Thank you to Linda Summersea for her engaging flash-memoir piece, “Mr. Buchwald.”
Mr. Buchwald
by Linda Summersea
My interest in writing humor grew from reading the Worcester Evening Gazette daily and The New York Times on Sunday. By seventh grade, I added syndicated columns and The New York Times Book Review.
I discovered Art Buchwald’s syndicated column below the fold on the Gazette’s editorial page. His blend of humor and Washington politics hit a sweet spot in my literary interests. I think it’s safe to say that I was the only seventh grader at St. Joseph’s reading political satire. I loved Buchwald’s style, which encouraged my goal of someday writing words that might make people laugh.
Long story short, during my sophomore year, I was moved to write a fan letter to Mr. Buchwald in my neatest Palmer penmanship. I told him how much I enjoyed his column, especially his humor.
I closed with: “I would be very pleased if I might receive a personal letter from you.”
Not long afterward, a hand-typed (Courier 10), hand-signed letter from Mr. Buchwald arrived on a 5×7” sheet of engraved Washington Post letterhead. He thanked me for my letter and interest in his column, and he closed with the following:
“Would you like to run away to Brazil with me?”
Naïve as I was, I didn’t understand this literal response to my request for a “personal” letter.
I brought the letter to my father in the living room. I saw the glowing tip of his cigarette and turned on the table lamp next to him. He scanned the letter, and without a word, he handed it back to me.
I passed the letter to my mother in the kitchen. She wiped her hands on her apron and read it slowly. She, too, had no comment. As usual, neither offered the assistance I was seeking.
I carried the letter upstairs to my bedroom, and I tucked it away in my oak drop-front desk. At some point after I went off to college, my mother threw the letter away, along with six years’ worth of my British pen pal letters and the poetry I had written in ninth grade.
My mother had no respect for the written word. I remember the precise cubby in my desk where I placed Mr. Buchwald’s letter. I remember reaching in, touching all four sides and the top, all the way to the back, and
bending over to peer inside. The letter was gone, and Mum said she didn’t know what had happened to it. Liar, liar, pants on fire!
Years later, I discovered that 1963, when I had written to Mr. Buchwald to compliment him on his column, was the same year that he was hospitalized for severe depression.
Imagine!
A depressed young girl in Massachusetts writes a letter to her literary hero, who is also depressed. Neither of them knows this fact about the other. The girl comments on his humor, and he responds in kind.
His letter cheered me. I can only hope that my letter cheered him.
This piece was previously published in The Girl with the Black and Blue Doll, A Coming of Age Memoir by Linda Summersea
Linda Summersea’s coming-of-age memoir is The Girl with the Black and Blue Doll. While teaching Youth-at-Risk, she never knew she had been one herself. She discovered her passion for expedition hiking by walking fifty miles in the Moroccan desert with Berber nomads. Her childhood survival is where it all began.