August 31, 2015

Dear Hildie:

You mention watching Wild Strawberries–Boy, you’re recalling college days. I remember when we used to go to all those foreign films. Everything was new and worth seeing and discussing. Those were good days.

My ear’s healing well, but I couldn’t help but marvel when it was sore the first day how people with real pain deal with it. I’d be such a coward. What will happen when my time comes if there’s real pain involved? How did POWSs, like McCain, deal with the horrible pain from illness, injuries, and beatings? I stand in awe of people who are so much braver than I am. Just as I stand in awe of those of my generation (and earlier generations) who went to battle and managed to deal with fear. Most of them would say they just did what they had to, but I can’t really imagine it. That’s what makes TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH  such a great film.

Saw ANATOMY OF A MURDER last night. I’d seen it before, of course. The acting was great, the pace excellent, but I really couldn’t feel any sympathy or interest in the accused (Ben Gazarra) or in his bimbo wife (Lee Remick). Joseph Welsh was great as the judge–He played Joe Welsh, as anybody who watched the Army-McCarthy hearings would have recognized. You could almost see him telling the two lawyers in the movie, “Have you no shame?” as he did McCarthy. Somebody said that after Welsh’s indignant performance against McCarthy, as Welsh strode out, he turned and winked at this person.

Take care.

Love,

M

Dear Hildie:

I now have a huge bandage on my ear where the dermatologist excised a basal cell cancer. I told him I’d just have to go into creating impressionist paintings. We had a nice conversation about van Gogh as he sewed and cut and burnt. He’s heading over to St. Petersburg at the end of the week. I told him to watch out for the surprise fountains in the Peterhof Palace gardens. Boy, the difference between glum, Asian, gray Moscow and bright, European St. P’burg is (or was years ago and I suppose it hasn’t changed) striking. In Moscow, looking down from hotel window, we saw men on sidewalk drinking vodka out of paper bags—almost like we were in New Orleans or New York.  MM got groped on the subway—Again, might as well have been in the good old US! And the food was horrible, which is probably why so many Russians looked constipated. All of which reminds me that I’m ready for another Martin Cruz Smith Arkady Renko novel. Smith has Parkinson’s, poor fellow, but I selfishly hope he can continue to put out the Russian mysteries, which I really enjoy.

On my walk to work this morning I noticed where they’d cut down an old water oak about two years ago. Funny, but I can’t even remember how it looked when the tree was there except it provided shade when I walked the dog. Odd how it was like it had never been there at all. Yesterday I passed the site on Longwood where my uncle’s house used to be. Somebody leveled it and put in a monstrosity of a palace. Not that they don’t have the right—It’s just that it looks so damned ostentatious. I can’t understand that kind of materialism. For me, a house is a roof over my head with a place for my books and, one hopes, not too many rats and roaches, and a car is a means of transport. What kind of person defines himself by his house? (Or car, for that matter?)

Oh, well, to each his own—I guess.

 

Love,

M

Dear Hildie:

I really want to finish this rewrite of the manuscript Summer panned. I came to the conclusion she was largely right. I hate rewrites, especially this kind of total one. It takes a majopr emotional effort to get oneself into the mood of a book–That is, into the world of the characters and the plot. It’s emotionally satisfying but also fatiguing and when I finish I never want to see it again. That’s what makes going back for a rewrite so difficult. There are other things I want to write and, since I’m not Isaac Asimov, I can only write one thing at a time.

I’m enjoying the nice Fall weather. I hope it makes your work easier. Almost makes me want to go back into the field, but I’ve been in too many mildew-smelling motel rooms, where the 18 wheelers start up at 5 a.m., to want to go back to that.

I know I’m a cantankerous old man, but I am so sick of the information overload in our electronic society. MM signed up for some TV station’s instant news texting. Now, while I’m sitting quietly reading or watching TV, her damned cell phone dings constantly and when you look to see what’s so important, it’s news on the order of: DOG KNOCKS OVER GARBAGE CAN IN CENTRAL; STATE TREASURER SAYS STATE BUDGET SMOKE AND MIRRORS; or MR. MORTIMER FLEAGLE OF SACRAMENTO WAS THE 5,000^TH PERSON THIS MONTH TO RECEIVE A SPEEDING TICKET IN THAT 500 YARDS OF THE TOWN OF WASHINGTON, LA, THAT COVERS I-49. LOCAL OFFICER LEROY WHIPLASH SAID FLEAGLE WAS GOING 2 MILES OVER THE POSTED SPEED LIMIT.

Or sometimes, when it’s thundering outside, they end you the news that there’s a thunderstorm on the way. When I was a kid we knew enough to come in out of the rain.

Oh, well, enough grumbling for now. Down to “work.”

Love,

M

Dear Hildie:

 

I’m enclosing an excerpt from the Biblical Archaeology review relative to the question of whether “Adam’s rib” was really “Adam’s penis bone,” since your grandson asked such a logical question the other day. I’m not a Hebrew scholar, so I can’t comment, other than to say that what they say about male mammals (other than humans) generally having one is true. God, just think of how much anguish would have been averted in older men if God had left Adam alone! No purple pills, no Cialis, no spam on the computer about male enhancement!

Ten years since Katrina. It doesn’t seem like it. You know, what I remember most are two things: The look of shock/anguish on Gov. Blanco’s face when she appeared on TV (which I am convinced cost her the chance to run again) and the constant sound of helicopters coming and going in the air overhead for weeks on end. Our power disruption was minor, as I rec all—a few days. Far more alarming were the news reports, such as the one that armed gangs were downtown rioting/looting. Turned out to be false, of course.  Three years later, when Gustav hit us, we were in much better shape—Gov. Jindal talked the storm to death. I remember the newscasters laughing about his pervasive use of “we,” as if he knew what he was babbling about.

 

Well, on to my writing. It’s painful to have something to write and not be able to get it all out at once. Sort of like having a baby, I imagine, or some other bodily function! But the best writing advice I ever heard was not to write all you had in mind at once, because that would leave you staring at a blank page the next day, with no place to start. Better to leave something undone so you could start at a point where you knew what was coming next.

 

Take care.

Love,

M

Dear Hildie:

 

They say Erika is the next storm to watch out for. I am unimpressed. Just as I am with the weather forecasters. They give them an inordinate amount of time on TV to stand in front of big aerial maps and wave their hands around and talk about tropical waves and cold fronts and dry air, and what it always boils down to is “maybe.” Seems like they could pay these guys less to say less, since in the end they have only informed guesses.  Trying to run my field crews based on weather predictions is courting financial disaster.

In my opinion, weathermen are bat-fowling, sodden-witted ratsbanes (I have a wonderful little book with three sections, each with a Shakespearean epithet that I can open randomly to get an old fashioned Elizabethan curse. But I have yet to find out what a “bed-swerver” is.).

 

Enough for now.

 

Love,

M

Dear Hildie:

Well, Friday was Summer’s birthday. Hard to believe it was 44 years ago she was born in New Orleans. I remember that as soon as she was born, which was in the evening, her grandfather dragged me off to a Saints game in old Tulane Sugar Bowl stadium. Jesus, I’d as soon have watched the grass grow.

The Jeep quit again, this time in the parking lot opposite Reginelli’s pizza place, right down from Henry’s. Sunday morning it started right up but we left it parked at Henry’s and will see what Wallace finds out.  I suspect it’s an ignition switch or wire, since the lights go on but it wouldn’t even grind and the battery charger didn’t do any good. So they’ll have to take the Explorer to Crowley tomorrow for their tromp through the rice fields.

I’ve been reading Evan Thomas’ BEING NIXON. I’ve read a good many Nixon books, because I find him such a fascinating character–Even Stephen Ambrose’s three volume biography, though you can’t trust Ambrose’s scholarship–He invents things. But Nixon has always intrigued me, because he was brilliant and, at first, very principled. And he got terrible treatment from the press and the East Coast establishment. If only he’d not been so thin-skinned he might have risen to be a great man, instead of a petty revenge-seeker and intriguer. I think Castro would have been gone after 1961, but we may have had a crisis with the Soviets over Viet Nam, because I think Nixon would have jumped in there with both feet.

Oh, well, speculation.

Take care.

 

Love,

M

Dear Hildie:

 

Sorry to hear about the dog and the rattlesnake. That’s rough.

 

Meant to send crew to Crowley today but bad weather. Now delayed until Monday.

 

Trying to wrap up some writing I’m doing but it gets hard, because it’s mostly rewriting.

 

Lord, at this time in 1963 I was in the classification center at Fort Polk, waiting to be assigned a training company. It was so lonely, but there were some great guys I became friends with for a little while, though I never saw them again because they went to different companies. A big black guy called Joe, who’d been in before; Herman, who’s almost graduated from Southern in ROTC and then, in his final year, mysteriously dropped out and enlisted as a private; Donald, who was from Baton Rouge and a really nice person.  I wonder if any of them are still alive. And I’ve always wondered what Herman’s story was.

 

Take care. Don’t drown in this rain. As for Hurricane Danny, “I spit on him.” So there.

 

Love,

 

 

 

Dear Hildie:

 

Funny how images (and characters) endure:  Lovesey’s fat detective must be a version of Carr’s Dr. Gideon Fell, whom I always liked. But Fell is generally considered to have been physically modeled after Gilbert K. Chesterton, the creator of Father Brown (one of my favorite detectives, even if he is so smug you sometimes want to throttle him).

 

What a nasty day today-and they say there’s a storm out in the ocean. I wish it would just skip over to California and pout out all those fires for them.

 

Man from pest control says she have roof rats. The term roof rat makes it sound more technical than it is—Hell, they’re just Rattus rattus, the common rat, as opposed to R. norgevicus, the Norway rat, which I used to tend for the psychology department as a student. He’s going to climb up in the attic and deal with them there. I think it might be cheaper just to release a cat up there.  I kept wondering of any whimsical soul has a pest control service named Whittington’s—I’d definitely hire them. Especially if the owner’s first name was Dick (“Turn again, Dick Whittington, lord mayor of London.”).

 

I have one crew set to go tomorrow morning, to Crowley, if the weather permits. And two people in Plaquemines.

 

Oh, I hope you got my last letter (Aug. 17)—I stuck it through the window of the mail truck and it fell down onto the floor, but in plain sight.

 

Take care.

 

Love,

 

 

 

Dear Hildie:

 

Our friend Leslie sounds like the bearded lady in a three-act circus. Shouldn’t be cruel, but with just a little more wry humor inserted you could probably market this stuff as black humor.

 

I’m sending 2 victims to Plaquemines Parish tomorrow. You know, the parish old Leander Perez said he was going to build a fence around to keep out the “Nigras and communists.” And Uncle Earl Long said, “Whatcha gonna do now, Leander? The fed’s’ve got the atom bomb.” Well, old Leander is dead these many years and the Church accepted him back into its bosom after sufficient reparations were made to the right coffers. Earl’s dead, too, of course. And I keep thinking of what else he said: “One day the people of Louisiana are going to get an honest government. And they ain’t gonna like it.”

 

Take care.

 

Love,

 

 

M

Dear Hildie:

Don’t sweat it about Beelzebub–I mean, your son Murphy. Most of what he’s done so far are misdemeanors.

Well, 52 years ago today I was in New Orleans undergoing an army physical. I’ll never forget how the medic looked at the gap between my big toe and second toe and said he’d never seen anything like that before. I told him all Arabs who wore sandals had it but I’d been born with it. If it was a problem, I said, I’d join the Arab army. That kind of fell flat. Then when they asked about scars I said I had a bullet scar on my right thigh. That really excited them, and one said, “I’ve never had anybody with one of those.” Imagine! New Orleans, 1963. Today it would be rare in New Orleans to find anybody without one or two. Probably a badge of honor. When they swore us in, they handed everybody a little New Testament that some Bible society had donated and said, “Hold up your right hand,” so that, in effect, you were swearing on the Bible. But the Christian Bible. Though raised a Catholic, I always rather resented that (as well as the Character Guidance lectures they made us attend, where, in one, I remember, they “proved” the existence of God through the argument from design, which no decent philosopher has accepted for a 100 years or so). I know we need an army, but they have to be so goddamned stupid?

And, of course, Fort Polk was–and is–a lovely place, nothing but pine hills and poor soil. Hell, they only put military bases in locations that can be blown to bits and torn up and where the surrounding populace is so poor that to them even Hell would be an economic improvement.

Our company commander in training was a 2nd lieutenant education major–man, who wouldn’t want to follow an education major into combat? He told us not to buy ice cream from the vendors who came around because it would rot our guts.

As protected as I’d been throughout my life, that was my first experience with illiterate people. Half the company was Mississippi National Guard, some of whom couldn’t read and write. I guess the theory was that they could either become cannon fodder or members of the legislature. They were mainly a good bunch–When they found I was born in Jackson, Mississippi, I immediately became a home boy to them, though I’m sure a somewhat peculiar specimen.

Well, enough of memory lane for now. Take care.

 

Love,

M