Ernest Miller Hemingway was born at eight in the morning in Oak Park, Illinois. In the nearly sixty-two years of his life that followed he forged a literary reputation unsurpassed in the twentieth century. Thus he created in himself a mythological hero who fascinated not only serious literary critics but also the average man. He was a literary genius. Born in the family home, a house built by his widowed grandfather Ernest Hall, Hemingway was the second of six children of Dr. Clarence and Grace Hall Hemingway; he had four sisters and one brother. He was named after his maternal grandfather Ernest Hall and great uncle Miller Hall. Oak Park was primarily an upper-middle-class Protestant suburb of Chicago that Hemingway would later call a city of "wide lawns and narrow minds." Only ten miles from the big city, Oak Park was philosophically much further away. It was basically a conservative city trying to isolate itself from the liberal mood of Chicago. Hemingway was raised with conservative Midwestern values ​​of strong religion, hard work, fitness, and self-determination; if one adhered to these parameters, he was taught, he would be assured success in whatever field he chose. As a boy he was taught by his father to hunt and fish along the shores and forests surrounding Lake Michigan. The Hemingways had a summer home called Windemere on Walloon Lake in northern Michigan, and the family spent the summer months there trying to stay cool. Hemingway fished in the different streams that flowed into the lake, or he took the rowboat to fish there. He also went squirrel hunting in the woods near the summer house, soon discovering the serenity that could be found being alone in the forest or wading in a stream. It was something he could always return to throughout his life, wherever he was. Nature would be the touchstone of Hemingway's life and work, and although early in his career he often found himself living in large cities such as Chicago, Toronto and Paris, once he achieved success he chose somewhat isolated locations places to live like Key West or San Francisco. de Paula, Cuba, or Ketchum, Idaho. They were all convenient places for hunting and fishing. When he wasn't hunting or fishing, his mother taught him the finer points of music.