Bob Sullivan, a good friend who lives in Forest Park, shared the following letter, written to a member of the family he hadn’t seen in a long time who had missed a couple of familia get-togethers. Bob said it took several months to write his missive. We asked if we could publish it because it seemed an excellent example of the not entirely “lost art” of correspondence. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did:
Dear Wayne, hello on your face:
One-year-old wins big first time out
There are get-togethers and wing-dings of all kinds. Like cocktail parties, too many get too noisy too soon. Too many salvos of Halloos and backslappings among men; too much insincere hugging and smooching between the ladies. Not so at a party for a 1-year-old.
Two family events took place as 2015 became 2016 and your absence was noted at both. One was Christmas afternoon-into-evening at Shari’s and Tim’s. A good mix of oldsters, half-ways and millennials, the latter friends of Kristen and Jake. Also a special appearance by the U.S. Marine of the year, Drew. Looking good!
The other celebration, late in January, was “newbie” Gwen’s first birthday party at her parents’ neighborhood clubhouse. She and her gummy smiles captured the attention of all 100 or 200 invited to the four-hour afternoon affair. That’s a long time for such a new person to be displayed without a yawn, whimper, tear or hint of discomfort, but she gave back as many smiles as she gathered. (I don’t think she made an enemy all afternoon.) About all that could outshine “little Gwenny” were the faces of love, joy and pride worn by Ashlee and Keith, who let everyone know that the necessary “prep work” for a sister or brother had been tended to. Ha!
Party foods. This always counts a lot with both families. Featured were extremely munchable sandwiches, crisp and good-for-you snack veggies, sliced fresh fruit and a light, white birthday cake slathered with smooth, creamy icing, in no way cloying. And all washed down with cold drinks, milk, and cup after cup of rich, hot, black, flavorful, steaming, delicious coffee. I could go on, and did.
As hostess and featured player, Gwen pulled it off with class and panache. She interacted with her public beautifully — and everyone had a good time right back at her. I later learned the judges deducted two points for poking her fist into her mouth, the better to show off her latest pearly whites.
Murder and good advice, outdoors
Twenty or 25 years ago, my wife Barbara, #2 daughter Cara, and I flew to California to visit #1 daughter Jill. On the agenda was lunch with Shirley Gordon, a lady friend of Jill’s, 80-something and never married. The two had worked together at Hunter’s, a nifty “indie” bookstore in Pasadena.
The lunch was outdoors and pleasant as it often is in la-la land. Like the weather, the conversation was easy and comfortable. We learned early on that Shirley had written and published several children’s books. And she was to make a living mostly by the chancy freelance writing route — putting words on paper and selling them to magazines, newspapers, journals, ad agencies, campaigning politicians, publishers, music houses — even as a radio writer and doing scripts for the Bob Cummings television show. By now she had put it all aside and was enjoying life on some of her own terms, getting around on parenthesis-bowed legs and a multi-colored, hand-painted cane.
Shirley was marginally involved in one of the West Coast’s most sensational, puzzling and lurid murder cases. On Jan. 15, 1947, the body of Elizabeth Short, 22, of Los Angeles, was found truncated at the waist. It quickly became an event that rocked the nation. The victim was dubbed the “Black Dahlia,” after film noir movie and book titles of the time, a hideous murder and an unspeakable perpetrator loose somewhere. Hundreds of leads, scores of “people of interest” and innumerable hunches and clues came into play and were thoroughly investigated — to no avail.
At the time, Shirley and many others were engaged in a popular pastime; a spiritualistic, telepathic board game called Ouija that produced a sort of “automatic writing” and was thought to foretell the future or explain the unknown. She and a friend put it to use with questions pertaining to the murder. These were two intelligent women not given to folderol or other subterfuge. More often than not, they had felt the game yielded some amazing or at least tantalizing answers. So much so, that they chanced forwarding their “findings” to the L.A.P.D. This resulted in a prompt call back and follow-up visit from the local police.
The outcome? Just like the case. Inconclusive, unsolved.
Whatever else we talked about that sunny afternoon (not Black Dahlia), Shirley had occasion to comment, “There are so many more interesting things to be than right.” Whacko! How right those words sounded. As the chatting went on, I let her words rattle around my skull and thought to save them for review next morning. Once they passed muster I had a new and worthwhile conversational nugget. But how, I thought, should I reply if the other person snarls “Oh yeah? Name one!” It didn’t take long. Some answers:
To be kind
To be humble
To be other-minded
To be interested
To be interesting (Two for one … if you’re one you’re probably the other)
To be curious (Keeping the brain going)
To be WRONG (Good way to learn)
Add your own.
And thank you, Shirley Gordon, for the luncheon tip.
A friend of misfortune
Ron Hunt was a friend I made in the ’60s when he and I were in our 30s. We worked two years in the art department of Addressograph-Multigraph in the ‘burbs. He arrived after me and left earlier to join Marstellar ad agency in Chicago as a copywriter. “For bigger bucks,” he said. His leaving prompted action on my part.
Having failed at my counterfeiting scheme — wrong picture on the C-notes — I interviewed at Addressograph. This turned into five years of writing dazzling, electrifying copy on behalf of Amoco, State Farm, Morton Salt, National Safety Council, Rust-o-leum, etc. Over the next 25 years, I settled to my level of competence, scattering my talents with other agencies thither and yon, mostly thither. (It just occurs, Wayne, that my subject is Ron Hunt, not me.)
So we continued our friendship in the marketplace and socially. His background had included a college degree, two marriages, two sons (one by each wife) and two divorces with limited custody — losses that simply do not calculate. Give that some thought. When single and in the army, he had smarts enough to learn Russian and graduate from translation school in 18 months. Go figure.
Why do people become friends? In a word, commonality. Maybe sharing and embracing the other fellow’s storehouse of wonder, wit and woes. Whatever, we found much to relish and condemn. Hunt craved theater, often attending and understudying at the Goodman and other venues. Both of us had an early and active love of poetry. A favorite line of his was from Hart Crane’s “To Walt Whitman”:
O early following thee,
I searched the hills
Blue-writ and
Odor-firm with violets.
And sports! We revered the American sport of baseball, its history, lore, statistics and its spooky imitation of life. He sensed beauty in the bloody ballet of the bullring. I saw a bullfight. My outlook changed a bit when I listened to his arguments — and read Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon. We were as charmed and beguiled with politics and politicians as you might be when a Jewel bagger tells you to “have a nice day.”
There was one popular item we both favored — one of us more than the other. An aficionado of such worthy spirits as single-malt Scotch and estate-bottled, fine French wines, Ron had added beer (some pretty ordinary) in a march that seemed to be toward alcoholism. The next year we saw less of each other, then less, then hardly at all ’til nearly two years passed.
One afternoon a letter arrived from Jamaica Plain, which I learned from Ron, was a poor, rundown section of Boston. I guessed the adjectives might better have described him. I remember little except he sounded not good. There were fewer letters and, to break his grinding loneliness, he took to telephoning once or twice a month — late at night. More often than not he’d break into a crying jag. Not fun for him — or me.
During one phone call he recited (key word from his understudy days) a poem he had written. I salvaged some fragments:
“Love dies not slow/But in the wink of un-reflection. … I touched or I did not touch/I said or I did not say/I meant or I did not mean/I ridded without knowing. … Undone with undoing/I am done with doing.”
It is a very good poem. A hurting human being wrote it. It came from a razor-keen mind, because expression was the need of his soul, because he had a thirst for better things than booze, because he was just another guy kicking around in the same universe, because we’re all so much more alike than different.
Peace,
Bob Sullivan