* * * * *
Former Marine Jim Corbett in Pamplona, 1977.
Photograph by Gerry Dawes©2020.
Story about Jim Corbett, related in James A. Michener's Iberia, pg. 530 in the original 1968 Random House version without mentioning Corbett by name.
Matador John Fulton performing in a festival bullfight in Pamplona, 1977.
Photograph by Gerry Dawes©2020.
Photograph by Gerry Dawes©2020.
"Matador Fulton told an equally strange tale. He was born in Philadelphia, Fulton John Sciocchetti, to a conservative middle-class Italian-Hungarian family who changed their last name to Short, so his name was legally Fulton John Short, but in the ring he was known as John Fulton. As an art student at the Philadelphia Museum School he gained high marks, but reading Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon alerted him to the romance of the bullring, and when his military duty took him to camps along the Mexican border he began to train as a bullfighter, and once he did this, he was lost. He kept us chuckling in the mists as he recounted one after another of the misadventures which seem to overtake all bullfighters: ‘I was fighting this time in Tijuana and there was this dippy dame from some society or other in southern California who conceived a passion for bullfighters, one after another, and this week it was “our heroic American matador, John Fulton.” As the fight was about to begin she leaned down out of the stands, grabbed at my hand and told her husband, “I have fallen madly in love with this young man and I warn you that if the bull wounds him I shall leave you sitting here, because my place will be in the ring with the wounded hero.” Her husband looked at her, looked at me, then put his hands to his mouth and bellowed, “Come on, bull!”’--James A. Michener, Iberia, pg. 530 in the original 1968 Random House version.
John Fulton told Michener and his fellow picnickers this story in Roncesvalles. The guy who yelled "Come on, Bull!" was supposedly Jim Corbett, a long-time friend of John Fulton and a man I came to know well when he lived in Sevilla in the Barrio de Santa Cruz.
Matador John Fulton on and Gerry Dawes in the bullring at Pamplona, 1971.
Photographer by master Reuters (at the time) photographer Jim Hollander.
In the following paragraph, Michener wrote about Professor Kenneth Vanderford, who was also a friend of mine, at the same picnic in Roncesvalles:
"Vanderford astonished me by having in his pocket the details of that first bullfight I had seen in Valencia so many years ago. Working in his patient way through the newspapers of the period on file in Madrid, he had found answers to my questions: The fight had occurred on the Sunday after Easter, April 3, 1932, in the plaza at Valencia. The bulls were from the ranch of Don Manuel Comacho of Sevilla, and the matadors appear to have been regular, no more. Marcial Lalanda, so-so. Domingo Ortega, details. El Estudiante, details. He continued with his deflating analysis of the fight which I had remembered as something rather more than regular."--James A. Michener, Iberia, pg. 530 in the original 1968 Random House version.
Kenneth Vanderford at one of our picnics in Roncesvalles, 1971.
Photograph by Gerry Dawes©2020.
Read more about our picnics in Roncesvalles here:
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Gerry Dawes is the Producer and Program Host of Gerry Dawes & Friends, a weekly radio progam on WPWL 103.7 FM Pawling Public Radio in Pawling, New York.
Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004, was awarded the CineGourLand “Cinéfilos y Gourmets” (Cinephiles & Gourmets) prize in 2009 in Getxo (Vizcaya) and received the 2009 Association of Food Journalists Second Prize for Best Food Feature in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià.
In December, 2009, Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés.
". . .That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran Adrià in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish table. Gerry once again brings us up to the very minute. . ." - - Michael & Ariane Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and Founding Editor/Publisher, Food Arts, October 2009.
Pilot for a reality television series
on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.
Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Customized Culinary, Wine & Cultural Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain
Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@gmail.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@spanishartisanwine.com
Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@gmail.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@spanishartisanwine.com
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