I lived mostly in California from 1967 through 1975, which meant I got letters from home. Reading them later, my main impression is how many different things my folks found interesting--politics, architecture, photography, theater, horse racing--and what an avid eavesdropper Murray was. I have inherited his pleasure in the overheard snippet of talk.
The election campaign here is moving into the final days
with everybody sore at everybody: Slim [Rasmussen] at the
Manager, the press, the old council, the federal government, the Puget Sound
Governmental Conference and targets of opportunity; the Manager at Slim, at
those who don't support the Council Manager form enough, at the guys who write
the ads for the Trib, and at the crooks for being overactive at a time when the
Good Guys are campaigning on their accomplishments in cleaning up the town. I
find Slim a classic demagogue and the council members too couth to give him
real battle. I can't guess at all how the voting will go on Tuesday night. (The
station hasn't asked me to broadcast the results.)
Anchorage was 70,000 when we saw it [in 1965] and claims 170,000 now.
It's changing but the change is all in the same old direction. It's an ugly
smarmy, grasping place, radiating ineptness, set apart and festering in the
austere distances of Alaska. The scenery really is grand: even mud flats are
beautiful if they approach being endless. The view from the Top of the World as
Turnagain Arm goes from blue to gold to pewter to black makes the International
Modern forgivable. But the only really pleasant buildings downtown are out by
the point in the shadow of the henshitbrown Captain Cook. One white clapboard
two-story has a Historic Marker plaque; it was built in 1915. (I'll get a
plaque next) and it's the oldest building in town. ...
I was up to talk to the Alaska Press Women about the Hegg
photos. I was the banquet speaker at the end of a two day meeting devoted to
communicating thru photographs. It was bit of a botch. The woman who had
arranged the session came down with whooping heaves, an efficient harridan from
Valdez took over with atrocious efficiency and kept everything going ein, zwei,
drei up until the banquet at which she was too drunk to present the awards,
turning that function over to a blue-haired lady who was too drunk to know that
she was too drunk to present the awards. If giving somebody the wrong scroll is
good material for repetitive gag comedy, this was classic.
E. A. Hegg, a Bellingham-based photographer, chronicled the Yukon gold rush. "One Man's Gold Rush," Murray's book about him and his work, was published in 1968.
[Nov. 5, 1967]
Sunday
Dear daughter-type...
Sorry I missed your phone call on Thursday, though the big
widge gave me the good reports, and I trust filled you in on the way things are
going here. The snow started just as we got home from the weekend in Vancouver;
the first flakes showing up in the Barnard Cadillac headlights as we were going
through Seattle and the snow just starting to be visible as we came into our
driveway. It was deep and beautiful and it lasted three days. We didn't have a
chance to enjoy it, though, because Rosa had a cold and maybe the flu for the
whole week, while I was running some kind of low grade virus and though on my
feet had no extra energy at all.
 | ||
| A. L. "Slim" Rasmussen. |
Rosa says she told you about taking Lyla rpt Laila to the
psychedelic play at the Off Center last week. [Laila Pearne was the widow of
Murray's half-brother Harrison.] The play was a bit embarrassing even for
graduates of Daniel-Ostransky Academy [Howard Daniel and LeRoy Ostransky were
among Murray and Rosa's most profane friends.] It was like an inexpert version
of Homecoming, with a light show thrown in; and attending it with Laila was
something like taking Aunt Millie to a brothel. [The production was Christopher, by UW Drama graduate
student Clarence Morley. It was billed as the world's first psychedelic play.]
The only things she asked about on the way home, though, was why the couple had
made love under an American flag in the closing scene...
Vancouver was fine. We
had tea at the Bon Ton, a bacon and mushroom sandwich at Clancy's (which has
changed names again but not personnel), a bottle of Canadian whiskey at our
rooms at the Georgian Towers, a dinner at the roof-restaurant ... and a fine
time at the zoo, though we couldn't see Skana [the orca who inspired the
creation of Greenpeace] from underwater this time since she put her head thru the window last
week and was cut up a bit and the pool level is not being kept low while
unbreakable glass is installed -- and high time, I'd say. From above she looked
fine, and smiled when fed. The Humuhumu apaapa nuanua went swimming by; the
polar bears were wrestling each other happily and breathing clouds; the
hornbills hopped and gave us the separate eye; the penguins looked pleased with
themselves, and one wagged a literally frozen fanny at us, making the icicles
shatter. ...
We have a big week coming up. Tomorrow (Monday) there is a
rally of [Eugene] McCarthy types at the library. Sally Goldmark is to speak. Tuesday,
beside the election, there is a talk at PLU by Agnes de Mille (I'll try to get
your book autographed). Wednesday night the Seattle Rep opens THE FATHERS by
Strindberg with Pauline [Flanagan] in the leading role. Thursday the University
of Washington is putting on Robert Penn Warren's Brother to Dragons (it's about
a crisis in Jefferson's career) and there is earlier a Stanford Mothers'
program that Rosa will attend if not teaching. Friday, the Off Center is
offering three one-actors including Kraft's Last Tape by Beckett. Saturday
there's a party at Ostranskys to celebrate their new Danish table. Sunday,
thank god, is blank; but there may be a good movie available.
...
Love,
father-type
Slim Rassmussen (his twin brother was known as "Fat" Rasmussen) won in a landslide,
unseating Harold Tollefson and beginning one of the weirder periods in twentieth-century Tacoma
government
Sunday
en pleine
aire
near SeaTac
(May 1975?)
Darling daughter
 |
| Turnagain Arm. Courtesy of Wikipedia |
There was a lot of charm to it though. One of the Eskimo
women who skinned seals in Fairbanks got two awards for "special
feature" writing. She said she was "walking on feathers."
Two young --(sort of)--women who make up 2/3rds of the
editorial staff of the Kodiak paper won twelve awards between them, and hope it
will impress their boss who is under pressure because they've been quoting
police blotter reports directly and the mayor thinks it makes the city look
silly. (I said "sort of" young because one has an 11 year old son.
She is very tall and serious as Buster Keaton.) They both feel overworked,
underpaid and uncertain how they could be so lucky. But they'd like a year in a
big city.
Of the Anchorage people the most interesting was a skinny
blonde photographer named Nancy Simmerman who has sailed her own ketch up from
California, and specializes in wilderness scenes. Her feeling for rock and
flower textures approaches Johsel's. She was able to hold my attention for an
hour while talking about light angles; it helped that she doesn't use filters,
and never mentioned shutter speed. She kept saying underexpose for warmth.
...
I find myself turning out copy easily and quickly about the
Puget Sound area and hope to have a finished ms on the southern sound region
ready for the Press by the start of fall semester. It would be a sort of south
forty version of Skid Road: what happened downstream from Seattle. I hope I can
finish it before my confidence wavers.
...
I saw a rather corny documentary that recreates Athabascan
legends. One scene shows man and woman rising and taking form from boiling,
seething mud. It was a low budget production and I asked how they could afford
such elaborate effects. He said it was easy. They made man and woman out of
wax, then photographed them under heat till they became puddles and played
creation backwards. Maybe that's how the Voice of America should do programs on
Vietnam: from Vietnamization thru Americanization to peasant revolution.
---------
One good thing about writing a letter on the plane is that I
don't have to think about the mound of clippings, xerox stuff, and other
detritus on the coffee table awaiting forwarding. Things like Stanford's offer
of good tickets for WASH-STAN, or USC-STAN, USC being a dollar cheaper, Odd
pictures of colts. Winning pictures of Foolish Pleasure. Quotes from Bill
Russell: "That man Gray wouldn't walk around a bear." Sad clips from
Yugoslavia. Reviews on Erika Jong. Clips from Emmett [Watson]. Also one from
Denny [MacGougan]: The chief orphan from Vietnam is seeking to lease Peron's
mansion from the Argentine government. He wants to see if Thieu can live as
cheaply as Juan. ...
Things at school have worked out so that I shall teach a
Tacoma history class as well as NW. It will really be an extension of PNW into
the 20th Century: public power, the progressive movement, civic reform
movements. Where did we go wrong?
Back to Anchorage: while waiting for the airport bus in the
lobby I heard two Rasmussen looking types with wedding bands on their fat
little fingers arguing in Dutch about petrol and dollars--the only words I
understood. Two Eskimo kids, 7 and/or 8, brother/sister maybe, were arguing
about food. "Yeah, you say tastes like banana but you never tasted no
banana, not never." A black in pork pie and shades came in to announce to
nobody in particular, "Just flew in from Valdez. Hot enough over there to
brown my ass." Mothers, all in pastels, some carrying plastic iris, others
real carnations paraded past to the Glorious Mothers Day Brunch.
...
Buckle your seat belts
We are about to attempt to land,
Murray
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