8. “Her name is Charette. Jonny, I actually think she’s the one.” Harlan Davison to Jonathan Blashette, 14 May 1958.
9. “Sorry. My mistake. She isn’t the one.” Harlan Davison to Jonathan Blashette, 15 May 1958.
10. Charette was a cruel mother. According to Griswold Lanham’s article “Harlan Davison” in Entrepreneurial History (13, 1990, 25–42), Davison’s girlfriend purchased a Betsy McCall doll for her daughter’s birthday in June 1958, then refused to buy it clothes. “Betsy lives in a nudist colony,” Charette told Davison in a voice that reminded him of an overly peckish Eve Arden, “and by the way, it ain’t really none of your beeswax.”
Feeling sorry for young Vicki, Davison bought a wardrobe for the doll himself and delivered it to the little girl at her grammar school. Vicki’s second-grade teacher, a Miss Wingfield, thinking the clothes were for Vicki, chastised Davison in front of the class for not knowing the girl’s size. Vicki came to the defense of Davison, whom she had begun to fantasize as war hero, fireman, and/or possibly even her birth father. Having forgotten the name of the naked birthday doll, she pretended that the clothes were, indeed, intended for her. When she attempted to pull one of the little dresses over her head; it became snagged about the forehead. “I’ve made a real mess of things here,” Davison is reported to have apologized. “Come on, Vicki. Let’s go get some ice cream.” With avuncular tenderness, Davison took the little girl by the hand and guided her to the door, respecting the fact that the Betsy McCall dress draping her head partially obscured her vision. The result was a bit of stumbling that to some of the children resembled a funny dance. Davison and Vicki were blocked at the door by Miss Wingfield, who proceeded to blow her recess whistle painfully close to Davison’s left ear. Amidst a wash of playground-minded elementary school children flooding out of their respective classrooms and into the hallways, followed by angry teachers glaring at Wingfield, harumphing, and tapping their watches, Harlan was escorted to the principal’s office by two officious safety patrol boys. He was held there until police arrived to book him for attempted kidnapping. In the confusion Vicki disappeared and was later found alone, seated on the down end of a stationary teeter-totter, clutching tightly to her chest the doll clothes Davison had given her and singing softly and wistfully a song she had made up about ponies.
Eleven years passed before Davison saw Vicki again. Now a young woman, she visited him at his home in Levittown during spring break from her studies as sophomore at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “You’re the closest thing to a father, war hero and/or fireman I’ve ever known,” she confessed, kissing the old man affectionately on the cheek. “By the way, I’m so sorry I’m late. I had trouble finding the house.” Then she volunteered to rake up all the leaves in his yard. Touched by her offer and even more so by the visit itself, he replied, “You didn’t come all this way just to rake my leaves. But if you like…maybe you could clip the hedge.” Together Davison and Vicki spent the afternoon doing yard work and rekindling a friendship.
The two stayed in touch for the remainder of Davison’s life. Although he had never gotten himself a wife, Harlan Davison had, in a way, found himself a daughter.
11. “I Took a Spill.” Jonathan Blashette to Andrew Bloor, 4 February 1959. An excerpt from the letter follows.
“You know, Dr. Bloor — I never thought I’d be one of those old farts who go and break their hip as soon as they turn seventy. (In my case, I suppose I got a seven-month grace period!) When did these bones get so brittle? How is it that you, several years my senior, haven’t had an equally difficult time with the ravages of advanced years?
I have had to do what I never thought I’d do and that is hire a live-in valet or nurse or what have you. A gentleman was recommended to me by the name of Uriah Hensley — a good man, very active in the Negro equality movement. I commend his efforts and those of his son Zachary who is quite a mover and shaker in Civil Rights.
Still, I have never been comfortable with servants except for Miss Cook. I suppose I am basically too much the egalitarian. And how be you these days, sir?”
12. “I, too, took a spill.” Andrew Bloor to Jonathan Blashette, 8 February 1959. An excerpt from Bloor’s response follows.
“Were we, Jonny, at one point joined at the hip? A very frangible hip, I might add. Yes, I also took a spill, and am likewise incapacitated. You are right. It is a depressing development (although Evetta is taking good care of me), serving only to remind me of my easily verifiable mortality.
For goodness sake, man — if you must have a manservant, don’t spend your days apologizing to the gentleman. He expects to be treated as employee and expects you to comfortably assume the role of employer. Anything less will throw the whole universe out of balance.
And speaking of the universe, have you figured out your place in it, yet?
Just curious.”
13. Zachary Hensley’s commitment to civil rights was undisputed. Zachary’s involvement in the Freedom March from Selma to Montgomery and his participation in other historic moments of the Civil Rights movement of the fifties and sixties were complemented by his instigation of the Taylorville, North Carolina, Barbecue Pig Hut sit-in of March 3, 1960. Inspired by the sit-in at the Greensboro Woolworth lunch counter a month before, Zachary and five college compatriots settled themselves down at the whites-only service counter of the barbecue establishment only to be instantly threatened and harassed by the regulars. Hensley’s quick thinking turned what might have been a violent, unilateral food-fight into a strong statement for racial tolerance. Learning that one of their number had a white grandmother, Hensley negotiated a service stance for the young woman next to her stool with one hand permitted to touch the counter and the other hanging at her side. For a young man who was half-black and half-Asian, successful bargaining from Hensley resulted in the man being allowed to sit on the stool in alternate three-minute segments. Another young woman, one quarter Cherokee, was allowed to stand behind her half-Asian Freedom-fighting comrade and be fed by him in small modest bites, each followed by understated chewing. Hensley did not fare as well when it came to his own requested allowance. He left the restaurant wearing a headdress of barbecue sauce. Parker Noell, Claiming our Stools: History-making Sit Ins of the Civil Rights Movement (Los Angeles: Locklear Kun and Sons, 1988), 88–98.
14. “Her name is Silvana. Jonny, I actually think she’s the one.” Harlan Davison to Jonathan Blashette, 22 March 1959.
15. “So sorry. My mistake. She isn’t the one.” Harlan Davison to Jonathan Blashette, 23 March 1959.
16. Davison saw very little of Silvana after that. Georgia Neilson, When Advice Columnists Go Bad (Los Angeles: Pepper Plum Publishing, 1975), 267-73. Despite widespread syndication throughout the U.S. and the inevitable comparison to popular advice columnists Ann Landers and her twin sister Abigail Van Buren, Silvana Lichtenstein was promptly dismissed and her column deep-sixed. Davison seems to have pounced on this opportunity to break up with the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound, sixty-two-year-old Jersey City native, confessing to Jonathan that the chemistry that he “had thought he felt there in the beginning was maybe never even there at all.” I tracked down a copy of what was to become Miss Lichtenstein’s final column for the Jacobson Syndicate. Much of the advice she dispensed that day seems fairly innocuous. It was the final “confidential” that appears to have been the career-killer.