I was about 14 or so when I discovered "The Groucho Letters," and it was with that discovery that my checkered career as a correspondent was born. As an adolescent, I didn't have many opportunities for epistolary brilliance, but I bided my time. At the end of my sophomore year of high school, a friend moved from Pawtucket, Rhode Island, to Harrisville, a tiny hamlet out in the sticks. In the meantime, my folks had moved me (with them, of course) from Pawtucket to North Kingstown. Now, that distance may not seem very big for people from big places, but in Rhode Island terms it was the equivalent of lightyears. Since calling her would have meant message units on the phone bill and since message units made my father's blood boil, our best chance for staying in touch was the US mail. At last, my time had come!
From time-to-time, I would shape my half-witticisms into letter form and mail them off. For every two or three of mine, I would get one reply. Life was good.
As time went on, more friends went more places and for a time my correspondence bloomed to its fullest glory. Then, as will happen, the friends slowly became strangers and there were jobs to worry about and lives to figure out, and my correspondence dwindled to mostly a memory.
With one exception. This past weekend, I wrote to the adult version of that young lady I had started corresponding with so many years before. We're down to one or two letters per year now, each. The mad rush of life leaves little time for the well-crafted half-witticism, although the urge to correspond remains. I'm trying to correct that, trying to carve out some time each week for a few people in my life who I don't get to see or speak to as often as I'd like. Like most resolutions, the odds are against this one, but if I don't try at all, it will definitely fail.
And so I reach out, one envelope at a time, waiting for the ever elusive return.
6 comments:
This has nothing to do with anything, except that it made me laugh:
"The lease said about my and my fathers trip from the Bureau of Manhattan to our new home the soonest mended. In some way ether I or he got balled up on the grand concorpse and next thing you know we was thretning to swoop down on Pittsfield.
Are you lost daddy I arsked tenderly.
Shut up he explained."
Ring Lardner, "The Young Immigrunts," excerpted at http://www.tridget.com/lardnermania/excerpts.htm
Groucho is one of the great influences on my life. He taught me the futility of language. He taught me to beware those who would lead us. He helped me become myself (oddly, through impersonation of him). And, most importantly, he made me laugh.
I can do the dance that Groucho did, and I know how to make a "Gookie." If that's not enriching a life, I don't know what is.
If I have a writing style today, it is one that I developed to a great extent by writing letters. I've often had to remind myself to write like I'm writing a letter in order to get the tone right in a story.
I appreciate your comments about inflicting my opinions on public radio. It is a thought that I've considered, and one that I find attractive. There are outlets for short essays, and perhaps the time has come for me to mangle the airwaves with my dulcet (bari)tones.
There exists one other possibility. Posts can be trashed by clicking on the little trash can icon next to the time of the post. Perhaps some miscreat thought that they were being quite the wit by doing so. People think some pretty incredible things sometimes.
When I get home this evening, I can re-enter that post (which will then make it a post script) from the e-mail that I get for every contribution to the blog. Perhaps I need to tighten the security on this thing.
On closer inspection (and a visit to a site that tracks the visitors to my blog), it seems like the ghost in the machine is the most likely culprit.
The deleted post went as follows:
I've said it before in other places, but I'll say it again. After your read a line like "Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like a banana" (which is from a letter Groucho sent to his son), you can't look at language the same way again.
I actually wrote a musical play with the Marx Brothers' characters in it, but I have no idea what to do with it and so it sits in a file drawer awaiting its moment. If you happen to know any big-time Broadway producers (if any still exist), feel free to drop a good word for me. Let's make the word, "serendipitous."
I spent my youth so comedy obsessed that I can remember a lot of the minutae of what I watched and thought funny. I saw a comedian on "Ed Sullivan" one Sunday night, a black man who's gimic was that he never cracked a smile. He told my favorite joke of my early years. He said, "My wife's so ugly. She has little circles all over her body from people touching her with ten-foot poles." The next day, I started training myself to keep a straight face.
You can imagine what a revelation it was, some years later, to finally watch Buster Keaton in action.
I remember Myron Cohen, also on "Ed Sullivan," telling a joke about a Texan visiting a kibbutz.
I memorized all of Bill Cosby's mid-60s output and would torture anyone in hearing range whenever the desire to recite was upon me.
The thing that made me laugh the most? The mirror scene in "Duck Soup," later to be joined by the blind hermit scene in "Young Frankenstein."
Another post I made yesterday got eaten by the machine. It was very witty, filled with puns and illusions. Probably the single greatest piece of prose ever composed. Certainly the best piece of something. But now it is gone. Gone like the last Milky Way in the freezer of life. And, in this case, what's undone cannot be done again.
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