Death in the Afternoon

My father was quite an aficionado of the Spanish bullfight and over the years I attended a lot of bullfights with him. But none was as memorable as July 11, 1987 in Pamplona for two reasons, I was almost killed in the encierro—the running of bulls—and, later that afternoon, I watched a picador narrowly escape death by the one of the same bulls.

I have to admit that in the ten years that I regularly ran the encierro in Pamplona I was always the most apprehensive about running the bulls from two particular ranches—the Muiras, which have the reputation of having killed the most matadors, including Manolete, and the Pablo Romeros, which were the biggest bulls in Spain. That particular Saturday morning, the fifth day of the Fiesta of San Fermín, we were running the Pablo Romeros, known by the American runners as the “boxcar” bulls. Since it was my third year attending the fiesta, I had not run in more than a dozen encierros, so it’s not surprising I made mistakes, serious mistakes.

I started the run in a position that only an experienced runner should take, near the top of Calle Domingo, only a few hundred feet from the corral, which meant that the bulls would catch me at the 90 degree turn where the course heads up the dreaded Calle Estefeta. The Estefeta is a straight and narrow uphill street of shops shuttered for the run. The street holds no quarter for runners looking to bail out other than a small alley that bisects the long two-block stretch.

In my short time running the encierro, I was aware of the particular dangers of the course and one of them was that turn, which was difficult for the bulls and even some of the lead steers to negotiate. I was told that I didn’t want to be on the outside corner as the bulls skidded into the turn and to be between a 1200 pound bull and the heavy wooden barricade.

But on that chilly July morning that’s exactly where I found myself, at exactly the wrong time. One of the bulls skidded into me and hit me with his hind-quarter so hard that I flew about 10 feet into the barricade well ahead of him and out of his path. It felt like getting hit by a car.

It was an inglorious encierro for me. I lost all the skin the entire length of my left arm and, unknown to me until I returned to the States, had dislocated a disc in my vertebrae. That morning, however, the medics at the makeshift enfermaria, bandaged me up and sent me on my way.

Aching all over as I was, I knew I had to bare the pain to see these bulls fight that afternoon. If my father didn’t have a date for the bullfights, I could wrangle his other ticket in his abono from him. I enjoyed seeing a bullfight with my father as he was quite knowledgeable. He also had a press pass, which he occasionally used to get us into the callejón, the passageway between the barricade and the stands to get closer to the cuadrillas, the bullfighters’ entourages, and the action. That he said I could go with him.

Of course, the Pablo Romeros did not disappoint. I remember the hush that fell over the crowd when the door from the stalls opened and an even larger bull came out for the second fight of the afternoon. His name was “Chivito,” little goat, and weighed 651 kilos or 1435 pounds. I couldn’t imagine why he was given such a name, but it would soon became apparent.

Chivito ran the length of the ring twice then trotted out to the center and, after turning abruptly as if something had caught his attention, charged the barrera and leaped over it, landing in the callejón, where he chased mozos through the narrow passage before being led back out into the ring.

“He’s big enough he can see over the barrera,” my father observed. “He’s attracted to any movement behind it.”

Then the first picador, a horse-mounted torero with a lance, came out along with another torero carrying the traditional magenta and yellow cape to draw the bull’s attention. The bull immediately charged the horse and hit it so hard that the picador flew off. He quickly got to his feet, but would have been gored if not for the torero attracting the bull’s attention with the cape. The picador scrambled over the barrera into the callejón. The bull turned again to the now rider-less horse, and butted his head under the horse’s belly like a goat and proceeded to lift the horse completely off the ground and with a flip of his head tried to send the horse over the barrera.

As the mozos held his now battered but yet unbroken mount against the barrera the picador climbed back on his horse, while the torero caped the bull a few more times. Again the bull, ignoring the torero, charged the barrera and leaped over it. Again mozos ran for their lives in a chase to lead the bull back into the arena.

By then the second picador had come into the ring. Chivito immediately charged the horse, pinning it against the barrera and then got his head under the horse and proceeded to lift both man and horse off the ground. If it hadn’t been for the mozos pushing back from the callejón, he would have flipped both man and beast out of the ring.

The bull turned his attention back to the first picador and charged him again. The picador got his lance into the bull just as it met the horse, got under it again and gave it a toss. Because the picador was leaning over so far, the toss caused him to fall off the horse and be impaled on the horns of the bull. The bull started violently tossing his head, throwing the picador off who was stuck to his horns.

The bull was eventually distracted long enough for the medical team to pick up the fallen picador. As they raced out of the ring with the picador on a stretcher, he managed to give the crowd a thumbs up, which they acknowledged with cheers and bravos.

“That’s always a bad sign,” my father said. “He’ll be dead before they get him out of the plaza. I’ve seen it too many times before.”

Finally, the first banderillero came out and placed the first pair of banderillas in the bull. I noticed, due to the sheer size of these bulls, it was difficult for the banderilleros to get their barbed sticks, banderillas, over the horns and into the back of the bulls’ necks. They were arching way over and leaping higher than I’d ever seen them to avoid the lethal horns.

It’s not uncommon for the matador himself to place one of the three pairs of banderillas into the bulls neck, but that day the matador who was to fight Chivito, Luis Francisco Esplá, refused and was jeered by the Pamplona crowd and even had a bottle thrown at him. After all six banderillas had been placed and Chivito was showing signs of tiring, Esplá came out to fight.

Esplá’s fight was mediocre, not worthy of such a fine bull, but eventually death came to Chivito, but not to the picador, Victoriano Cáneva, who survived his cornada. I found out later, that the horns of the bull had punctured a lung and his liver. He was in surgery for two hours in a Pamplona hospital and spent the next 11 days in intensive care, after which he was moved to a hospital in Madrid. Luis Francisco Esplá vowed that day he would never again fight in Pamplona.

Lucy Part III of III

This is the last installment of my father's writing about his affair with his 19-year-old student Lucy. It's unfinished in that he was still writing it at the time of his death on January 15, 1995. In fact, judging from the time stamps on his computer files, this was the last thing he ever wrote. But you can read about the end in his letter of Tuesday, July 26th, 1977 to me in The Summer of 1977 post.

I guess the daily chronology of this is less than exciting and it doesn’t go very far in conveying my troubled state of mind. It was getting so that I didn’t want to go anywhere where my emotional security regarding our deeper relations might get tweaked. Lucy has always, like any truly beautiful woman, been vain, impressed with the power which her looks give her, and, quite normally, with the nice looking men whose attention she can command. Since she is also searching for herself, her identity, some relation to a field of interest, and exploring all that the world has to offer, it would be restrictive indeed to censure her for the effects of all these qualities and these drives. They are normal, and easily anticipated in someone so ideally endowed. But NEVER, NEVER get romantically enmeshed with such a person at this stage. It is death: slow and sure and painful. And the more sensitive the person who falls, the more endlessly devastating will be the effects. I know, for I shall never never be the same again. It will be better, much better for the man who claims Lucy at the end of this tunnel of growth and experience. Lucky will be the man who claims the last dance and takes her home. I shall always regret that it will not be me . . . with anyone . . . with her above all.

 So many things now seem clearer in the perspective of time. She didn’t feel, couldn’t feel, and she was only aware of a small part of it. She said that she was a total loss in the mornings . . . not very amorous (at all!), not very with it. But, you know, while I accept this on one level, I still deny it on another. Sure, if she stays out late, has a nice draught before going to bed, etc., she’ll still be out of it in the morning. But, on the other hand, if you love and are loved, if you feel and are felt, if you are really into sharing, well, it all just flows . . . there are no demarcations. Look, it isn’t all that bloody important to me but obviously this is providing that it doesn’t represent a turn off that lies just a little deeper. Just that I can imagine Lucy so happy and so into life that I can’t see such an artificial distinction.

But then there’s more. For Lucy does like to call the tune in a sexual way. A cue rarely, in itself, turns her on. It is merely like a request to be considered and she reacts to it in whatever way she feels at the moment. It is her own well circumscribed ego that accepts or rejects; sadly it is rarely an ‘ego involved’, if you know what I mean. I think that her past ecstasies have very much been selfish ones, bits of self-fulfillment . . . I don’t think she’s ever put her neck in the noose, handed someone the loaded pistol. I might even venture to say, since she is older now and projections are now potentially more accurate, that she may not be capable of true abdication (however impermanent) of self. But she knows how to get what she wants. She got Morocco, but she agreed that she wouldn’t stint on the loving (sun, sand, and salt water really turn me on, I’d said) up to a point and if I’d agree to lay off stiff morning overtures. Well, we both lived up to our promises, as it turned out. I am still amazed how many things I must have felt but repressed during all those days. Indeed, to read them paraded out on paper, in limited context, one would think I was miserable 99% of the time. Far from it. Just that, having ended disastrously for me, I tend to analyze and explore those elements which seem to have signaled or contributed to it. This accounts for subjective distortions and, relatedly, a little unfairness.

On Monday morning we zipped down to Abbotts and plonked our money down for a 7 day all in trip to Tangiers, leaving the very next Wednesday from Luton. We busied ourselves with preparations, between brass rubbing, pubbing and the like. Lucy was noticeably ‘up’ once the Moroccan die was cast. We drove to Luton on a bad afternoon and took off for Tangiers about 4 p.m. British time. We arrived in Tangiers around 7 p.m. It was a cool 66, but Lucy was brimming with happiness . . . and wearing a straw hat I’d bought her in the market square . . . and looking gorgeous in it!

Our hotel was quite nice and quite modern. I was a little shocked when I saw two single beds at right angles to one another, and fixed so that they could not be placed side by side. But the view of the Straits of Hercules beyond the Bay of Tangiers was really nice . . . in fact, we faced nearly due West and the sun set right out our window. We put our gear away, showered deliciously, redressed quickly, got a light evening snack, a meal, took a walk, then it was bedtime.

Of course, being fairly familiar with Tangiers from my previous trip, I was brimming over with things to show Lucy. Our first minor problem was that Lucy was already well tanned and would and could soak up the sun for hours at a time. I, on the other hand, could take no more than a couple of 60 or 70 minute exposures on the first day and only about 20 more on top of that for each of the next three days. The longest I could stay out under that sun, even after a week, was two 50 minute stretches a day . . . if that. I’d say that Lucy could be out, after that same period of time . . . at least two 3 1/2 hour stretches a day. And, remember, this is not counting the exposure that comes from all that walking around in the city and touring!

I seem to be returning constantly to the subject of differences. Look, I don’t think the seeming disparity between me, who could spend 5 to 6 hours at a stretch with the colorful denizens of the Casbah, and Lucy who could spend the same amount of time basking in the sun poolside, is significant. Remember, Carl and Lucy’s current boyfriend could enjoy the security of knowing that Lucy loved them. I never could (because she never ever did). Had I that security, the story would have been very different. Very. First, she could have talked to Sammy for five hours and it wouldn’t have made any difference, though I might still be angry at Sammy for using up her time and energy; or anybody for that matter. Indeed, an honest and close examination of those few of my past relations that involved me being loved clearly and unequivocally by a good woman (Mary Ann, Helen, Diana) reveals that I often take advantage of the situation and hurt them with my consequent inattentions (or attentions elsewhere!). You know, it’s a funny thing, but I caught myself feeling this very early in my affair with Lucy.

I guess it was in late April one day in my office. It may indeed have been that same day that Lucy told me that it was quite likely that she would walk away from me after the summer. I can remember feeling that although I was completely emotionally ensnared by her at that moment, and that I was a captured victim I knew if I only could succeed in bringing her around to loving me equally, then the balance of power (so called) would shift immediately. I knew that if I could only reach that stage (of her loving me) that it would instantly cure my insecurities and I’d have exactly the right operational attitude that would be required to hold Lucy completely. It has never ever failed though not something I would ordinarily brag about: once they fall, they never fall out (unless I want them to). This is because my tremendous self-sufficiency doesn’t spell ‘need’ or at least that kind of ‘need’ that turns people off. I treat them at best well and considerately and as independent and intelligent people, and they never know for sure . . . .at worst I let them on their own if it’s not me who’s off on his own. I was made to be some explorer or sea captain type who has to follow his urge to go off and return to pick up my love when it suits me. But this is a failing. And here’s where Lucy comes in. You see, she represents so much to me, in terms of what we can be to each other together, that we would move a distance from each other and this would trigger reactions that would make us come together again . . . from natural, internal mechanisms . . . neither of us would go beyond a certain point, because of love, selfishness, and mutual consideration. Interesting . . . and I had a vision of a near perfection that I cried for my failure to get even to the necessary starting point! And I was so confident; I had not the slightest worry if I could only get to that magic point. It wasn’t a matter of time, per se, just a matter of a few days or weeks at most, but starting only from that moment that Lucy unequivocally—not necessarily permanently—invested her heart in me. But that never happened. Alas. It is so nearly equivalent to the bottom line, that I am tempted to stop the story at this point.

And I have to be careful, elsewise this will be merely a chronicle of hurts and pains. Let me carry on by regaling some of the beauties. We did indeed share love for travel, meeting new people, eating new and exotic food. We had a liter and a half of good white wine with lunch, two with dinner, whisky in our tea in the late afternoon and always a night-cap. Lucy had a great sense of humor and got a real kick out of rare and unusual people of character. She warmed immediately to our little hunchbacked guide, Hassan, who, in turn, warmed to her. She really savored our mint tea that we had in the back of Ali’s shop in the Casbah. We could have both sat there and did quite often for hours. Only her requisite sunbathing kept us from staying even longer within the walled city. We enjoyed our shopping, though Lucy had too much heart to be a stern and unrelenting haggler . . . but she shared my victories with great relish. She made everything we did together a really enjoyable experience. She had that sensitivity and quickness of mind to reflect on the great beauty and happiness of everything we did right then and there while we were doing it. She was, to borrow a loving term from Gudrun of old, “fine, very fine.”

We walked, talked, took pictures and I took great pleasure in the hungry happy way Lucy drank it all in . . . like watching a little girl in a toy shop. She wanted everything. And how I wished I could have given her everything. Indeed, I felt so bad that I hadn’t planned to take more money than I did, for my only credit card was not honored, except at one bank where I did manage to get an additional $150 advance. In fact, we spent about six hours of our vacation doing just that: trying to get enough money to buy even more and, more importantly, to rent a car to take a side trip down the beach to Tétouan, but we had no luck. But Lucy took it in good stride and we did have one great evening before we left—almost.

Unfortunately, Tangiers was not without incident. Let us say at the outset that I am glad that I am writing this and not relating it verbally to, or in front of, Lucy; for she would probably laugh and make light of the whole incident but maybe not. Depends on how self-perceptive and honest she is.

It seems that there was this attractive young Dutchman probably about 27 or 28 who was at poolside daily. He had come down with his girlfriend (as we learned later) of several years’ standing. He had taken a fancy to Lucy and had taken to nodding a hello and an acknowledgement about the third day before we were to leave. He had noticed that Lucy and I had taken to having a bottle of the white local wine at poolside at midafternoon. On the next to the last day the waiter brought us over a 2nd bottle of wine and nodded in the direction of the sunbathing Dutch gentleman. We saluted him without glasses and drank his health. He did not come over immediately. In fact, we’d gone upstairs, showered, and come down again and were in the bar/restaurant area adjoining the pool area when he came over. And he made no bones about his interest in Lucy. By ordinary American standards it would have been embarrassing, I contend. Less than three minutes of perfunctory questions during which time he ascertained the usual details of nationality, occupations, relationships, he began straight at Lucy and his own interest in coming to the U.S., his need for contacts and all sorts of things. The man was clearly nobody’s fool, he was good at it. And I know that he caught something in Lucy’s eye, that invisible something  . . .  ‘interest’ you might call it for lack of a more suitable word. She was clearly flattered by his attentions and that almost invisible dropping of guard that often follows. As I like to say, like the zebra in the herd of tens of thousands who has a limp or infirmity that is almost naked to the ordinary eye. But not to the lioness. With uncanny perception it can find the one animal with the slightest disadvantage/weakness. And so on. This guy knew, he got the scent just standing slightly downhill. And man, he knew no social bounds.

I can just hear Lucy laughing and arguing and getting irritated if she had to hear this to her face. What an imagination she would say! And that in itself would tell a tale. I would stake my life on my perceptions. It was a bit like the Sammy situation, only this guy was not only humorless, but deadly serious. Well, I figured on being about half European myself and decided on a European answer to the situation—the American one would have been to either tell him to piss off, thump him on the spot, if he didn’t, or gather the lady gently by the arm and move away. I asked him if he wasn’t sure he didn’t want me to leave because clearly he seemed to have something very personal he wanted to say to the young lady. A slightly less deadly but more sophisticated chap would have stepped away then. But he merely said ‘no’ and kept at it . . . talking as if I weren’t there. He told her how much he wanted her. I interrupted again. “I think you’d really like to take her upstairs and have it off, wouldn’t you?” I said, almost a little incredulous myself. He seemed a little surprised at my directness but only for a split second. Still a little surprised, he looked at me and said “You would give your permission?” I looked at Lucy this guy was too much. “I don’t think it’s mine to give, is it?” Lucy dismissed us both with something like ‘don’t be silly’ and the conversation took on a suddenly less heavy breathing tone as he plowed on about needing to have someone in the U.S. to sponsor him, etc. In the end these two swapped addresses!

I am also 100% convinced that if this guy had met us on, say, day 2 of our trip, our love affair would have ended on June 17, not when it did. I would have been ‘set up’ by his persistence and her refusal not to abruptly cut him off but to enjoy his attentiveness. I would have taken the next plane to London, without a doubt. Fortunately, as the case was, we had less than 24 hours left and Jan, or whatever his name was, left us for that brief period. But I hurt deeply with the knowledge of what clearly, to me, would have or could have happened.

On our last night in Morocco we joined out travel group and went out to a ranch about 17 miles outside of Tangiers for an evening of music, wine, & barbecue. Everything was going fine, it was a pleasant farewell evening. But then it happened. I get on line for the chicken and this over-zealous waiter’s shoulder hit a large ornamental tree trunk on which a small lamp had been set. It tipped over and fell. On my left foot. The tree trunk weighed about 400 pounds . . . and I was only sandal-shod. Even at that, the ground below being sand, my toes simply went down into the soft ground. But the buckle over the second little toe went down as well, and broke the toe. At first I thought I could make it through the evening. But then the swelling started . . . and the pain commenced. And it was painful indeed. And I felt such a fool. In the end the photographer took Lucy and I back to Tangiers and the hotel in his car. I still recall it all with great embarrassment.

If Lucy only knew . . . I was hurting from two things at the same time. I felt the decay and ruination of everything I had wanted. I only wanted her love . . . they could cut the damn toe off! I’m not saying she was not solicitous, she was indeed. One fact. Weird as she thought my request was, she did agree to make love—and me with my left foot in the air! I paid her kindness back by walking the two miles to the Casbah (we couldn’t get a cab to save our lives that morning!) and spending another hour-and-a-half picking up all the items we thought we’d leave until the last day. Instead, that last day we made two trips to the Casbah and bought every single item that we wanted—using up just about our very last cent. On the surface—and in many ways—it was a wonderful trip and I knew we’d both love to do it again.

We landed at Luton at nearly midnight, were delighted that the old Jag started up right away, pleased that my painful foot could still manage the clutch pedal . . . and got home to Cambridge about 3:30 in the morning, exhausted but full of loot. That early Thursday was the 23rd of June . . . one week and we’d be off for Pamplona.

Dreary England soon dragged on Lucy again. We went down to see Clive in London on Friday. We met him in a wine bar in the West End with his new housemate, the soap opera star Alan Browning. Alan was going to Pamplona with him . . . they were going to fly down. Lucy and Clive took to each other immediately. We really had quite a bit of wine that lunch-time. Clive gave Lucy a nice Coronation Crown (coin) and we parted looking very much forward to rendezvousing in Spain.

I can’t remember all we did in Cambridge that last week. We did take the girls to the Midsummer Fair . . . but again the weather plagued us every day. I do, however, remember one more bad day. I guess it began with me caressing Lucy around 9 am. It might sound like I was making excuses if I try to recall what kind of day I’d had before and thus whether it was in need of assurances. I was. I guess there’s always that element. But clearly, the days in Cambridge were a strain for both of us. Anyway, Lucy wasn’t having any of it—and she was snapping and bitter. She was offended, insulted even . . . to her it was just getting prodded by a penis and she found it demeaning. But, naturally, I was hurt. But even then I was going to let it pass. I had, however, to go out to Pampisford to return the lawnmower and the vacuum I had borrowed, and to see the girls. Jessie was nearly hysterical when it came time for me to leave. And, although I knew that Lucy was enjoying an excellent, and rare, morning of sunbathing, I was anxious to return because I was sensitive to her being hurt by a too-lengthy absence at Pampisford. But I had to take the extra time to walk with Jessy down to the Rec Ground to reassure her of my love and non-desertion.

The Summer of 1977, Part II

If you’ve read the original post, The Summer of 1977, then you’ve read the brief introduction below. You can skip to the text of the letter. I hesitated including this earlier letter as it’s not as interesting as the previously-posted letter of July 26, 1977. As always, I’ve not deleted anything, not even my father’s racist epithets or other embarrassing comments and you can find a link to a scan of the original letter at the end.

In the spring of 1977, when I was 18, my father and I planned to take trip together to France and Spain. We were to drive down from England, where he was spending the summer, over to France and then to Spain by car, and back again. He promised to cover my airfare from New York to London while I covered the rest of my expenses. After my spring semester at Temple in Philadelphia, I went to visit my mother in Michigan after which I would fly to New York and then on to London.

At the time, my father had three houses, the Wallace Street house in Philadelphia and two in the UK, one in Cambridge on Highworth Avenue and the other, south of the city, in the village of Pampisford. He told me of his intention to leave my stepmother and sisters at the house in Pampisford once they got to England and move into the Highworth Avenue house.

Sometime during the spring semester, my 40-year-old father, had begun an affair with one of his students, an attractive 21-year-old girl by the name of Lucy. I had met her when I attended one of my father’s lectures for the class in which she was a student. I knew of the affair and was even asked to cover for him at times. Without consulting me, my father decided to include her in our summer plans and clearly intended for her to spend the rest of the summer with us at the Highworth Avenue house.

Friday, May 13th, 7 p.m.

Dear Jeff,

It's been a very busy week for me . . . but everything is humming along fine. Guess I’ll start where we left off. Saw Lucy for the last time on Friday. Managed to get everything done in Philadelphia--exams, grade sheets, papers, etc. Things were moving apace with regard to Mary Ann and Stanley . . . it was to be up to Stan on Sunday night. Everything went smoothly on Saturday. Susan was about 20 lbs. overweight but got away with it. We got up at 6:15 pm, Susan boarded her flight about 7:20 and just grunted a goodbye, Good riddance to her and all her kind, I say. We boarded an hour later. Good flight . . . got in on time . . . 8:50 a.m., our taxi man waiting, we got here in Pampisford at 11 a.m. Bev was tired. I moved about 35 boxes because I knew I was going out around 7pm and wanted Bev to have something to do in the evening. Went 'round to Stan's. We went several places and then went to the boathouse. Mary Ann's phone was busy from l0:30 to about 11:15, so, since I knew Lucy would be home by then I called her. She was glad to hear from me. Stan has this bird coming over, not May 2Oth as he had previously said, but on June 2Oth. She's about 27, married to a Finn, lives in Minn., and is coming with a 15 year old brother . . . what a rip for Stan.  He'll wind up showing them around everything . . . then says he'll pay for her to come back on her own as soon as she ferries her brother home! He started pissing me about with regard to money and so, since Lucy was also dickering around about her bloody graduation, I decided to start thinking about #1 for a change . . . particularly as Mary Ann knew we were calling and somebody damn well didn't get off the phone. Lucy, no longer under my Svengali influence, is procrastinating. But things did get a little difficult what with Mary Ann backing out and her father so insistent on graduation day. Said she would come on May 28 (arrive that day. Well, what could I say? I was a little disappointed, but then I've been thinking very selfishly. So . . . I spoke to her Tuesday and again today. She doesn't think she can hold out for 2 more weeks, has told her mother she doesn't want to go through the bloody ceremony; but that's different from telling her father the same thing. If she breaks down and comes, it will probably be next Thursday the 19th--if she comes early--otherwise the 28th. She's depressing the hell out of me because she keeps repeating that it will only be a summertime thing. Now she's talking about leaving at the end of July . . . sounds to pat and premeditated to me . . . but why knock a good thing, eh? If I can have a great June and a great Pamplona, what the hell do I care? Right?

You've got a job waiting for you at the pub, in fact they're hiring new people right now. I wouldn't advise waiting longer than arriving here on June 7th, tho. Two cute chicks working at the pub; Jane, aged 22, beautiful red hair, short, cute as hell, and Diana, about 20, short and dark . . . rest are the usual, Judy and her fiancé, David the pub manager. The usual fort crowd. The nigger had left Highworth Avenue--in a bit of a shambles--filthy beyond belief, but nothing stolen. One mattress had to be thrown away, one bed broken. Place a pig sty.  Roland started work on Tuesday, same as me--he also has another man. Status report as of end of work today: one bedroom done--painted and papered; one bedroom about l/8 done. I have the kitchen 2/3rds done . . . it was really rough. I have torn up and scraped the floor and put one undercoat on everything . . . cabinets, window trim, door, etc. Not to mention cleaning stove, fridge, etc. Central heating working fine. It is 4:30 here and has been raining on and off, lightly, since we arrived. Top temp is 60º. Bought a beautiful 2.4 Jaguar saloon car, 1968, with 50,000 original miles on it, for $510.  Everything is fine . . . has passed inspection and a11. Will put a coat of paint on it (just dull at the moment while I'm in Spain and think I'll bring it back to America with me .. what a steal! Don't get it until May 22nd. House will be in good shape in a week's time. Bev is adjusting well, but my 'procrastinating' is of course pushing further away the moment of truth . . . and Lucy isn't in the picture yet.  I've been out every single night for 5 nights now and she hasn't said a thing. Of course Lucy will tip the balance completely. Wish I could say that I wasn't slightly depressed about her, however . . .  The kids were out at Highworth Ave., today, they liked it. I will move in on the 22nd, when I get the second car . . . Bev knows that. Of course, it might be 3 days sooner if Lucy opts for the early arrival, which I don't think she will. Ray Walker turned me onto the Jag, he has driven it and says it's OK . . . in fact he said it was worth 500 pounds, but says I could drive it to London and sell it instantly for 800. I reckon with a new coat of paint on it (metallic grey) I could get about $3200 in the States. With the purchase, the painting and the shipping, will get it to Philly for just under 1000. It has real leather seats which are just supple now . . . really pleased about my purchase. Expenses are mounting on the refurbishing of Highworth Ave., it cost $150 to put in the front lawn. Then inside and outside work will cost me another $450; but it will be a little dream house when it's done

Tomorrow there's an antique and toy dealer's Fair, lots of lead soldiers and dinky toys. But also have to paint the kitchen and lay the new vinyl floor. That should finish the kitchen; bathroom is next.

Hope all is going well with you; hope Michigan turned out as expected. Keep me informed of your plans. Tell Mark I'd be interested to hear his as well. I've talked to Clive twice; he was coming up Thursday but didn't make it. Called on Wednesday, thought it was Monday . . . said, "Christ, what happened to Monday and Tuesday". Let's hear from you, 

 

A PDF of the original letter can be found here:

The Summer of 1977

My father’s 8-page letter of July 26, 1977 needs a short introduction, aside from saying that it’s not the kind of letter a father would normally send to a son. I’ve also included a brief note at the end.

In the spring of 1977, when I was 18, my father and I planned to take trip together to France and Spain. We were to drive down from England, where he was spending the summer, over to France and then to Spain by car, and back again. He promised to cover my airfare from New York to London while I covered the rest of my expenses. After my spring semester at Temple in Philadelphia, I went to visit my mother in Michigan after which I would fly to New York and then on to London.

At the time, my father had three houses, the Wallace Street house in Philadelphia and two in the UK, one in Cambridge on Highworth Avenue and the other, south of the city, in the village of Pampisford. He told me of his intention to leave my stepmother and sisters at the house in Pampisford once they got to England and move into the Highworth Avenue house.

Sometime during the spring semester, my 40-year-old father, had begun an affair with one of his students, an attractive 21-year-old girl by the name of Lucy. I had met her when I attended one of my father’s lectures for the class in which she was a student. I knew of the affair and was even asked to cover for him at times. Without consulting me, my father decided to include her in our summer plans and clearly intended for her to spend the rest of the summer with us at the Highworth Avenue house.

I guess he had expended so much time and effort getting this mistress to England that he had either forgotten about my ticket or had not followed up on it. The day before I was to fly there I called the travel agent in New York where my ticket to London was supposedly waiting for me. They didn’t have anything for me and, in fact, knew nothing about it. I called my father in England and he said he would “straighten it out,” but that I should at least get to New York. I heard nothing back from him before my scheduled flight and, knowing not to trust my father, and having only a one-way ticket to New York, I stayed in Michigan.

No letter I received from my father better sums up by example the mistakes my father made in his life. He sabotaged a marriage to a beautiful woman—for the second time in his life—alienated himself from his two daughters and completely lost what little trust any of us had left in him.

Tuesday, July 26th, 1977

Dear Jeff,

Well, there’s really no short version of the summer of ‘77. Suffice it to say it was a natural disaster – only Jimmy Carter won’t be sending me any federal funds. I’ll give it to you in rough factual outlines, like a historian.

May 8 arrived. We settled into Pampisford and I contacted Spicer to start work immediately on Highworth Avenue genuinely believing a 50-50 chance that Lucy might come as early as the following Thursday, but not likely to be much later than the 28th.

May 10 I realized that Lucy would not be coming at least until the 8th. May 12: work commenced on putting Highworth Ave. right. Bev knows generally that Lucy is coming sometime in the summer and perhaps with someone and possibly as part of a general ‘touring around’. May 23: I have phoned Lucy three times (talked to her), she has yet to write or call, though she has promised to call. My social life is busy but I am constantly thinking of Lucy. May 25: a strange letter from Lucy in which she refers to having met several interesting men, in which she shaves down her sense of commitment to me, talks of not possibly thinking of a liaison that will extend beyond the summer, and that I can cancel ‘our’ plans if I like. I call and write and said I’ll play it like it lies – besides I’ve nothing better cooking, really.

June 2nd: House is ready; Lucy says on the phone that she feels ‘pressured’ by my insistences .. especially to get her here sooner rather than later. June 3rd: Lucy says she’s coming on the ‘6th, 7th, or 8th’ – the 9th being her 22nd birthday and the first day of a new non-youth fare pricing for her trip. I push for the 6th, reminding her I have theatre tix and that the 7th is Jubilee Day here. June 7th: Lucy arrives. Bev has been told the magnitude and details of Lucy’s stay – i.e., to actually move in with me here for the summer – the day before. She is incredulous and says she’ll “never forgive me” but otherwise unteared and unbowed. June l0th: Lucy is enjoying herself but is uneasy about my trips to Pampisford to mow the lawn, see the kids, she has gone on outing with the kids and is really great with them -­ they like her so much that they ask Bev why can’t they have Lucy round to the house. June 12th: We decide to take a week’s vacation to Tangiers, Lucy will pay her own fare, our relationship has become a little strained because clearly Lucy doesn’t feel as deeply as I and I am still emotionally puzzled over how she can feel so firmly about an ending (she must return August 4 to go on an all-family outing and prepare for her job in September) yet claim to love me, etc. June 15-22 in Tangiers. Fantastic time .. sun, swim, eat, and loving 3-4 times a day .. like a honeymoon, but still undertones of emotional limitations on her part. Is it that I’m moving too fast and asking too much too soon over someone who’s only just turned 22? Or is it that she just simply “knows” that, for various and sundry reasons, it just “can never be” with us? I am deeply disturbed and try – somewhat unsuccessfully – not to let it show. We return & try to sort out what has become of you. I am beginning to feel that I cannot have all 3 of us go down to Pamplona together when I have such a feeling of a half-formed relationship with Lucy. Clive and Linda are going, with two others, and have offered to take you, Lucy and I to meet you either in St. Jean or Pamplona .. I figuring that 2-3 more days in semi-isolation travelling should consolidate things so that, abdicating heavy emotional considerations during the Fiesta, we  can all have a good time when we meet down South.

My money situation is a bit tense and Bev, after Morocco, is threatening all sorts of retribution in the law, divorce, etc. Your trip, as it was, would have cost me about $650-$700, there was no way I could remotely consider another $300 or more .. that was the way it had to be .. a loan with you taking over the payments against my credit card, that was marginally acceptable – but I knew you wanted to come so, well. But you weren’t having it and you sounded just like your mother when you went into that sulk, etc. I certainly wouldn’t have left you high and dry in N.Y., you know that. But never mind. I was partly relieved as, by the 27th I was beginning seriously to think of sending Lucy back and forgetting about everything. She was writing too many letters to men, and to ‘Ralph’ the fellow she dated the two evening’s just before she flew to me .. and her heart clearly was not ‘involved’ with me. I could try to accept the ‘now’ of our relationship, but it was fucking difficult. If I could only evince a ‘now’-like sense of commitment, but her commitment to ending it in August infected both (a) her ability to really give of herself emotionally ‘now’ and (b) my ability to simply take each day as it came – if she hadn’t told me, and re-told me, about it ending in August – well, who knows but that I might have gotten tired of her or whatever and ended it myself! But the loving was fantastic – she clearly had a libido to match my own, she was so beautiful and as she tanned she got more so. We drank, we went places, we did things and we loved almightily! So we left on June 29th, in the Jag, for the South. Two and a half lovely days in Paris; one night on the road, 3 days in St. Jean.

On the morning of the last day in St. Jean I went for a postcard from the envelope containing the new unwritten cards (I had been sending one a day to the girls) while she was in the bath and I came upon one she had written the night before, when I was asleep, to Ralph. We’d been walking on the promenade at sunset by the sea; she’d written “Here’s another sunset for you, my darling. I think of you always and wish that you were here with me. I miss you so and I can’t wait until I am with you. Think of me. All my love. Lucy.” What a blow! I went into the bath and told her that she had misplaced this card among the blank ones, I told her I couldn’t help reading it, and walked back into the room to pack my bag. She came out in a few minutes and pleaded with me not to end it. She said she didn’t feel that strongly about him, it was just what she thought he wanted to hear. Besides, she loved me, – she said she was with me, wasn’t she? What more could I want? Besides, he was for the fall, and I was for now. Well, we wound up making mad passionate love and on we went to Pamplona. We arrived, as planned, about noon on the 5th. There’d been a slight fuck-up on the rooms but we did stay in the Bearan, where we planned, but a bad room in that the paper was peeling etc. No roaches, but it looked like a roach pit. Lucy was not charmed by it .. but she loved the atmosphere. Party that night and then off at noon for the Grand Opening of the Fiesta .. many old friends, etc. But Lucy was hardly what I wanted and it was growing worse, or my sensitivity was growing greater. She turned her back on me during our 2:30-4:30 p.m. siesta on the 6th and I packed up our bags and we left Pamplona. We hit St. Jean at 8:30 p.m. and as it was raining I stopped for the night there. No words, no loving, nothing. Up early and on the road. 14 hours of silence, just the tape machine. We reached Dieppe on the English Channel at 10 p.m. We decided on one last great French meal. We talked. Lucy asked what I intended doing with her. I said I’d take her to a London hotel, pay a couple of nights in advance, leave her there, go up to Cambridge, pick up her bag and things and bring them down the following day. I told her I wanted it over. Well, she made mad passionate love to me and I began to think, what the hell, we were in London or rather England now and I could send her back any day I wanted to, here, only hours from Heathrow, I could play it truly day by day .. why cut off my nose to spite my face? Besides, I loved her.

We stopped with Helen Lipton (the woman who had arranged your flight with John, so we thought) and then had dinner in London. We motelled it only 5 miles outside of London .. very nice again. Back in Dieppe she insisted on coming back to Cambridge, at least to pick up her developed films of Morocco and pick up her own luggage. I suspected that she wanted to pick up her mail as well. When we came in the door at 11 a.m. there was mail .. she reached down and quickly took up hers. It was in a way and with a motion that made me very suspicious. And a few minutes later as we stood at the dining room table reading our mail, I reached over and flipped down the upper left corner of the bottom letter and saw Ralph’s name and return address. If was fit to be tied because I thought she’d ended their lover’s exchange when she tore up the postcard in St. Jean. Well, I decided that it was only my love for her and the physical enjoyment of her that kept me hanging on, and that I was a bloody fool. So I went in and hauled out her remaining stuff and told her it was time we parted. She called a cab, I loaned her some money and we sat in silence and packing busy-ness for 30 minutes longer. She offered no protestations, no requests for an explanation, no pleas, nothing. Finally, she asked one thing of me. “What?” I said hoping for an opening to reverse everything. “Can I have those plates you bought at the Antique Fair?” (I was hunting for antique plates and she found a beautiful pair which I bought – for myself “After all,” she said, “I found them.” Wow! What chutzpah! “Sit on it” said I. And that was it.

The cab came, she got in, I tossed the luggage in the boot and it drove off .. no words. The date was July 9th: she had been with me 33 days – constantly. I thought she might call from Heathrow .. she would be unable to actually fly out until 11 a.m. the following day. I stayed by the phone .. nothing. And that was it. I have done veritably nothing since that day.

I finally broke down and wrote her a love letter on Friday the 22nd; allowing the average time for mail she had been home fully a week without writing a word to me.

Actually; I left out a vital – and slightly funny – part. On the Monday following her departure a letter came from Ralph .. the 4th so far! I opened it. What a nerd .. he is exactly the same kind of Jesus freak as Susan Jenden our last mother’s help! Apparently he must be tall dark and handsome and didn’t reveal the magnitude of his weirdness in religious matters (and Lucy is a fairly devout Catholic!) It was pure chemistry on those two dates I suspect. Well, he is a 31-year-old Quaker wood-carver .. a simple kind of man .. in every way. His letter was weird. He burns candles to her memory. She apparently slept with him as he made a reference to “holding you in my arms again all night” .. this must, giving her benefit of the doubt, have been the 2nd of their two dates, or in other words, the day before she flew to me .. no wonder her heart was never in it with me!! Anyway, he asks her to send “another” lock of her hair AS HE CHEWED UP THE FIRST AND TAPED THE REMAINDER TO THE DASHBOARD OF HIS CAR! [Whatever happened to plastic Jesuses?!?] Well, if I wasn’t so torn up over her I would have been rolling in aching sides and tears on the floor. I sent her the letter with a 3 line typed note, no salutation, no signature .. saying how I thought they were made for each other and how I knew she had to have the letter as he had her hair on his dash so might she want to hang the letter as a pendant round her neck. She got it the following Thursday.

On the following Saturday, here in Cambridge, the 23rd, I got a letter from Lucy, mailed the previous Wednesday. This was quite a surprise. She missed me, she realized how much she loved me, she wished she’d said something to prevent me sending her away, she said we both had been silly, etc., etc. It was all ‘on’ again. And so my spirits soared even though the rational part of me knew that she hadn’t really changed. But she probably at least found out what a nerd Religious Ralph was and thus had finally put ‘finis’ to what had been open on the day she left. I was going to tell her .. this was to be at a call made 11:30 a.m. here, 6:30 a.m. there .. that there was a flight she could take (she having paid for her own flight over the first time – and spent and additional $500 while she was here) that would actually get her here 9 p.m. the same evening!

I got through. Her mother answered. Said Lucy couldn’t come to the phone. I thought that was very strange, asked if she’d be calling me back (I sensed hostility in the mother’s tone) .. she said “I doubt it”. So I hung up and sat for an hour and a half thinking. Then I called back; her mother was now really irritated .. tried to be both polite and diplomatic but, after all, I’m sitting holding this avowal of love in my hand and the mother says she doesn’t want to talk to me. Said that I’d like to hear it from her own lips. She said she’d hang up. I said politely, how do I know that it’s not you standing between us .. how will I know?  She hung up.  I called a woman friend in Philly and asked her to call a few hours later for Lucy and see if she would merely inform Lucy that I wanted to hear from her. I also found a return address from a girlfriend of Lucy’s who’d written to her here earlier. I knew that if I got ahold of her that neither parents nor Lucy would know that I knew her.

And that particular ploy worked. 20 minutes after I spoke to the girl (around 1 p.m. on Saturday) Lucy called me. I couldn’t believe my ears .. she was spewing venom. Said she, no matter what she may have written, no matter what she may have ever felt for me, it was all over now, How could I have opened a letter to her??!! What a violation of faith. What total lack of integrity, etc., etc. She would never, never, ever be able to forgive me for doing that, etc., etc. I was in a state of shock. This adolescent clearly hasn’t got the slightest conception of love if she can profess love on the one hand and then turn it off on the other .. at least based on opening a letter from her ‘lover’. It didn’t come into the forefront of my mind while talking to her that 2/3rds of her anger might be because the content of the letter revealed that she had been cruelly deceiving me with regard to her real relationship towards RR .. her protestations that he meant nothing to her, that they had merely two innocuous dates before she left, etc. But I told her that while I knew it had been wrong in one sense, I had also felt emotionally justified .. I had, after all, been literally offering her my life up to that point: I had to know to what extent I was a fool (i.e., to have sent her away, or to have kept her as long as I did and feel the way I did). She sallied back and forth, not quite rationally .. she alternated by asking how I was, by cruelly telling me how slim and brown and beautiful she was and what fun she was having, by saying that if anyone came to anyone now it would be me that would have to come to her .. my analysis is that she still feels something .. certainly not any serious love .. that she is spoiled and selfish but that she knows I have touched her deeply as well as vice-versa ..  she wants to be in control, yet she hasn’t the slightest respect for anyone she can control .. clearly needs a few more years of growing up. And so it is over. Oh sure, I know what will happen in the fall, we discussed it as far back as Morocco when I told her that I certainly wouldn’t bother seeing her or doing anything with her in the fall.

She will pursue me .. not like a teeny-bopper .. but she will leave notes, presents, a little flower, etc. She won’t be able to reach me directly by phone, so I can ignore her there. I’m not holding open public lectures or normal classes (Freshman Interdisciplinary Seminars only); but I do have to keep office hours, and she knows this. So .. she’ll come ‘round to my office. And I’ll fuck her there, for sure .. but that will be it. I will be in control. We did it before, so we can do it again. She knows me so well that she knows that if I don’t make love to her that I’ll be hurting .. so if I can just make love to her and matter-of-factly show her the door and say “That was nice, we must do that again someday”, well, revenge is sweet when you have tasted such doled-out bitterness.

So, there you have it .. a real adolescent tale .. better than Love Story though. Having lived to 40 now I can say that I have learned very little, non-rationally that is, since 18 .. still the same mistakes. I’ll probably make them again, though of course not the same kind .. and certainly not while the present pain lingers on.

Bev has, at this point, invited us both back to Wallace Street for the fall. Clearly, she realizes that if she leaves at mid-December she is unnecessarily inconveniencing us by spinning us off on our own for 3 1/2 months. I shall probably stay in the house only as long as it takes me to move some things into David Dickstein’s .. for I want no symbolic attachment to her in the eyes of any 3rd party – particularly any women in my life.   I might borrow Hal Leventhal’s pad for a while, as he is about 200 yards away directly opposite the 7-11 in the Philadelphian on Fairmount .. or some similar arrangement. Thus, except for overnight I can use the Wallace St. facilities. She was quite warm & quite genuine when she said you were quite welcome to your old room, etc. regardless of whatever I decided to do.  To add bait to your considerations: we have a really first-class mother’s help .. I believe the best we’ve ever had. She is attractive, sincere, great sense of humor, great personality, good body, 18 1/2 yrs., we’ve only had her 3 days but I am very impressed. If you and I had a place of our own – or from mid-December, she would be perfect as a housekeeper, etc. She sews on buttons, mends, cleans, cooks .. great arrangement, eh?

Did you write to Colgan and get your grades? He hasn’t forwarded much .. I haven’t heard from the Law School yet.

We’ve sold both houses here .. but there are some knotty problems yet to come. In England she would only get l/3rd of what I have; all monies and goods in England and not covered by any court judgements in the states .. thus if I held everything .. money and goods .. here in England she would (a) have to get a separate English court judgment governing them here and (b) probably get only l/3rd. I will keep at least the monies here (ca. $30,000) to hold as a negotiating point .. when one subtracts all the debts, mortgages, etc., it won’t amount to much anyway.

So, drop me a line and let me know what you’ve been up to. It will be quite an experience, just the two of us, come December. If Bev doesn’t go to Temple for any reason and the divorce business gets too hot and sticky and her presence is not required in Philadelphia, she might well go sooner.

We won’t be able to go back sooner, I think, than 26 August, and probably around the 29-30th, I guess. Colgan has a contract to Sept. 1, but said he might go out a week early.  We will give over Pampisford sometime between 25-28 August .. hopefully Highworth Ave., only a day or two later. I am now anxious to get back and get busy again. The weather here is lousy; the bird life rather pre-adolescent – and I still hurt a bit. I hope everything has gone well with you over the summer and that you are quite the opposite from my state. The girls are fine and speak with thick English accents, this time, because [Jennie] is in school, Jessie as well.

Let’s hear from you,

What my father doesn’t say in the letter about the au pair girl other than: “attractive, sincere, great sense of humor, great personality, good body, 18 1/2 yrs” is the fact he had had sex with her sometime within the three days prior to writing the letter, a fact and the circumstances of which I wouldn’t know for another three months. At some point within those three days Beverly had sent her over to do some housekeeping at the Highworth Avenue house. When my father walked in on her making his bed, he apparently liked what he saw and said, “Why don’t we unmake that bed?” 

Within three and a half months my stepmother left my father with my two sisters. My sisters were the same age my brother and I were when my own mother left my father.

A PDF of the original letter can be found here:

Rocket's Red Glare: Launching the Ashes of The Living Legend

For the last 28 years of my father’s life, he made the same pilgrimage every summer. It started in the UK with the boat races on the River Cam and Wimbledon, then to France by car or train. Some summers it included a stop in Paris, but always a week in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, arriving at the very end of June. From there it was on to The Fiesta of San Fermín in Pamplona, Spain where he would arrive every 5th of July at noon. His kids and friends had a standing invitation to join him on any of the stops along the way. We always knew, depending on the date, where to catch up with him.

In 1995, after he died, my stepmother decided my father would take the trip one last time. She asked my brother and I to join her as she made the trip he did every summer, leaving bits of his ashes scattered along the way.

We started in England by scattering some of the ashes in the courtyard of his college at Cambridge, then south to France by train where we were met by some of his life-long friends, in particular the artist, well-known in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Alfred “Alma” Martinez and his wife Françoise.

My father first met Alma back in the 1960s in the town square in Saint-Jean where he was selling his paintings of Basque country landscape. My father was selling bullfight photos similarly propped up on easels. Alma bought one of my father’s photos while my father bought one of Alma’s paintings and the friendship began.

Once my father arrived in Saint-Jean each summer, the routine was pretty much the same. First there was the greeting of old friends and then the procuring of fireworks in Biarritz, the neighboring city, to be used for his annual Fourth of July celebration on the beach. On the Fourth we were back in Biarritz to the American Consulate for their annual Independence Day party.

In Saint-Jean we would have a dinner of Magret de Canard (a dish of seared duck breast) and moules-frites (mussels and fries) at the Vieille Auberge. Daniel Grant, the owner of the Auberge, always referred to my father as Inspector Maigret (from the famous character in the Georges Simenon novels) as my father always referred to his favorite dish as Maigret de Canard. After dinner we would head to the beach with our fireworks and start a bonfire. There we drank champagne and set off fireworks until the wee hours.

It was a bit of a somber affair when we arrived in Saint-Jean with my father’s ashes. There was a lot of “quel dommage” and the wringing of hands. The dinner at the Auberge was low key and the entourage to the beach quiet. I’m not sure what my stepmother’s intentions were as far as scattering my father’s ashes that night, but my brother and I knew instinctively how it had to be done. There was only one way out for The Living Legend. We gathered up all the small boxes left over from the fireworks and wooden matches and emptied the ashes into them. We tied them to the large rockets, toasted my father’s memory and proceeded to fire them off one by one over the Bay of Biscay.

This newspaper article in Le Semaine du Pays Basque appeared after shooting off my father’s ashes 

and refers to one Fourth of July party in Biarritz the actor Jack Nicholson attended.

When Alma’s wife Françoise realized what we were doing, she was scandalized and screamed that it was sacrilege. She was always very conservative, would never let us interfere with Alma’s “work” and never wore anything but black and white. (I always suspected she was color blind and the black and white clothing made it easier to put together her ensemble each day.) We tried to convince her that he would have wanted it that way, but she would not be dissuaded except by physical restraint until the last rocket was off.

We took what was left of my father’s ashes and headed to Pamplona. At noon on the opening day of the Fiesta we went to the then empty bullring where my father took so many of his great bullfight photos. In the center of the ring we dumped another canister of his ashes.

“Is that it?” I asked my stepmother. 

“I have one canister left,” she said, “For the enfermería.”

We were going to have one more wake for my father in the form of what in Pamplona is referred to as an enfermería, ostensibly a party given after each day’s running of the bulls through the streets to medicate the injured runners with booze. My father’s ashes sat on the table in the midst of the merriment.

Family members and a few close friends in attendance at the last enfermería.

The enfermería was at a restaurant called the Meson del Caballo Blanco in the old section of the city near the ancient city walls that overlook the River Arga. We walked to the wall and cast the ashes over. At that moment a gust of wind came up and blew the ashes toward a group of tourist at the wall just beyond where we stood. Judging from the rubbing of eyes and dusting of clothing, he was not well received. Surely it was my father’s rage at the indignity of dying.

The Living Legend by the Numbers

I believe in my father’s case, the numbers that made up the totality of his life say more than an obituary can. Here they are for better or worse, good or bad, impressive or appalling.

Age at death: 57

57 years, 8 months and 8 days.

Number of wives: 3

Mary Ann (1957-65), Beverly (1966-77) and Janet (1993-95)

Number of children: 18 (4 legitimate, 14 illegitimate)

The four legitimate children are, of course, me and my brother and sisters. The fourteen I discovered after my father’s death recorded in a little black book. They are listed by the mother’s first and last name, country, month and year of birth and sex of each child. No names of the children.

Number of degrees held: 4

A bachelor’s degree (University of California Santa Barbara, 1958), a master’s degree (Cambridge University, 1959), a PhD (Cambridge, 1963) and a JD (University of Pennsylvania, 1981).

Number Countries in which he lived: 3

The United States, Great Britain and Sweden.

Number of states in which he lived: 7

New York, Nevada, California, Washington, Texas, Pennsylvania and Hawaii.

The number of wills he left behind: 9

According to the family lawyer, there were nine wills among my father’s papers at the time of his death. Among the nine wills, the lawyer confirmed, there were versions excluding each one of his four legitimate children at various times. Never a mention of any other children.

The number of countries to which he traveled: 34

U.S., Canada, Mexico, Curaçao, England, Ireland, France, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Monaco, Spain, Portugal, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Italy, Switzerland, Morocco, Algeria, Vietnam, Thailand, China, Japan, Peru, Brazil

Number of women with whom he had sex: 194

The name and year of every woman my father had sex with was faithfully recorded in a little black book. I have not shared this book with anyone except my stepmother, my father’s last wife, who was with me when I found it. Although the keeping of such a sex diary is in itself of questionable taste, at least the women weren’t rated with stars. 

The list includes his mistresses, models, stewardesses, transsexuals, wives of friends, some of his children’s college-age friends, au pair girls and one Miss America contestant (But as his good friend Norman Pearlstein was quick to point about Miss Pennsylvania, “it wasn’t that impressive when you consider there were only 13 states at the time.”).

My mother recently asked me if I thought my father had exaggerated the number and I told her no, I didn’t think he did and told her my reasons, which were: 1) She was the first on the list (and they met in college). If you’re going to exaggerate your sex life wouldn’t you claim to have started at a younger age? 2) The number is only 194, if you were going to exaggerate, wouldn’t you go a little higher number? I’m sure my father thought he would reach 200. 3) I knew a lot of the women on the list personally and, just as importantly, the women who were not on the list within my father’s circle of acquaintances.

My mother still wasn’t satisfied, so she said that she would give me the names of a few women who she was certain he hadn’t had sex with and if they were on the list it would almost certainly prove my father was exaggerating his conquests. None of the women she named were on the list.

 The number of nationalities among the women with who he had sex: 14

Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, German, French, British, Irish, Swiss, Dutch, Latvian, Ukrainian, Pakistani and Australian.

IQ: 140

This IQ put him at the 99.6 percentile. He was a member of Mensa, the high IQ society, for much of his adult life. For more on this see: “Mensa and the Bye Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case.”

Books owned: 6,379

His books covered much of the wall space in his three story Philadelphia rowhouse. When he retired he cataloged his entire library, which can be seen here: Library of the Living Legend. 

Books read: 1,652

In cataloging his library, he had a column in his database to indicate whether he had read the book or not. Filtering out unread or only partially-read books leaves 1,652. I should note, however, that the number includes bound magazines such as Horizon and American Heritage. More to come on this in a future blog.

Number of books written: 3

Project Gemini: A Chronology (with James M. Grimwood and Barton C. Hacker, 1969)

Charles Darwin: The Years of Controversy (Temple University Press, 1970 and University of London Press, 1972).

He also wrote at least one unpublished autobiography, Tales of the Living Legend and one unfinished novel, The Loves of Dr. Death.

The number of people he killed: 1

On St. Patrick’s Day in 1954 while driving in Hollywood, my father accidentally struck and killed a woman. A couple of notes about this: It was something he rarely talked about over the course of his life. Ironically, the woman’s name, Bertha, was the same as his paternal grandmother’s and, as fate would have it, my father himself would not live to the age of 59. Though he was half Irish, he never celebrated St. Patrick’s Day. It wasn’t until I heard the story in the late 1970s, I understood why. My father’s own mother would also die on Saint Patrick’s Day 31 years later. 

Number of jobs he held in his lifetime: 7

The various jobs he held include three academic positions: The University of Washington (Seattle, 1963-66), The University of Houston (under contract to the NASA-MSC, 1966-67) and Temple University (1967-93). After working part-time for Diners Fugazy in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he started his own travel agency, Student International Travel. He also worked for a short time as a stringer for Time Magazine, a job he held during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Number of consecutive years attending the Fiesta of San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain: 29

This is the fiesta featuring the running of the bulls, made famous by Ernest Hemingway’s novel, The Sun Also Rises, (1926), also by the film made from the book (1957) and by James Michener’s books The Drifters (1971) and Iberia (1968). 

Number of consecutive years holding a birthday party for Giuseppe Verdi: 17

More to come on this in a future blog.  

Number of countries over which my father’s ashes were scattered: 4

The U.S., Great Britain, France and Spain. For more on this see the post: “Rocket’s Red Glare: Launching the Ashes of The Living Legend”