Franny
figured out, as best I could. Now, who in the hell is my father?
Easy
enough—google him. Of course, you do have to add Wisconsin to the search list,
because otherwise you get the REAL (to everybody except us) John Newhouse, also
a writer.
And
then, of course, you have to disregard LinkedIn, which will tell you about John
Newhouse, Esq. Some sort of lawyer in New York….
(Come
on, Johnny—who in the hell is an esquire in this family!)
Well,
you come to page three, or screen three, or whatever it is, and then you get to
the John Newhouse of the chase—that would be Jack. The father…
…I
don’t know.
It
appears that he left some stuff he wrote for Lee newspapers to the University
of Montana. I remembered that—Eric was out there, at the time of the donation,
and was a go-between (though I suppose if Johnny can be an esquire, Rick could
be a liaison…) So you click on that—not the stuff, but the google link—and then
you read about him.
Written
in 2010, it’s mostly accurate. Sure, they get the date of death wrong
(officially it’s May 18, 1993—I suspect it was May 17, 1993) but that’s hardly
surprising. Actually, nobody is quite sure when he was born, either. It had
been celebrated—as I recall—on the 20th of April for years. But in
his fifties, Jack discovered that his mother, years before, and gone to the
County Clerk and filed an amendment, stating he was born on the 21st. And she was dead…
Oh,
and never told him.
Well,
it’s a round-about way of knowing your father. Easier it was to call up Dave.
That’s Dave Nelson, a guy I
don’t know. But Dave was an obliging sort, and sent me a picture.
And readers of this blog will know—that’s Link!
“The old boy himself,” as Dave called him.
But oddly enough, it may also be Jack. Because I peered
at the photo, and thought, “geez, I bet Jack took that….”
And that started me off on a hunt through the
Wisconsin State Historical Society. Turns out there are over three hundred
images—most of which I’ve never seen.
Well, I knew that story, too. They’d been down at the
State Journal all those years when Jack worked there, and then traveled home—in
a cardboard box—when he retired. Then, when they moved to the Acres, Jack had
to get rid of ‘em—no room. So he dumped them on the State Historical Society.
(Parenthetically—although I probably can’t use that
word and enclose it in parentheses—an old lover asked me, seconds after
learning my name for the first time, if I wasn’t John Newhouse’s son. “Yes,” I
said, tired of again being John’s son, especially with a guy I had just had sex
with. But it turned out that Gary knew Jack not from the Journal, or from
meeting him, but from the collection….)
So there I was yesterday, wondering—is that Jack who
took the photo of Link? Sure looks like it.
And what about Link? What the hell was he doing out
there, shooting the damn squirrels?
Well, Dave had an answer for that.
“He was probably manic depressive,” he said. “At least
that’s what his son thinks….”
The son being Dave’s link to the…Link family….
(sorry!)
Well, that makes sense. Some of that conduct—one thinks
of the morning visits and the Hershey bars—was off the mark behaviorally. But
what a wonderful face—craggy and individual and fearless. A guy with a gun. A
man with a mission.
And looking at the photo, one sees the bird feeder in
the background. Was that old bastard luring the squirrels to their
death? Did he prefer birds to squirrels? Too damn cheap to give some bird seed
to what were (are) rodents? And we know how Link felt about them!
And am I the only one who feels—maybe—that it’s a
shame, our current view of mania? I’ve almost been there, you know, but got the
hell away before I plunged—or was plunged—into it. It’s living life on the lip
of the volcano—an image from Robertson Davies—that moment before the plunge.
And Link—was that where he was? Always a step from
madness, and sometimes over it and in it?
And Jack, observing, recording—and sending me a picture
through the decades….
…and through a stranger.
The letters from Link would arrive—“John Newhouse, a
scribe” they would be headed. The air temperature and atmospheric pressure
would be stated. “Karl Paul Link, rattor,” they would conclude.
They came for years, they stopped. Both guys are dead….
And oddly fragrant.
