Thursday, February 10, 2011

Lost In Akron

I was gone all day yesterday. If you peaked in the window you’d say I'm a pathological liar though because there I was from eight-thirty in the morning to two-thirty in the afternoon sitting on the family room floor surrounded by three piles of sorted letters. Somehow I fell into a black hole and wound up in 1911 Akron right at the beginning of a long distance romance. As you know, I love ephemera, so finding a heap of letters all addressed to the same woman from Covington, Ohio penned by a man who’d left rural Covington to find work in the manufacturing cities of Barberton and Akron was like following bread crumbs in a fairy tale. The letters begin in April 1911 and abruptly stop in January, 1913, but do reach a satisfying conclusion nonetheless. I’d bought the flat because of a bunch of other items, not realizing that the scattered letters combine to tell the story of a woman named Mary and a man named Bill, two ordinary people starring in their own private drama

First I sorted the letters into piles by year, and then by month, and finally date, so that in the unlikely event that a story hid in there it would unfurl chronologically. Since Bill wrote all the letters we only have his side of the tale, but he references things Mary said and did and records his impressions of her – “I think a precise person (which I'm not) suits you best as you are of a poetical turn of mind. ” Mary also seems to be of an actively dating turn of mind when the story begins, though she also nursing a broken heart over a mutual friend named George who dumped her for a woman in Michigan he was planning to marry soon. And poor Bill had past relationship problems of his own due to the unfortunate fact that he had given his pin to an ex-girlfriend named Lillian who in return had given him her ring. The problem was Bill lost the ring in Pittsburgh and now Lillian was spitting the blue fire of a blow torch in his direction. So he wrote to ask Mary if she’d explain to Lillian that he didn’t do it on purpose and would give her an even nicer ring if she’d accept it. Mary played go-between, Lillian agreed, and finally sent him back his pin along with “a sassy letter” which made him not care if he ever laid eyes on her again

At this stage Bill’s salutation never wavered. Letter after letter began “Dear Friend.” At first he lived in Barberton across the street from a lake (likely Lake Anna), which was great because hundreds of people “bathed” in the summer evenings and on Sundays he could do what he loved best – drift along the silent, dark water in a canoe under a canopy of Van Gogh stars. Later, when he moved to Akron for a job at a boiler works, he took to the canal, but had to be careful because the launches zipped by so fast they raised the canoe straight up into the air. Bill loved gazing at the stars, sleeping late, reading the Saturday Evening Post, and going to plays, though he thought Akron had “gone dippy” over vaudeville and never got any decent shows. Bill mentioned several times that he had no intention of ever getting married, but so did Mary, even though she admitted she had a “steady.” But steady, schmeady – a boyfriend never stopped her from meeting Bill from time to time in Piqua where she moved to take a job in a law office.

In addition to the relationship’s dramas and traumas, scattered about the pages of Bill’s letters are historical references of note. He mentions that Akron offered men great opportunities in the tire building trade where they could earn a wage of $5 to $6 a day, but, sadly, admits that it’s not for him because it’s “a dirty, unhealthy business and the smell of crude rubber is the most offensive smell in the world.” Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but I did grow up in south Akron not far from the Goodrich plant and the old joke was to take a deep breath and say, “Ahhhhhh! Good, rich air!” Bill also makes casual mention of an auto tooling down East Market Street past his rooming house (he lived close enough to see the Goodyear plant) chiming out the song “How Dry I Am.” I’m not sure how it did that, (did they have car radios then? I doubt it), but he thought the car probably came from Canton because Canton, Ohio was a dry town.

To add to the intrigue, mixed in with Bill’s letters are a couple from other men addressed to Mary. One of these Romeos had just met her (in 1910 -- see photo) and was finding it very hard to keep a lid on his cauldron of roiling emotions. I’m guessing though that Roger, the newspaper reporter, was the steady boyfriend. He definitely caught my interest anyway, probably because in an earlier incarnation I shared his profession. Roger covered the police beat for the most conservative newspaper in Columbus and was actually based AT the police station where he had a desk, a typewriter, and a phone. He’d type out his stories, which had to be disappointingly short, and send them over to the paper by messenger. Roger fought boredom with the one-two punch of Mohammed Ali in his prime, constantly looking for ways to stay awake and snag a big byline. He figured he could wage the battle and still slip in 10 to 12 hours of coursework at OSU while he looked around for a better gig. But I digress here. The story, after all, is about Bill and Mary. Roger is only a bit player.

Bill was a slight man, weighing only 145 pounds, but he figured he’d get pretty fat once he had a real apartment instead of a room and could cook for himself, or maybe sample some of Mary’s bread and pies. He’d “never loved a girl sincerely, he admitted, and had had only a string of relationships “where a guy goes with a girl for companionship.” (Yeah sure, Bill – companionship). What Mary thought about this is lost to time, but one thing is clear – old Bill, like generations of men before and after him, sent out mixed signals. In one letter he chides her for thinking about the other guy all the time and never him and tells her he would like a thousand kisses, only to then say it’s a joke and draws a picture of candy. Then when she womans up and tells him he’s the ONE, what does he do but whirl like a dervish and nearly blow the whole thing!

Fascinating, isn’t it, how the dance of love never changes. Advance, retreat, cha-cha, tango – on and on it goes in dips and spins through time. This thread of human longing and folly is the warp and weft of our humanity. The voices of the past, even those --maybe especially those -- of ordinary people beg us to listen. So we’ll pick up tomorrow -- I PROMISE! --with the rest of the Saga of Mary and Bill. I also promise a couple surprises.

2 comments:

Cheryl said...

I love this whole drama and realize that email and text messages will never be found and read in the same way as these letters in the hand of the writer. As a person who rarely writes anything anymore if I can figure out how to do it electronically I almost feel ashamed.

tess said...

Oh, me too, Cheryl. What a loss it will be to future generations not to have our letters and diaries. The thing that amazes me is that no one seems concerned about it either!!!!!