by J. F. Powers
Jim
23
Back and wondering why
December 22, 1958–August 25, 1959
The Vossberg Building, suite 7, redux
Upon their return from Ireland, the Powers family stayed with Betty’s parents, the Wahls, in their place on the Mississippi. The idea was to find a house to buy with the ten thousand dollars that Art had promised to give them for that purpose if they returned to the area.
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
[North River Road, St. Cloud, Minnesota]
December 22, 1958
Dear Katherine Anne,
Back and wondering why, of course, and wishing I’d got this off to you in time for Christmas. We sailed from Cobh on Nov. 30, docked late in N.Y. (8:00 p.m.), which is no time to arrive with five children and nineteen pieces, including five trunks and five packing cases. There we were more or less slaughtered (our sensibilities and finances) by the porters and coopers and agents for the one “approved” transport company, all of whom struck me as members of the Mafia. A Negro customs inspector, however, proved to be a human being, by getting Betty and the children out of the place so they could get a cab to a hotel.
We had hoped to go on west the day we arrived, but the boat being late fixed that. I had tried for three weeks before we left Ireland to find out what would happen to my trunks and cases, especially them, when I docked, whether the railroad freight people would pick them up. I tried to find out what railroad we’d be traveling on when we got to New York. (My publisher, as it turned out, hired a travel agency to handle all this detail, and I was to be met by a man who would nurse us through customs, etc.) I called from Newfoundland, off Newfoundland, that is, to say we’d be late but didn’t manage to get a word in edgewise; the girl at the publisher’s kept saying DO NOT WORRY. NO MATTER WHAT TIME YOUR SHIP DOCKS, OUR MAN WILL BE THERE TO MEET YOU. Me: “About the freight…” DO NOT WORRY. THAT’S IN THE PACKAGE TOO. “About the train, our Pullman reservations…” DO NOT WORRY. Me: “Well, thank you.” THANK YOU! WE ARE CANCELING OUR CABLE TO YOU SAYING DO NOT WORRY. “Yes. Well, thank you.” THANK YOU FOR CALLING.
As it turned out, I had to pay the Century Transportation Company for transporting my packing cases to, as it turned out, a trucking shipper; because of the airline strikes, there was trouble about the Pullman reservations, so that we were left with one unredeemable double bedroom ($25), my ship-to-shore call not having been conveyed to the travel agency; no allowance was made for “family plan” from Chicago to Minnesota ($25 loss); the [travel agency’s] man left early, after being absent for the first fifteen minutes after disembarkation (picture man and wife and five children standing under the letter P not worrying).
Betty and children got out of it, though with no night clothing, and three hours later I followed, having had the worst time of my life. The cooper who axed into the packing cases in which I had things like a Sheraton barometer, Waterford glass decanters, and satinwood cane chairs cut his finger and therefore had to be adequately compensated for his injury: my heart broke to see how he nailed up the cases again (for which I had had stencils made which said FRAGILE and an arrow pointing up), but I was able to have them strapped with steel bands by paying the Mafia. I got a very good deal from Al of Century Transportation Company, who thought I ought to “take care” of Joe, who was writing up the tickets for the packing cases; Joe later thought I ought to take care of Al, who had given me a very good deal; and so on; and on.
I managed to borrow forty dollars the next day from a friend in New York, and so we left in a blaze of prosperity for Chicago. The train was an hour and a half late, and our plans went awry again. But we did get to St Paul ultimately, and then here by car. The barometer is on the wall in this knotty-pine basement room, and an 18th-century print also, both fruits of my attendance at auctions in Dublin, and the trunks, which went as baggage, finally arrived, after a week of not worrying about them. (I relaxed Sunday afternoon in N.Y. and forgot to redeem them at Penn Station and arrange that they be sent on as baggage, relaxed with Betty and my friend and his wife over some of our duty-free Irish whiskey, that is.)
Oh, the joys of travel! And yet, unless we find a house we can stand to look at here, which seems unlikely at the moment, I see no course open but to set out for somewhere again. Meanwhile, we swarm all over this little rambler house, and I don’t even think of working. The prospect isn’t promising, but I suppose I at least will have to pull myself together and start working pretty soon somehow. Now how are you? Happy New Year.
Jim
Art and Money left for their place in Florida, planning to return in April, by which time everyone expected that Jim and Betty would have found a place of their own. Happily, Jim was able to rent his old office in downtown St. Cloud.
HARVEY EGAN
St Cloud
January 5, 1959
Dear Fr Egan,
The last words typed by this typewriter originated in my office on Westland Row. I am now writing from my old office above Walgreen’s—which is somewhat singed from the fire next door, but then aren’t we all? It was not my intention to write to you today, or tomorrow for that matter, for there are times when silence is the better part, but something just happened—something so symbolic that I thought you ought to know about it. You recall King Alfred’s hard times, don’t you, when it was a spider who gave him strength, inspiration rather, to go on. I seem to remember that Bruce, or Douglas, had a similar experience. Well, in my case, it is a ladybug. It was lying half frozen against the sill, and then the sun trickled in, shining first on the diocesan exchange building, which is a powerhouse of Catholic Action, and then, having nothing better to do, shining in here on me and the ladybug (we are both wearing orange-red, by the way). Now the ladybug has gathered its strength and is walking around the envelope which I intend to put this letter in. I’d say the bug, if it watches itself and sticks close to the radiator, will be all right. As for me, I anxiously await inspiration, wondering if I’ve already had it and if I need a stronger charge than Alfred and the others.
Let me telescope it for you. I’ve spent fifty on the car and a certain amount of time waiting on the garageman. I’ve been to several affairs sponsored by members of the Movement up here: no change except for a little ram’s wool in Leonard’s beard. The Wahls left for Florida yesterday. The girls are enrolled at Holy Angels school, and by a singular combination of circumstances I drive them to school (today is the first day): school begins at 8:15 a.m. We have found one house that just might do, though I personally feel very shaky about it (and about the whole picture—as does Betty, I think, but she is slower to entertain thoughts of turncoatery). Anyway we are now prepared to entertain you and George anytime you care to venture up. My radiator gives off a keening sound, and I must draw closer to it. This building has only about a year to live. My shirt is threadbare, and my cushions are dead. Our bishop gave a talk on TV yesterday (Alexandria station), only a half hour, all too short.
Jim
What does a ladybug eat? Clark Bars.
Journal, January 5, 1959
First day in office. Radiator cooling at 2:00 p.m.… Money short. Friends depressed and depressing. Houses nonexistent … Truth is I hate wooden houses and especially white ones … Last month probably the most miserable in my life. Ladybug like me—half frozen, wearing orange-red. Will it be here tomorrow?
Journal, January 6, 1959
Yes, it’s here. I tried a crumb of milk chocolate on it, but it wasn’t interested. I wonder if it’s seeking the cold and doesn’t enjoy the sun, knowing it’s winter.
Journal, January 7, 1959
So far I’d say returning has been a mistake. Keep coming back to Don. What’s wrong? I ask myself, and topping the list is that … Ladybug still around.
Journal, January 8, 1959
No work yet. Am hoping to start pretty soon now. Always hard to begin again, and this is as hard as any time I can remember in the past. About all this—house, staying on, etc.—I feel
no better. Discovered girls have been wearing no sweaters under their coats—just their blouses. Mary home sick today. Suppose KA will be next. I don’t know—at this point, with the weather near zero every morning—what it means. Nothing in my history enables me to understand them at their ages—or Betty, for that matter. A strong strain always tending toward absolute confusion. Haven’t seen the ladybug around today.
Journal, January 9, 1959
Trying to get started—still. No sign of ladybug, but haven’t really looked for it.
Journal, January 12, 1959
The family-life novel seems more and more possible. (Perhaps the account of our arrival off the Hanseatic cd be in it, for I now see the novel not ending with our departure from St Cloud.)
Journal, January 14, 1959
I drove out to Jacobs Prairie—looked for Don’s grave. I think I found it in a corner. Very odd standing there where he is buried—hard to believe—and I’m afraid I’m such a poor Christian that I get mad at him for dying.
HARVEY EGAN
February 11, 1959
Dear Fr Egan,
[…] We haven’t found the social life here quite what we’d hoped it would be. I finally got Doyle to come out last night, having spent one night at his house watching the children go to bed for three hours; they kept reappearing to have a dish of cereal and to pat the cat. The Doyles are considered strict disciplinarians by most people, I understand.
I have my Dublin office furniture here now, but the work, I must say, isn’t getting done. It is now 10:00 a.m., and I’ve been here about two hours and am beginning to think about opening up my sandwiches and thermos of tea. The Mpls Tribune is out of the way for another day.
I got pretty interested in the Del-Dupas1 contest, reading up on it before and after. Watching it on TV, though, I got that old feeling. I don’t think I gave Del a round. Just shows you how much you can miss watching a show on TV. I thought I heard your voice ring out at one point.
In short, I am trying to take an interest in the life around me. Not easy, is it?
Del drank too much water before the fight. He wants title shot. If ever a guy deserved it, Del does. Maybe with the International Boxing Club dissolved, he’ll get it. Well, let’s hope so. But if so, I hope he remembers to train for it, and doesn’t get too fine, and doesn’t drink water to excess when he’s drying out, and all the rest.
Jim
Jim whose address is:
c/o A. Wahl
North River Road, Rte 2
St Cloud
Journal, February 21, 1959
I was asking what it is my present life seems to be saying to me—I think it is that I must work willy-nilly and abandon all hope of living as I’d like to, forget what I like to eat, who I’d like to see, where I’d like to be, etc., and think of myself as just having been given a stiff prison sentence: if I should ever get out, it would be nice to have a book or two to show for the time. I’ll not get out either until I have a book that makes me some money. So what, my life is a plot against living, but perhaps a good thing for my work—if I can ever get around to it. If I can stop trying to think of other ways to escape the trap I’m in. Stoicism then …
HARVEY EGAN
March 6, 1959
Dear Fr Egan,
I just rec’d the following wire here at my office: THE TROUBLE2 SHOWING CBS LOOK UP AND LIVE SUNDAY MORNING MARCH EIGHTH MANY THANKS AND CONGRATULATIONS = ANNE FREMANTLE. So I wanted you to be the first to know. The only thing is that CBS in Mpls–St Paul isn’t carrying the program. […] They are on tape, so maybe we’ll see them someday somewhere. Naturally, I am excited about my debut on TV, though there’s no money in it and it’s, unfortunately, invisible.
How they going?
I hear conflicting reports. That Del will meet Martinez on St Patrick’s Day, and since Vince is so heavy, Del will not have to train down (and so, it follows, will not have to drink so much water); but this morning Sid Hartman, that ace reporter, reports Del and Vince will never meet because Del isn’t ready.3
Joe Dever writes that Hollywood is nibbling on his last. Some talk of Crosby, Sinatra, and Dean Martin (now crooner, late of Martin and Lewis) all wanting priest parts. How about you?
Jim
Journal, March 24, 1959
Opened the window for a little air—and a few minutes later I saw the ladybug going up the windowpane. Hello again.
Art and Money returned from Florida at the end of March. Although they never complained or showed resentment about sharing their house with seven Powerses, the couple did not understand Jim and Betty’s insistence that they would not even consider a rambler, most especially one in a new development. Jim found the living situation at the Wahls’ increasingly intolerable. He accepted an invitation to a writers’ conference at Grinnell College in Iowa and planned to stay briefly with Egan on the way there or back.
HARVEY EGAN
North River Road
April 1 (ha ha), 1959
Dear Fr Egan,
Yours rec’d and glad that you were able to shuffle the cards so as to make space for me on your tight schedule. I sometimes wonder if Pope John knows what our American pastors are going through (and I’d be interested in his reaction). If I am ever to receive recognition at the Vatican, now is the time. Well, no, I didn’t realize that Fr Bandas was succeeding to Msgr Knox’s seat at the Round Table.4 Do these things just happen, or is this the divine humor? […]
Betty exclaimed during the course of changing diapers, getting milk for the baby, trying to quiet boys, etc.: “Suicide would be better than this. No, I shouldn’t say that.” But I’m afraid that’s about it. How’s it with youse?
Jim
ROBERT LOWELL AND ELIZABETH HARDWICK
c/o A. Wahl
North River Road
St Cloud, Minnesota
April 13, 1959
Dear Cal and Elizabeth,
On returning to this, the Granite City, yesterday, I found a summons from what may be one of your publishers, to meet you people in New York toward the end of April. Nothing was said beyond that, but I take it that you have a book coming out; Betty says that you are on your way to England, remembers something to that effect in one of your letters. If the former is true, there’s nothing I can do for you. But if the latter is true, keep an eye out for a place for me, my wife, and five children. […]
I am just back from Grinnell College, where Howard Nemerov and I were visitors for the writers’ conference. I must say I liked him very much. He is like you in conversation—a kindly, murderous approach. I’m sorry I can’t make it to New York in April, but you tell them how it is with me. I imagine you’ve been as happy as I have to see that Ted Roethke is finally being recognized. I am hoping they don’t make him wait too long for the Nobel Prize.
Best to youse.
Jim
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
c/o A. Wahl
North River Road
St Cloud, Minnesota
April 21, 1959
Dear Katherine Anne,
As for housing, I’m afraid our luck is no better than yours, and here we are four months later (than when I last wrote) and still where we were, with Betty’s father and mother, who have had three months in Florida in the meantime. The one house I could imagine us living in was rejected by Betty’s father, who, of course, has the money with which we were going to operate; too big, taxes too high, he said, and he’s right, but I fear that means we won’t find a place. We are not going to move into a three-bedroom rambler and fix up the basement (one of his suggestions). There is little direct communication between us and him. Betty has gone on for years without intimidating him—he is a builder of large buildings—by her different outlook on life. To me it seems odd, for my parents knew from about the time I got out of high school that I was not going to follow in their steps, i.e., make earning a living my primary concern. […]
The atmosphere is clear of trouble. That is the really remarkable thing, that the two of the
m can stand to have us and our five children around. I know I, in their position, couldn’t go it at all. Meanwhile, we sleep in fear of the baby’s waking in the night and get through the meals sometimes with hardly a mumblin’ word—and I am in the worst spot I’ve been in yet, which is saying something. We run ads for lake cottages; we write letters to people who have suitable ones—the majority of cottages in these parts aren’t fit for man or beast. You have to be from Chicago to believe you’re experiencing the best that nature can provide. As a resort area, it is not of the first class or even of the second. And still we can’t find a place to rent for the summer. What we’ll do in September, I don’t know. The thought frightens me, but I think we may go abroad again. I have all summer to pan the necessary gold. […]
All best.
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
O’er Walgreen’s
Suite No. 7
St Cloud
April 24, 1959
Dear Fr Egan,
[…] I walked around St Paul that morning I left you, and I kept getting the feeling that the city had been bombed. St Paul Stationery now looks like one of the Horder office supply stores in Chicago. The public library has been all switched around inside so that the contents no longer match the words carved in stone over the various doors. Field, Schlick appeared about the same. But my opinion is that the same rats who are gnawing down the good old buildings here—the Highway Department leads the pack—are at work in St Paul. It didn’t seem much like home to me. I did not go up around the cathedral, fearing perhaps I’d find a cloverleaf in its place.
