Love Letters
I wonder how much someone would pay for any of my old love letters? If you haven't
heard, a techno-tycoon from Intel paid $157,000.00 for some old love letters from
hermit author J.D. Salinger to a former girlfriend some 27 years ago. She reportedly
sold the letters to pay for her kids' colleges. To kill what could have been a great story,
the Intel guy is just going to return them to the JayDee Man (as he likes me to call
him).
The scenario makes for a pretty crazy story. It was 1972 and J.D. Salinger was 53.
After reading a story written by the girl in question, an 18 year old Joyce Maynard,
he started writing her love letters. She quit college and they moved in together
for a short period of time, but love didn't last.
I have admired a people from afar during my single life and even wrote a few letters
of contact. I once was at a large flea market when I lived in Macon and saw a very
cute, blond-headed girl selling knick knacks off the back of a pickup truck. I wrote
her a note and took it back but she was gone. So I left it fixed to the mirror on the
truck. A few days later I got a phone call. To her credit, I am pretty sure I wrote
something witty enough that few women could have resisted calling. She told me her
name, Sara.
So, we talked on the phone a few times and she sounded as delightful as she had looked.
After about a week of talking, and I'm sure, lots more wit, we decide to go out.
I go to her house to pick her up. A close-to-middle-age lady comes to the door and
I say, "Is Sara here?" She answers, "I'm Sara."
This was odd.
Come to find out, the letter I left for a much younger, blonder girl had been found
by her older sister. Ten years older than me even. I would have paid money right
then to have THAT letter back.
Another time, still in Macon, (these were my lonely, depression years circa, 1983)
I was washing clothes at a laundromat. These were the Lycra-Spandex days and there
was a lady there wearing shorts and a tight lycra spandex top. It had a big star
right in the middle. I was down to my last bit of clothes and was wearing some striped running
shorts and a 3 button cardigan sweater with no shirt under it. I was leaving and
noticed that this very cute, athletic girl had slipped out, leaving her laundry basket
all free, just begging for me to leave a note.
I went back to my car and scribbled a note that started, "Dear Star..." The middle
section I do not recall but I am sure it was something witty. Then I closed with
my phone number and signed it, "Stripes."
I am a late night person and not much of a morning glory, and this is integral to
the rest of this story. A few days later my phones rings at about 6 a.m. Easily hours
before I normally rise, I pick up the phone grumpily say things that were not all
too witty. I hear a timid voice on the other end say, "Is Spike there?" I basically yell
at her and say, "NO! and please don't call again." I fall directly back into my pillow
in hopes of dreaming about the cute laundromat lass. Then I raise my head and realize. She was asking for "Stripes!!" not Spike. "Stripes!!" Did she call back? Maybe a
future discovery of Billy Murphy love letters will only tell.
Billy Murphy -- 7/2/99