For Don Murray

In 1977 I had finished the draft of Where is Crusader Rabbitt, Now That We Really Need Him? typed out on the backs of old quizzes I had scrounged from the waste bins at York High School in York, ME. From the time I had started it in 1973, I had gone from being poor, single and living in the slum of Portsmouth, NH (Those of you familiar with Portsmouth might remember Seacrest Village) to being married to a wonderful lady who was a nursing instructor on the faculty of the University of New Hampshire.
One of her extra duties was to represent her department on the Faculty Senate. Among her fellow “senators” was Don Murray, perhaps one of the most popular faculty members who ever walked the halls of UNH.
Don had dropped out of high school to work in a logging camp, and at the outset of WWII had enlisted as a paratrooper and served throughout the war with the 82nd Airborne Division. Upon being discharged, he returned to school on the GI Bill, received a BA and MA, and also won the Pulitzer Prize.
At one meeting, Susan told him about my project, and he replied that he would like to see it. So at the next meeting, she presented him a ratty assortment of various colored paper bound up in four term paper folders. Not long afterward I received a call, asking if I could come over to his office some afternoon after I was done teaching, an invitation I accepted with some trepidation, considering the stature of a man like Don Murray.
We spent a pleasant afternoon, during which he waved off a stream of visitors, sharing stories about living in the mud and eating out of tin cans. Then he cut to the chase and asked what I planned on doing with the manuscript. My response was that I was happy I had written something that long, when no one else I knew had. And besides, trying to get something published was shooting in the dark.
He leaned forward, looked me square in the eye and asked, “Tell me, do you like sex, or do you like to masturbate?” I responded that after years of being single, the former was my preference, or words to that effect. “Well,” he said, “If you don’t try to publish this, you’re just masturbating.”
Well, I’m slow, but it’s finally been done. I only wish he were still around to see it. I quit when I needed glasses.