Ephemera: Ancient Writing Notes
In 1971, I had published no fiction in seven years. My famous literary agency refused to show my novel begun in Nassau and finished in Harrisburg PA. They said the ending was too downbeat. So I fired the agency, concentrated on newspapering, and kept an occasional journal…
The clock says 8:10 p.m. and Wanda has Gunsmoke on Television. Today it rained and my grey overcoat and hat got heavy and sodden so I reflex-bought a $2.10 umbrella with one of those switchblade openers. I got another freelance check from The National Catholic Reporter, $95. Today is Wednesday, 9:10 p.m. I was interrupted by the phone Monday before I could write. I don’t even remember who was on the phone.
Monday I spent in the state law library researching federal code on federal grand juries. I checked out volume one of federal rules of criminal procedure, Wright ( A law professor at the University of Texas) to continue my studies. Wanda has gone to sulk because I was taking excerpts from the Wright edition to use in my introduction to the magazine section.
The law library is in a huge grey stone building behind the capitol, in the wing opposite the state library Benjamin Franklin began in the fledgling days of the Republic. It is somewhat more comprehensive than the Nassau Public Library in the old round jail building behind the Crown Royal Post Office in Bank Lane.
Yesterday Cal Turner and I went to Baltimore working on the proposed magazine section about the Harrisburg Six. After staying in a third-floor rectory parlor for close to three and a half hours interviewing Father Joseph Reese Wenderoth, 35, one of the kidnap-bombing conspiracy defendants, Cal and I were two hours past our usual quitting time when we got clear of the Jones Fall Expressway rush hour and pointed the Barracuda north on Interstate 83. We spent the early part of the day in “the power tower” where Lawrence Cardinal Sheehan, 73, prince of the Roman Catholic Church, dispenses the word among the faithful of the oldest see in the United States.
We were with Jim Shaneman, “the eminence’s” P.R. guy, a former Patriot reporter who opened the Harrisburg Catholic Witness and is now helping “the eminence” (his term) formulate a news-bureau concept in the face of what he calls a dying national Roman Catholic press, “but still formidable.”
Everything is formidable about the Roman Catholic Church to Jim Shaneman, a basically nice guy and good reporter who would paint Torquemada as an eccentric of lovable foibles. He is in a hot seat, because the Maryland R.C.s are having none of that Anthony Quinn playing the Pope business that Sheehan has pulled, and a battle is shaping. Sheehan steps down in two years — a young fellow like that. J. Edgar Hoover has two years on him and appears pulling away fast.
Anyway, I dropped Cal off in LeMoyne, and I came in late today. I got home late, slept until the wee hours, then got up, ate two peanut butter sandwiches, and perused our Baltimore swag: clips and the Wenderoth notes. There was some midwifish bickering in the news room when Lionel said Doran (Executive Editor) had complained about the desk men leaving early. Right away that loudmouth Brennan was braying about these goddamn reporters. I do not believe a reporter gives a shit what a desk man’s hours are, but the reverse apparently is not true. Ron Wilson informs me that Cal’s and my detached status has created resentment. Penniwell because he is a pig; Weirich (city editor) because he thought the paper could not do anything independent of him, went to Israel on that freebie junket — and came home to find out that we could.
Wilson says Weirich resented that we went to Baltimore without asking and that I came in late without asking. He said further I would not be called on it because I was protected “by the gods” and my friend in high places, Seymour. These are things he said.
I spent the day with Cal’s seven-take color piece, trying to meld in the Wenderoth quotes without ruining his stuff and I probably failed. But I got out of it a phenomenal 20-take story I read to Wanda before she got the sulks and she pronounced it very good. I am less enchanted by my color piece on the Lewisburg police chief than I was when I first read it after I was finished.
And I never did get the progression into the Wenderoth piece I wanted of internal struggle, inter-parish clash, city-agency confrontation, open federal defiance in the draft board raids, then church discipline — the stripping of a parish — then the dead time during which the government alleges the plotting went on — and finally the FBI knock on the door, the chains, the ride to Harrisburg, the jail, and after bail and arraignment back to Baltimore and reassignment. That twenty-take effort was the strongest I’ve tried in a while, and I went through it without even pausing.
I got a nice postcard today from the gal Boyd Douglas (FBI informant) allegedly told he had cancer, informing me of a session at the school Sunday with some of the defendants. And called Pat Rom to clear Cal for his trip up with a photographer so she wouldn’t think he was an ingratiating FBI agent pulling a fast one. I think the thought had crossed her mind the way she was quick to jump in that she had never read any of his stuff. Now as I write this my pipe goes dead and Junkanoo the Cat climbs out from the chair she’s been sleeping in under the table to yawn fangily at me and accept some ear and whisker work, and then head for the food dish.
It was pleasant to go work in Baltimore for a day. The most singular sight — superlatives again — was a pair of mounted policemen in great cloaks sitting McClelland saddles, holding their big mounts in the advantaged angle of an alley just off an intersection, residual wind flipping their cloaks, their mounts stirring restively. Something out of MGM, said Cal. Waiting to ambush the intersection, I said. You should see ’em on weekends said Jim Shaneman, that’s when the hippies are in town, the hippies come from all over…
And the black boy with the pony cart of tomatoes and bananas, waiting for a big blue Buick to vacate a parking space before shooing the pony into it. And of course the interminable row houses Wanda and I first saw the weekend we went down because our septic tank backed up. We went and watched the Orioles trounce the Senators on their way to the pennant, with homers by Brooks Robinson and Boog Powell, Robinson’s being his 3,000th career hit.
That is almost an hour of private writing and the sparks of creation have not struck. The fiction will have to wait again, and so the bated world. The pump has got to be primed more that this to strike the spark, for an all-wet metaphor to end this sorry exercise in Crestview Manor, Hummelstown PA….
