This story begins with the Portland Arts & Lectures, which staged its first lecture in the fall of 1984. Julie Mancini was nice enough to let me sneak in once in a while. I had completely forgotten this one time. I usually got two free tickets and backstage passes for every event I covered. Just in case I could land a date. Failing that, there was always Barker Ajax. From October 25, 1989. – JDW
Following a pre-function at Hung Far Low, we moved to the Schnitz for the season opener of Portland’s Arts & Lectures series. “This place is full,” Julie Mancini says. The Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, where it routinely sold out the 2,700 seats.
We’ve all come to hear John McPhee, a man who’s five-foot-seven tall, a journalist who’s a giant.
Dark hair balding, bespectacled, white shirt open at the collar, unstructured black jacket, his beard mostly gray. McPhee is best known as a contributing editor at the New Yorker. And for some twenty (20) books written in the last century, books like Oranges, more than you ever wanted to know about a certain citrus fruit, and A Sense Of Where You Are, an examination of Bill Bradley’s excellence in collegiate basketball.
McPhee’s talent is so great he can actually write a captivating tale about a subject one might normally not find interesting.
He’s done it more than once.
Tonight, McPhee is reading from Rising From The Flames. (Typically, A&L performances are not readings, but rather an artist exploring his art and our world.) He’s accompanied by his wife, Yolanda, who will speak as Ethel Waxhan Love, the work’s major figure.
Love was a pioneer schoolmarm who became the wife of a Wyoming rancher when that was a very tough job. Tough times and tough guys, that was her life. And as hundreds sat in that ornate theater, Mr. and Mrs. McPhee – and the written word spoken – made those times, that life, come alive.
I could almost hear the sheep bleating as they starved frozen in a winter’s night.
Heading home, we stopped at a neighborhood saloon to wash down the trail dust. We sat at the end of the bar, me next to a plaid shirt nursing a beer. He looked like he should’ve switched to coffee long ago. A friendly guy, his eyes a little blearly, he chooses my nose as a focal point.
“What do you do for a living?,” he asks.
“I’m a writer.”
“I respect that. I’m a merchant marine.”
“I respect that.”
“If we don’t have people like you,” he declares, “we don’t have a United States of America.”
Barker leaned over and whispered in my left ear. “I think he thinks you said you’re a waiter.”
His name was Mike and his ship was in town for thirty (30) days for repairs, and he worked in the engine room reading gauges and fixing pipes. He seemed to think writing was some celestial gift bestowed upon a Chosen Few.
He’d never heard of McPhee. Mike thought I should sign on with a ship and tell the merchant marine’s story from the inside.
McPhee’s already done that, I said, only he hasn’t written the book yet.
Mike didn’t want to hear about McPhee. Mike wanted to make his point.
“Writers let the people know what’s going on. That’s what makes this country great. If we do something stupid, I don’t care what it is, the people have to know. The only way we’re going to know is if it’s in the paper. I’m serious, man. The day that somebody controls the truth is the day we’re looking at the end. We just have to have freedom of the press forever and ever. That’s all there is to it. I believe in my country. I don’t take it for granted.”
“Now, I’m positive,” Barker said, “he definitely thinks you’re a waiter.”
The conversation died after that – if you can just imagine – and shortly we headed for the door.
“Hey, writer!” Mike had more to say.
“If I could scrape the flesh off my bones, that’s how much I mean it, man.”
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/program/episodes/eight/psilikeyou.htm
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/program/episodes/eight/iwillnever.htm