In the early 1980s, a faithful correspondent, Wanda Tinasky, who purported to be a literary bag lady who lived under bridges on the Mendocino Coast, turned out to be an erudite former San Francisco beatnik named Tom Hawkins. One couldn’t have known from Hawkins’ Wanda’s always funny, always optimistic letters that Hawkins would murder his wife, torch his Fort Bragg house and drive himself over the bluffs into the sea near Ten Mile. Some people still think the letters, sampled below, were the work of Thomas Pynchon, the famously reclusive author who lived on the Northcoast at the time while writing Vineland.
Dear Mr. Anderson: As we approach the synchronic festivities of The Great Pumpkin and the Big Horse’s Ass, people keep throwing sample ballots under the bridge & I finally looked. Who is this Bob Richards who is the American Independent candidate for President? Is he the guy who ate all the Wheaties? I really don’t know, and don’t know if it’s obscure or if I’m just out of touch too much. Would I know these things if I still read the San Francisco Chronicle? I used to read the Chronicle in the Fort Bragg public library, but I quit going there a couple of years ago because I got tired of Don Rickles in drag. Is Herb Caen still alive? How about Don Sherwood? I suppose I have a sort of limited perspective, just reading the AVA and the Mendocino Commentary.
Incidentally, Mr. Anderson, the Commentary seems to be publishing rather irregularly lately. What’s the matter with them? Are they sick? Did they all get three-piece jobs in Sacramento like their pal Luke Breit? Why is it that everything that I love dies? Why can’t I love President Reagan?
Well, I don’t expect you to know the answers to all these questions, Mr. Anderson… if you were smart, you’d be rich… and I’m not going to vote for any Bob Richards, even if he has a pole and a Wheaties bowl. I’m going to vote for a winner: Emily Wong. Her relatives and I will elect her. A couple of years ago, when I was still reading the Chronicle, the Wong family held a reunion in San Francisco, and the Chronicle said that there are fifty million people in the world named Wong, and I feel sure that there are plenty of them to elect Emmy, although I can’t believe that there are really fifty million of them, because fifty million Chinamen can’t be Wong.
Actually I did see another newspaper the other day… I remember it was the Fort Bragg Advocate-News. I remember that it had a picture of a poster some local had made, with Ms. Ferraro as Miss Liberty and Mr. Mondale as Honest Abe, and I thought it was very nice but it would have been better if each of them had had one tit hanging out.
PS. Is the Mendocino Commentary going broke? Could we help them by holding a benefit? I would be willing to present my epic poem, “Shit Fight At The OK Corral,” with Wyatt Earp and the Clayton brothers having it out with horse turds.
Dear Mr. Anderson: A few hitches hitching back from the circuses in SF & LA, or Sodom and Gomorrah West, as the folks from Rapid City say, and although I enjoyed my outing in the wonderful world of the Billygoats Gruff it’s great to be back under the bridge. Don’t let them kid you, Mr. Anderson, there are definite drawbacks to sleeping in a Port-a-Potty.
Of course it’s no bed of roses either being the only shopping bag lady on the Mendocino coast who carries a typewriter (and I wish someone would give me a portable; after all, you gave Antonia an electric, didn’t you?) and I’m not going to eat at Rhonda’s any more because $23 a month really isn’t enough to feed six people, and winter is icumen in, lewd sing goddam, but wotthehell, Mr. Anderson, wotthehell, the word is toujours gai.
I cried all the way to the bank of Jughandle Creek; it was the longest trail of tears since the Cherokee pogrom, but I cry at everything: card tricks, politicians’ lies, human courage and decency, happy movie endings... life isn’t like that, so I’m in no position to criticize Mary Decker Eddy and the rest of those girls for blubbering, and anyway you spend your youth taking those pills to retard menstruation and doing flipflops or playing volleyball eight hours every day and you don’t even get a tacky gold medal; it’s enough to make anybody cry.
What really touched me in L.A. was Joan Benoit and Bowdoin banner; I thought Benoit of Bowdoin was great (Benoit of Beloit would have been too much) and I was glad to find out that Joanie did it all on pineapple juice, although I am not totally naive about commercial endorsements, in fact it wouldn’t surprise me if 7-Up got Mary Decker Eddy and Zola Budd to plug Coke and Pepsi. You could tell there was big money involved in the doings in L.A. because Howard Cosell had a new wig. A new, old wig. I think Mr. Cosell could learn a lot about aging his wig gracefully from Cary Grant (perhaps you saw me on TV sitting by Cary at the Coliseum) but of course Cary’s facelift is inimitable, as they were able to lift not just his face but his whole body by hooking the hole in his chin onto his belly-button. (N.B.: That last part is not true, Mr. Anderson. I just made that up. I thought you might like a laugh.) The only one of that golden gang I really envy is the West German girl gymnast who was lucky enough to break her back on world T.V. (“She’s alright, folks!”) She’s making millions doing commercials for an iron lung. That’s my idea of having it made.
I decided against trying to make the Republican convention in Dallas… or any part of it… a girl’s got to draw the line somewhere… but I know without looking how L. Ron Reagan will counter Geraldine’s candidacy if she stays out of jail: “O.K., George… you like Georgia or Georgina? I’ll see you get the purple heart…”
What started me off on my crying jag was the outburst of delight of recognition from the fags at the SF Demo convention when Geraldine got that one off about a cynic being someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing… or maybe they thought she made that up herself, but anyway you got the feeling that not since the halcyon days of JFK have we heard the Middle School Debate Team eloquence of Geraldine Ferraro. (I can survive anything but a misprint.) and although I seem to recall having voted for a lady of African ancestry the first time that Ron ran for President (vowing to reduce federal spending and the national debt… “Excuse me while I laugh meself black in the face…” Mr. Dooley) and I don’t recall that we have yet conceded the honesty of the returns in that election, I think it would be cute to have a President with a lady vice-president, even if she can’t sing Tangerine (from the motion picture, ‘Double Indemnity,’ starring Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck, from the novel of the same name by James M. Cain. There was a period when a number of film dramatizations were made from the novels of James M. Cain, beginning with ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice,’ of course... ‘Mildred Pierce,’ for which Joan Crawford received an Academy Award, and a comedy called ‘Career In High C.’ The last and worst by far was ‘Serenade,’ which ended the careers on the screen of Mario Lanza and Joan Fontaine, and high time. ‘Serenade’ would make a terrific movie now, but they couldn’t do it right in 1951 because it was the story of an operatic singer whose voice went weird on him when he started making it with a queer impresario. They changed the queer to a plutocratic patroness of the arts (Joan Fontaine), and that messed the whole thing up. Of course, Lanza wasn’t exactly empathetic, either. Today, Robert Redford would be dynamite, lip synching to Pavarotti, and for the old queen, George Plimpton, or almost anybody.)
Besides people taking my name in vain in the local prints, I was really shocked on my return to Mendocino to learn that the county supervisors decided to continue selling dogs and cats to vivisectionists, Mendocino being one of only ten counties in California that do it. What was that smozzle about stopping it for? To jack up the price? As I understand it, the only justification for doing it is to raise money, and the supervisors could save more money than they get for the dogs and cats by cutting our Poets in the Schools, or some other useless crap.
Still, it’s great to be back among real folks, Mr. Anderson, and I’m looking forward to seeing all those millionaire political and spiritual leaders of the land of the free and the home of the slave selling tortillas, but only on TV, because, as everybody knows, some of them don’t wash their hands after they scratch their ass. (Wanda Tinasky) P.S. If Geraldine can’t sing ‘Tangerine,’ could she sing ‘Eggplant’? P.P.S. If you won’t consider changing the name of. The Anderson Valley Advertiser to the Boonwile Bugle or the Philo Vance, how about ‘The Bowdoin Banner’?
Be First to Comment