 1845, writer and transcendentalist henry david thoreau escapes the surrounding world for the shores of the now famous walden pond in concord, massachusetts. living there for two years, he chronicles his experience in the book "walden, or life in the woods." [birds chirping]

>> it just interesting -- it is interesting that very often, readers of "walden", when they come to the pond are little disappointed. because when you read "walden" you are expecting to be just amazed by the landscape. the fact that thoreau could be, every day, staggered by a landscape as humble as this

takes a little getting used to. it was just a little pond, and now it is an icon of american literary history. henry david thoreau first came here as a little boy, and he remembered that excursion long after. but he came here with his family, actually together sand for his father's sandpaper manufacturing enterprise. but he came here to live on july 4, 1845, and was out here for two years after that. his friend, ralph waldo emerson, had not long before bought the property we are standing on now as a woodlot, basically. the soil around walden isn't

good for much except growing trees, and he asked emerson if he could put up a structure here and stay here for a while. and emerson said, sure. his principal purpose was to find a writer's place for himself, something he had been thinking of for several years the specific project he had in mind was a book in memorial to his brother john, who died in 1841. the book is about a trip he took with john in 1839, they were both very young, but the took a trip by boat up to new hampshire, and that is loosely the thread that runs through "a week on the concord and merrimack," which is the book he

wrote here. while he was here, it is easy to imagine thoreau was all alone. if you read the book, you would think he is halfway up the slopes of a mountain or something, that he was at the end of the world somewhere, but he is not. he is connected to town, it is only a little over a mile away, especially if you take the railroad cut there, you are in town in no time. and he had lots and lots of visitors while he was out here. so it is not that he was isolated, but he had plenty of the solitude that he wanted as a thinker and writer. the house he built, he tells us in the first chapter of "walden," was 10 by 15 feet, a fairly substantial space about the size of most craftsmen's

workshops in that period. you can get a lot done in 10 by 15 feet, and it was sufficient for thoreau. not immediately, but he soon planted a field of beans and tried to get by in part on them. but for the rest of his living, it was supplies that he would get from town, rice and things like that. phil roe came -- thoreau came from walden, already with a set of ideas about what wildness, not the wilderness, but wildnes s. that is what interested him. part of the exercise in coming to walden was to remove himself from culture.

this was something that emerson mentioned and in a house with no neighbors. historically, there have been other people living out here, but were gone when he was out here. not long after he came to walden with the idea of the book walden started to occur to him, and if you look at his journal, there are passages from it that were worked into some of the early

drafts in the lectures he gave on the subject. writing the beginning of walden the book, he said it was curiosity on the part of his neighbors. they wanted to know if he was lonely, aren't you afraid out there, and so on, so he started answering those questions, and it grew from there, but of course he changed. it was not just a narrative of my experience in the woods, so he had the publisher to get rid of that subtitle. it wasn't a narrative of living in the woods. it was more complicated than that. there was walden the experience, just two years, but the book was a longer project, published in

1854, going through several drafts, so in the interim, thoreau picked up a new methodology of observation, 1851, 1852, a new way of observing the world, and a lot of that is reflected in the final draft of walden, so it takes some exercise, some intellectual exercises to take apart those threads and figure out what it is that he is up to while he is actually out here. walden was more successful then something else. the deal thoreau made with his publisher was that if it did not sell, thoreau would pay for the publication, so he ended up being responsible for the publication. but walden sold better than that. it only went through one

edition during his lifetime, but did better than a week. one of the things to point out in the text of walden, he does not mean for anybody to imitate his experiment, and he talked about it as an experiment. rather, i think he wanted his readers to first have the sort of awed response to the remarkable fact that man and nature, that is the way thoreau put it. if readers take that away, it was good enough for him. if they thought about the relationship between what they do to get a living and what their life consists of, then i think he would've counted that as a success. announcer: the 1976 novel,

roots, the saga of an american family, brings the author alex haley not only a pulitzer prize, but unprecedented fame and recognition, with the popularity of the book and the equally successful television series. transforming his life, we take you to the 150 seven-acre farm he purchased in tennessee following the success of the book. -- 157-acre farm he purchased in tennessee following the success of the book. >> he did some writing while he was here. also, i think he was scared out of writing, because roots overwhelmed him so much that it was hard for him to finish books that publisher companies were requesting that he finish. he just had a hard time with it because roots took a lot out of mr. haley, the emotions that were in the story, the things he found out about his family, and

it was very, very emotional for him. i think the reason is he said he did not ever want anything like the success of roots to happen him again, because it was so overwhelming to him. he had no idea that when he embarked upon this research, to research his roots, how it would affect africans in our world. esther haley's first visit was in 1982, coming here to visit the world's fair, while here, this was his first visit to east tennessee, and he fell in love with the area and the people. he met and became good friends with mr. irwin, a museum owner in our area and specializes in preserving the history of the appalachian region. after his departure from the world's fair, he had asked mr.

was if a property came up for sale to let him know, because at that time, he lived in california. six months or eight months or so after his departure from the world's fair, this facility came up for sale. one hunter 25-acre farm, and -- 125-acre farm, and it was put up for sale. mr. haley came out and mr. irwin brought him down to look at this farm i'm and mr. haley decided he fell in love with it. the only thing surrounding the purchase was this two-story house and the barn, which now has something. mr. haley fell in love with it. so he set about to purchase it. i think it was purchased in june, 1984. a lot of times we would do entertaining for him on the facility across the front of their library. we would set up the big black iron kettles and build fires

underneath them, and we would have cap fish fries, hush puppies, corn on the cob, baked beans and those cabins over the fire, so the people from the publishing industry really like that. and then we would put the tractors on the wagons and take everybody for hayrides on the fun. it was an exciting time. a lot of fun. there was usually a band playing from the gazebo, and we would just decorate the place to whatever theme for the time of year it was. he thoroughly loved this farm. mr. haley was 61 years old before he ever owned his first home, and when he purchases farm, he described it as a treat to himself, and really loved for people to come here and visit. oprah winfrey has been a guest here, others, lamar

alexander, a lot of people have traveled through the facility here. mr. haley, he was comical at times. he was simple and down to earth. and that had very warm heart. he love help people. he put numerous kids through college who could not have afforded to go if it were not for him. he was talking to when young men one day and he had told me, i really would love to go to school, but i can afford it, because i have to help my mother take care of our family. mr. haley said something, and the young man said something come and mr. haley paid that boys weigh all the way through college, because he told him to go and go to school, if that is what you want, and a lot of people think that mr. haley was broke. he passed away, and innocence, he was, but not because he squandered it. he used what he made to help people did he love people.

he loved being around people. mr. haley made the fear one day and tell us i want to have four for supper tonight and when he came back home, he might have 30 with him. to give you an example of that, he a lot of times is to haley like to go back out to sea to write. we were over the lodge and putting something up in the freezer, because we grew a lot of vegetables here on the farm and did a lot of canning, and we were not expecting him for a couple of weeks yet, and he called us and said he arrived early, and he wanted to bring a few guests for dinner that evening to the farm, and we told him, sure. we told him that we were putting up corn and stuff and ask him about how many thought he was bringing me he said, i think about 110 would be a good number .

what had happened is he had met this plain load of teachers at a conference who were having mechanical problems with the airplane, and he got to talking to him, and he rented a bus at the greyhound station and had those teachers bust out here, and we were frantic out here trying to get together for the 110 who were coming, but we made it, and everything turned out great, but he would do that to us a lot, you know, because if he was out here and there and would meet someone and would invite them back to dinner. he never met a stranger. he wished is always a caring and compassionate person. you could never tell anybody know whenever it was asked of him, he would try to accommodate, you know, if he could, and he allowed the university of tennessee to utilize the facility for many functions, and he actually donated his literary works in research papers for roots, he donated that to the university of tennessee.

he may come in and be here at the facility for two or three weeks, then he may be gone, then leave and be gone for several months, if he would go back up to sea to write. as he got older, it was harder to get around, having health issues, and he would stay here and try to do some of his work here at the farm. but he really wanted to use this places a place to come and unwind and relax and to enjoy the serenity that he found here. the last, on mr. haley here at his home here in tennessee was he walked out that the house and got into the car with his travel companion, arthur sends command they left to go to the airport and he was going to seattle to speak at a university, and he passed away before he got to speak, of a sudden heart attack come in washington with a grade

10, 1992. it is very emotional for mr. haley, and it took a lot out of him, but he gave, him, he gave back to all the people throughout the world. to be able to look back on their ancestors. he said he realized after he had written roots, he did not just do it for himself, that he had done it for all those who had no one to tell their story. announcer: this concludes our look at american writers. you can look at more content on our