It is snowing today, so we are not going to the storage unit. Carrying very heavy boxes around in the icy wind would be too grim. Instead, we have been gathering up things to donate to the ARC. They have gotten to know us there lately, but seem glad to see us anyway.
My dad died two years ago, just before the pandemic hit. Going through all of our stuff, I keep finding odd things from him that I've kept over the years.
This morning I found a note he sent to Jonathan thanking him for a gift of a book about an Italian sculptor from Brescia named Rita Siragusa. It read:
"Thank you for sending me the book about Rita Siragusa. I appreciate it. My aunt had the exact same name. In futherance of that, I contacted this Rita in Brescia with the information that I felt sure we were closely related and would it be possible for me to get a discount on one of her smaller sculptures. At first she seemed amenable but when I suggested that we meet for cocktails in Bald Knob, Arkansas, the line went dead."
I have also found copies of the letters he used to send to the local newspaper in his town in Arkansas. They were running a contest to give prizes to worthy local citizens who had shown true community spirit and deserved to be publicly recognized with a whole variety of Civic Leader Awards. There were many categories. You could nominate people you knew by sending in a letter detailing their civic-minded activities.
Dad made up a dog named Rosie and kept nominating her for a variety of awards, writing long letters about her activities, which mostly involved having drinks, affairs, or the occasional line of coke with various disreputable local elected officials. In our town, there were plenty of scoundrels to choose from and Rosie had made the rounds.
Rosie went all out in her campaign for an award. In one letter she had been on a goodwill tour of the local dog food factory. Unfortunately, she came back unexpectedly quickly with just one word: "cannibals."
Dad was the child of immigrants, grew up in Brooklyn before it became fashionable, and got his education with scholarships and ROTC. He served in the navy with Leonard Lauder, Estee's son, and when their ship was docked in Rhode Island, Len invited my dad and some of his other friends to Estee's mansion in Newport Beach. It was pretty snazzy in the eyes of a kid from Brooklyn.
Dad said it took him quite a while to figure out that the strange, dour, lurking man was the butler. The butler then carried around a silver tray with glasses on it filled with liquids in different shades of brown and clear, asking these ebullient young sailors what they would like to drink. No matter what outlandish thing they requested (and the requests became increasingly outlandish as the afternoon wore on), magically, it was on the tray. Dad asked for a "sidecar," which was a cocktail he had read about in books, and the butler gave him one of the glasses. "Was it really a sidecar?" I asked. "How would I know?" he said. Fifty years later, his imaginary dog Rosie was drinking them with the mayor.
I was with him in his last days, when he was so sick. Death did not come easily. When the hospice nurses came to visit, they would ask him questions to test his mental acuity. "Who is the president?" one of them asked him. (This was before the 2020 election.) Dad sighed. "Dipshit," he said. The nurse laughed and marked it down as correct.
