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| Gift from John Dos Passos. Marvin spelled the name incorrectly. |
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| John Dos Passos |
Stately Mangus Manor is loaded with memories. We moved in here in 1962. So I'm trying to organize 56 years of hoarded memory artifacts. I decided to clean out three of the Magnificent Marvin's old briefcases.
Mostly they were filled with desiccated rubber bands, paper clips, old pencils, "magic markers," foam rubber ear plugs, etc. -- but I did find two "gems." A collapsable tin drinking cup and a knife-sharpening whetstone gift from the famous "Lost Generation" author, John Dos Passos.
Dos Passos came to Alaska to write a travel article on Alaska for "Holiday" magazine in 1966. It was some of the little feature magazine work he could get. He had long-since been "blacklisted" by the establishment for being a "Commie sympathizer."
This actually ties into one of my favorite "Marvin stories." JDP had been told to look dad up by their mutual friend -- dad's art mentor in Washington DC, William F. WalterAlaska.
So dad monologued JDP's ear off about Alaska and its lore for two hours as JDP diligently took notes. Finally, Marvin thinks to ask, "So what do you do for a living, Johnny?" Pregnant pause. "Well -- I'm a writer, Marv."
Dad had no clue who the famous John Dos Passos was. Classic.
Anyway, I was thrilled to find this JDP-marked gift in amongst the dried-out erasers, thumbtacks, matchbooks, etc. -- A memory "gold nugget" buried in the detritus...
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| John Dos Passos |
Yeah, I have been slowly cleaning out my parent's farmhouse. In the 50's & 60's my father had worked as a writer for US Steel in Pittsburgh. Lying on the floor in the attic, under some LPs, I found a hand drawn pastel dummy for one of the Concepts books that USS produced in the early 60's, presumably drawn by Syd Mead. For years my father had told and retold stories about an illustrator whose house was furnished with boulders and who, in meetings, would get everyone off-task with his doodles. Unfortunately, this dummy was left where my 10 year old self could access it and use it as a scrapbook. There are a few pages that survived but I wish I hadn't done that.
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