At just 18 and 20-years-old respectively, Karl and Helmut Shilberg were already very successful by the standards of Frankfurt, Germany in 1957. Within the space of only several months, the two brothers had unwittingly expanded their single sidewalk newspaper stand into six busy kiosks. This was not due to any particular skill on either man's part. It was instead because they had just happened to be in just the right place at just the right time. Allied bombing during WW2 had virtually flattened the city, so because of the ongoing and extensive rebuilding efforts, Frankfurt was probably the easiest place in Europe to start and run a business.

Karl was blond, fit, and attractive; Helmut was all that and pretty uncomplicated to boot, plus he was also engaged to be married, to Helga, who was also blonde, who worked at kiosk nummer eins, and could also be considered fit and attractive depending on the lighting at the moment. Helmut was in love with Helga and looking forward to the wedding. But Helga really wanted Karl who did not want her; you know the old trope. She was nevertheless eager to marry Helmut so she could get out of that damned kiosk, but one month year earlier the Bundestag had enacted the Compulsory Military Service Act which decreed that all men upon reaching 18-years of age were obliged to serve a mandatory year in the army. There could therefore be no wedding until Helmut served his year.

So Helmut left his kiosks in the capable hands of his brother, kissed his somewhat attractive Helga goodbye, and appeared for duty. Much to the disbelief of his envious comrades, he lucked out and was somehow assigned to a General as a personal driver, which was not only a very coveted and cushy job, but it also allowed Helmut to completely bypass basic training. However, despite a full year of driving the general around, Helmut never quite got the hang of the unsynchronized transmission in the general's VW Kübelwagen. On a routine pickup one day just before his year was up, Helmut drove over the foot of his beleaguered general and then thanks to his fast, young reflexes, ran over the rest of the general as well.

All the world still had eyes on Germany in those days, so rather that being shot on the spot, Helmut was instead simply dishonourably discharged. This did not bother him in the slightest, mostly because he did not understand it. It did however, bring great shame to his parents who felt that after a pure blood-line, reputation is everything. So they first ignored him, and when that didn't seem to register on simple Helmut, they disowned him. For his part, brother Karl was so disgusted with Helmut that he kept the kiosks for himself. And Karl, who'd become impressed at Helga's ability to effortlessly up shift and downshift any vehicle he cared to without running over anyone, snatched her up while the snatch was still hot. So it was shortly after his discharge from the army that Helmut found himself both alone and financially ruined.

But! Helmut had been steadily siphoning money from the kiosks since the first newspaper was sold and somehow put it together that he had just enough money to go back to 'schule'. He chose a bookkeeping course because he'd always loved books and he hoped that perhaps they'd even have some picture books like his beloved and dog-eared copy of Der Struwwelpeter (an early comic book). So Helmut enrolled and after the initial surprise that bookkeeping was not at all what he thought it was, attended classes faithfully, and 11-years later, he graduated from the 2-year course. He was still unable to find work however since by then he was rather well-known in the local area. After a futile job search, Helmut took all this as a sign that perhaps a fresh start somewhere else was called for. He scraped together every last pfennig he had, borrowing it as required with promises to pay it all back soon with interest despite having absolutely no intention to ever do so, and he bought a one-way ticket to Toronto. He chose Toronto because he'd heard that money grew on trees in Canada, the rivers flowed with maple syrup, and most important of all, nobody knew him there.

Upon arriving, Helmut offered himself up as a bookkeeper and promptly obtained work for two the of the most prominent German-owned furniture factories in town. These were very successful businesses since Germans craft furniture as carefully as they do chocolate, Braun shavers and BMWs. Customers appreciate that. Soon after joining each company however, and despite Helmut's valiant efforts to control expenditures, the companies would begin losing money. When Helmut's first two employers went bankrupt, their owners returning to Germany only to then find out who they'd really hired, Helmut moved on to another 3 furniture companies, systematically bankrupting each one in serial fashion. Toronto-based furniture manufacturer owners at the time, despite being competitors did talk to one another so after a time it was determined that it was Helmut's accounting that was the culprit, but as that accounting was merely incompetence and not fraud, nothing could be done, except to blackball Helmut in Toronto. So for a time in the early 60s, there was a picture up of Helmut and a warning in every single furniture factory and store in southern Ontario.

At this point, Helmut considered simply moving on yet again to another city since by this time he had become fluent in English, mostly because of the extensive conversations he had been required to carry on with the various creditors of his previous employers, but one thing kept him in Toronto. Elodie Perrault was a slim and very beautiful 25-year-old bank teller from the village of Amqui in the hyper-rural Gaspesie region of Quebec, her village consisting of just 65 people, with the nearest large city of 5k, nearly two hours away. One of seven children, her father was a forest ranger and her mother owned a depanneur, a small convenience store, which was little more than the front mud room of their house with a bead curtain separating it from the the kitchen. Elodie worked at the bank of Helmut's last employer, the Toronto Dominion, and was immediately smitten with the fit, handsome and impeccably groomed Helmut. One day during a routine transaction where Helmut was transferring his owner's life savings to a Canada Customs and Revenue Agency tax collection account set up to collect a tax debt that the owner was not even liable for, Helmut, unaware that he was thinking out loud, mumbled that he'd like to take Elodie out to dinner and possibly back to his place right afterwords. Imagine his surprise when, with the damn bursting on 25 years of Roman catholic sexual repression, Elodie immediately agreed. Helmut couldn't believe his luck because as handsome as Helmut was, Elodie was gorgeous and way out of Helmut's league; a more perfect situation Helmut had never come across.

Their first date was a lovely, chilly, January day in 1966 and proceeded exactly as Helmut's daydream predicted. After treating Elodie to a moderate meal, he brought her back to his pin-neat apartment, thanks to the upbringing given him by his mutti and his mercurial and savage vati. The two virgins first figured out the mechanics, then proceeded to fuck like rabbits without nary a thought about birth control, because Helmut had never even heard of it and for Elodie it was a sin worse that dropping your Craven A cigarette into the fèves au lard at the cabane à sucre.

At work 8 weeks later, Elodie brought up to her friend and colleague Shirley that she seemed to have stopped menstruating.

Shirley said, "Did you squat and sneeze afterwords like I told you to?"

"Oh, I thought it was Helmut who was supposed to do that."

With that, Shirley understandably washed her hands of the situation by recommending some really intensive prayer, and the consult of a priest.

Both Helmut and Elodie visited father Gignac at St. Patricks's the next day, who first wondered aloud what the world was coming to, and then gave the couple their only option so that they could continue to remain Catholically repressed. So in April, Elodie became a Mrs., and the following August became Mrs. Hemingway after Helmut changed their names with the registrar General so that he could once again find work in Canada. Helmut chose Hemingway after seeing a book featuring that name in a book store in Toronto, and because he didn't think he could pull off Helmut Scott Fitzgerald. It sounded too wordy. Six months after the wedding, 9-pound 15.5 ounce me managed to find my way through my mother's narrow pelvis and out into the world.

There. You've just read Arne Hemingway's origin story.