Jim […]
Greek Song took down $50,000 first money at Arlington a week ago last Saturday. My brother, who subscribes to my service, had him across the board. He (GS) goes in the Arlington Handicap next Saturday. Listen at 3:30, NBC.
JACK CONROY
Milwaukee
August 9, 1950
Dear Jack,
[…] Very warm and dull in Milwaukee. I was in Chicago last week for a day. I was on North Clark but only in a streetcar. I find I’m getting a little old for the good life. I toured the Near North Side in daytime, alone, and meditated on the vanished splendor. I doubt that it’s vanished from anywhere but me. I heard Nelson Algren on the Chez Show, a radio program emanating from the Sapphire Bar of the Chez Paree — you see I’ve sunk to the lower depths — and he got off a line about Hollywood being a con man’s paradise, which wasn’t a very nice thing to say in that setting. The following week I heard this fellow Stuart Brent,12 and he seems to be in charge of culture in Chicago. He’s sore at New York, apparently, for thinking it’s so smart. […] Drop me a line, let me know who’s there13 this year, and thanks for the leaflets — do you have one on narcotics? I’m trying to kick my habit.
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
November 1, 1950
Dear Fr Egan,
[…] Just six years ago, about this time of day, I was being measured for my whites at St Joseph’s Hospital; I had already been shown my room; and I had a great hunger for coffee and cake, which I satisfied at Mother Merrill’s and Mickey’s Diner, alternating so as not to seem an addict. It was the start of an era which closed with matrimony; then there was another era; and now, I think, I am somewhere in the middle of the one after that. […] If there were some way of becoming writer in residence at, say, Belmont, I do think that may be the field for me. I’ll never know, though, this way, deprived of even a Form.
Waugh sent me a signed copy of Helena, “with warm regards,” and I’m grateful for that. Joe Dever messed up the review in The Commonweal. I don’t see why they don’t remove him from the reviewing staff. I think Joe can write some, but he’s no reviewer. His mentor, Fr John Louis Bonn,14 was here some weeks ago, from Boston College — he has a new novel, the Catholic Book Club selection — and I could see where Joe picked up part of his act, the worst part. I met Bonn at Pick’s one night and found him fairly interesting. Then the lecture … it was as rough as anything I’ve ever heard. All he needed was an electric cane and a rubber nose. I mean it was pure ham, and to top it off, he ended on that Fulton Sheen pitch, whispering and groaning about our Lord Jesus Christ in the Tabernacle, which has nothing to do with anything he’d said. Shades of our old retreat master at QCA, Fr Peter Crumbley, OFM. […] Please write.
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
Milwaukee
Washington’s Birthday [February 22, 1951]
Dear Fr Egan,
[…] Suppose you’ve been mulling over the big basketball scandals in New York.15 I hope they don’t dig into things to the point where they discover what really happened to us Little Hawks in the State Tournament in ’35 at Decatur. I don’t know what Dick Keefe got, but I do know that George and I were living mighty high when it was all over. You may remember that we downed the home team, St Theresa, in the first round, and the talk was that I’d be All-State. But in the next round, going against a clumsy but determined St Bede’s five, I fouled out early (so as to be able to go through the lockers in peace), Dick dropped his cup and just wasn’t himself after that, and George complained of an old ailment with him, shin splints. They said we went down fighting, but I wonder what they would’ve said if they could’ve seen us being paid off later in Ott Quintenz’s tavern16 (Ott had been a Hawk himself at one time). I could tell you some tales. All I wanted was to set myself up in business. All for now. Write.
Jim
CHARLES SHATTUCK
Milwaukee
March 30, 1951
Dear Chuck,
[…] I had hopes of a summer near the ocean, I’d sent for a directory of cottages in Maine, but when I got the rejection,17 I knew I’d been kidding myself, thinking I was Irwin Shaw or somebody. It’ll probably be Big Spunk Lake at Avon — leaky roof, outdoor toilet, mosquitoes, the salty breeze off North Dakota. […] Just goes to show heaven is our destination.
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
May 2, 1951
Dear Fr Egan,
Thanks for sending the McManus book and piece about Ireland. McM. is pretty rich for my blood; Betty is reading it. The piece about Ireland is informative but lame in spots — not enough about why the good Irish writers are “anticlerical”—I think it’s just a natural reaction, and I wouldn’t call Frank O’Connor that. Sean O’Faolain gives a depressing picture of Dublin — the Sacred Heart picture in the hallway, all the young men belonging (at one time) to the IRA, their female equivalent to the Legion of Mary — both organizations, he says, bore him. Much moviegoing, as here, among all classes. I mention these things so you’ll think I know about these things even now. I would not expect anything better … and I am not going to Ireland (if I’m going to Ireland) to get material, etc. I’m going for the change, to work on my book about characters over here. So many people make that mistake about me. Rectors and seminaries, I understand, are closed to me because it is believed that I’m looking for material! Incredible but true! You know better. It’s true I’m not above taking away a little, if it’s good, but I never go anywhere to explore. That kills whatever it touches, that spirit, like a conducted tour. […]
I had a letter from Sr Eugene Marie, with an enclosure — your church bulletin. I don’t see how you do it sober. I think you’re growing gage (marihuana) in your back yard, and incidentally that would be an ideal crop, terrain, weather considered, and the church would be a perfect blind. […]
I’m grateful for your invitation and plan to come. Will let you know when. One thing, however: make that discipline tough. I had the impression you were being soft. We move out of here on May 31. Write. Come.
Jim
No baseball for me, second base my spot, but I can no longer make the double play. Legs gone.
At some point around this time, much of the land attached to the house in Avon was taken by eminent domain for the construction of a highway. Though they didn’t especially want to live there, the couple was incensed by the state’s high-handedness. Jim left Marquette with the idea of moving with Betty and the children to Ireland that coming fall. After leaving Milwaukee, he made an extended visit to Father Egan in Beardsley, Minnesota, while Betty and the two girls stayed with the Wahls in their new house on the Mississippi, four miles up the river from St. Cloud.
BETTY POWERS
Beardsley, Minnesota
June 1951
Dear Betty,
Saturday afternoon—3:30. After I left you yesterday, I stopped at the place in Avon (our place). The grass is high. Some trees have been uprooted near the Achman road, which has been widened, and that may be why the trees were leveled. Except that along the old road (the one we used for a driveway) there is one tree cut down and lying partly across that road; an ax was used, and I can’t make anything out of that, any reason for it, I mean. The house itself is the same. Except the storm window on the window near the door is out, several panes broken (it was leaning against the remains of that old icebox, but I moved it), and possibly someone has been snooping around inside, though there are no signs of vandalism, no more than we left, I mean. The place is wet inside and shows some evidence of things like gophers. I didn’t go in, however; all this seen through the window I slid open. I looked for highway department stakes and saw two: one in the old driveway and one just on the house side of the bank that goes down to the old driveway. Not very far in, I thought, but they are very insubstantial-looking stakes, just lathes, and perhaps don’t mean very much. It’s sad, going back there, as you might imagine. But it’s sad because of what we did there, all the work and inconvenience; not sad when one thinks, as I did, that we don’t have to make anything out of it. […] Much love to you.