19. “This is my brother Lyndon.” Clara’s younger brother Lyndon Tosch Gleason was equally literary and best known for his Fork Creek Collection, (Redding, California: Di Prisco Press, 1955), taking as its inspiration, Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River Anthology. The work, originally mistaken for parody, was, in fact, a sincere effort to tell the encapsulated stories of the inmates of a large state institution for the intellectually challenged. Exhibiting the cruel insensitivity of its day, the asylum was officially known as the Illinois State Institution for Imbeciles, Idiots, Cretins, and Morons, and more informally as “Dummy House.” The book sold few copies, for it was nearly unreadable. An example follows:
Mickey Spenders
I got porridge! Yum. Mumyum. Porridge!
I like porridge. Sugar it. Sugar it. Yum.
More more porridge!
Timmy!
Hey Timmy, get porridge!
Thatzit.
Thatzit.
Now Timmy got porridge!
In the mouth, Timmy! In the mouth!
Uh oh.
Timmy got porridge hair.
Yee yee yee yee.
Hey, hey, hey, hey!
Hug me.
20. On April 20, 193 °Clara and I were married by a justice of the peace in Reno, Nevada. Jonathan Blashette to Andrew Bloor, AnB.
21. “So, you’re finally tying the knot at the boyish age of forty-two!” Bloor knew that he would not approve of Clara when they finally met. His intuition was confirmed on a visit to New York two months later. Bloor wrote in his journal that “as suspected, I found her to be totally lacking in charm and grace,” and “a regular foghorn with hips.” Still, it doesn’t appear that he ever revealed his true feelings to Jonathan, apparently aware that when the relationship finally soured (as Bloor was sure it inevitably would) he would not wish to be among those dancing the “I-told-you-so shuffle”—a dance which, Bloor noted, is never flattering and often “puts one at risk of being removed from the dance floor altogether.” Bloor’s ostensible (but privately grudging) approval of Jonathan’s wife seemed, however, to endear Jonathan to his mentor all the more, the two growing even closer, their correspondence much more frequent and illuminating of their emotional lives during this period. Andrew Bloor to Jonathan Blashette, 27 April1930, JBP.
22. Jonathan kept his Greenwich Village brownstone as a pied-à-terre. It was an ideal arrangement. The old farm house in Wallywaycong, New Jersey, was large enough to hold Clara, her family and hangers-on and all her creatures great and small. The house in the city served as the perfect “get-away” when Jonathan needed a quiet break from the “Clarathrong.”
23. “What do I do with my arboreal stepson?” Jonathan’s Diary, 18 July1930. Granted, it seemed that half the boys in North America were going for the national tree-sitting record in 1930, but fourteen-year-old Hunter’s choice of Wallywaycong’s venerated Founder’s Oak, which stood on the front lawn of the county courthouse, was a controversial choice. Even when following the crazes of the day, Jonathan’s stepson had a taste for rebellion that placed him in a category by himself. Climbing the oak may have looked to some like a simple act of youthful mischief, but to others it represented a disturbing offensive against tradition and authority.
I have found wildly conflicting accounts of the events surrounding town historian Fitzhugh Dowdy’s hospitalization for nervous exhaustion on the day that Hunter was finally “de-treed.” I am more inclined to believe Dowdy’s own — albeit heavily embroidered — account, passed down to us through his dairy (Dowdy Family Papers). If nothing else, the entries pertaining to the tree-sitting episode shed some light on the man’s fragile mental state at the time.
Saturday, July 19, 1930. I rise and hurry to the courthouse to find that the monkey is still there — still ensconced in that tree, desecrating it by his very presence, with the three-legged monkey stepfather doing nothing whatsoever to remove the child. Nor do any of the county commissioners seem alarmed by his presence. Damn them all. No tree — but especially this, the most cherished in our city — deserves such a fouling. I have a dunker and coffee while glowering up at the intruder. The dunker and coffee are too much for my weak constitution. As I stand retching without product, I watch the boy through rage-filled eyes. Between undulating body heaves I rail and remonstrate and command the vile man-cub through the most easily decipherable gesticulation to remove himself. Yet he does not. Moreover, he taunts me, audaciously asking me with mischievous gloat to catch the bag containing his evacuants, because his chum Mikey has yet to arrive to cart the foul-smelling effluents off. I find that I am having trouble standing erect from the enormity of it all, and I crumple beneath the tree and weep for its spoiled beauty and I weep for the rich history it represents that the boy has besmirched and I pinch my nose from the stench of the bagged evacuants that the boy dangles with most cruel malice over my exposed head. It is the darkest morning I can ever remember with the exception of that in which Poppy threw me into the river with all the kittens I had sought to save.
Sunday, July 20, 1930. I rise and rush with a tripping, stumbling gait to the Founder’s Oak only to find that the devil boy is still there, with father nowhere in sight and no one but me exercising any concern whatsoever for all that the beautiful tree represents. The sheer weight of this most horrible realization is simply too much for me. Suddenly the world darkens and recedes and I feel my whole body slipping into the abyss of unconsciousness. When I awake I am in a hospital bed taking an injection in the buttocks by a nurse who says it will calm me. Soon I feel a soft solace enfolding me. Shortly thereafter I am visited by Mr. Blashette who assures me the boy will be down by the end of the day. And I rejoice with tears and strange hula-like movement of the arms which I seem to do spontaneously and to my intense mortification.
24. Clara’s literary circle continued to expand. Figel, research notes from Clara! The Musical. A frequent visitor with adjunct status was poet Davy Kreis who several years later, inspired by the free verse epic Paterson by William Carlos Williams, wrote the three-volume nearly unreadable Bayonne. It received the 1949 Mrs. Delwood Dandle Poetaster Prize. I sought a copy of the encyclopedia-length poem to excerpt, but was unsuccessful. The New York Public Library’s Rare Books Division reportedly had a set in the early 1950s. It vanished at some point during the intervening years. It is hard to know the exact date of its disappearance, since it was never requested. Librarian John Rathe remembers that the volumes had at one point been used as improvised stepladder to assist diminutive researchers in reaching the division’s water fountain.
A side note: Mrs. Delwood Dandle is considered by some to be the world’s worst published poet. It has been surmised that her only book of poems was given a limited printing by Caven-Mulgrove Publishing to satisfy publisher Brennan Mulgrove’s gambling debts. Delwood (also known as “Squeaks”), a loan shark of the Damon Runyon school, worked out a deal to prevent Mulgrove, with his well-documented weakness for long shots at Belmont, from getting his legs broken.