| re: Grease spot on head- what is it? Thank you. nm | |
| Posted by: BruceinIthaca 06:35 pm EDT 05/28/24 | |
| In reply to: Grease spot on head- what is it? Thank you. nm - thtrgoer 01:56 pm EDT 05/28/24 | |
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| It would have been helpful if I had typed the right words to begin with. It's from the Requiem: "Nobody dast blame this man. You don't understand. Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman there is no rock bottom to the life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back--that's an earthquake. And then you get spots on your hat, and you're finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory." I get goosebumps just typing it, and remembering my dad, who was almost blown up on an island in the Pacific, but left his tent for a smoke, and, when he returned, found the tent was gone. As he lay dying, at 59, of lung cancer diagnosed just two months earlier, after only two years of retirement (he was excellent with money and, while not miserly, was also not a spendthrift--he worked as long as he did to put me through Northwestern--wouldn't fill out FAFSA forms, you pay for your own kid's education was his motto, even though today he would also recognize the inequities--as an officer at the bank, he hired some of the first Black employees other than custodial staff at the bank and did not succumb to pressures against open housing in our little suburb of Oak Park), he said to my mother, as he looked at the pack of Kents (the "safer" alternative he and my moher turned to after decades of unfiltered CHesterfields) and said, "These may be killing me now, but they may have given me forty years I wouldn't have had"). No whiner, DOn Henderson--it may be why, if I could choose a part to play in "Slesman," it would be CHarley. |
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