Once I had a good friend who called himself Captain Fathom.
He said I was his best friend.
He asked me to publish his memoirs. He paid for the printing and kept all the profits. I asked for no payment for creating the book, which was a mild success, at least on the Coast.
The man got rectal cancer and received an outpouring of sympathy, consolation and help from his many friends. On a cold windy day on Albion beach more than a hundred people, including the rabbi, danced and prayed and cheered him on. The cancer went into remission.
We are grateful for a society that tolerates eccentricity; we overlook peculiarities that non-conformists evince. We are amused when they clown and make us laugh.
We are not amused when they become dangerous, to themselves and to others. Sometimes events strip off coverings that have, even for years, masked a person’s true nature. Sometimes grandma does turn out to be the wolf.
He asked me to print another edition of his book, took the books, then refused to pay all the printing costs. That ended our friendship.
Thus began a series of events seemingly intended to alienate most of his friends, which is what happened. The most outlandish was when he destroyed property and threatened the women at the Mendocino Pharmacy, which resulted in a forcible arrest by sheriff’s deputies.
A year ago he began telephoning me, at all hours, in the middle of the night, from the County Jail in Ukiah. I asked him to stop, got caller ID, finally had to request the jailer to make him desist.
Last week the phone calls began again, collect calls I wouldn’t accept. Ravings in the background, “Mussolini lives!” Gibberish Italian.
This past Thursday I drove to Ukiah for a blood test at the VA clinic. When I got back home, at about 3:30, one of my oldest friends, 80-year-old Laurel Moss, was standing in my driveway next to her red Prius. She was bawling, almost wailing, as she tried to speak: “I heard that you were dead and came to find out if it was true.” She could have had a heart attack.
Obviously, and thankfully it wasn’t true.
What happened was that, on the day before, the Anderson Valley Advertiser had published this letter:
“Goodbye Bruce Levene:
“To the editor:
“The village of Mendocino is mourning the passing of Bruce Levene.”
“A heavy tree has fallen. Bruce Levene died at home with his pipe in his hand and a bottle of expensive brandy at his side. His wife was at work. We remember Levene as the ‘stalking horse’ candidate for the Fifth district’s long-time supervisor Norman DeVall. His friendship with such notables as Paul Katzeff (Thanksgiving Coffee CEO), Beth Bosk (New Settler Interview), S. Anapolsky, Paul Tulley (fisherman and poet) and artist John Chamberlin was well known.”
“Fellow worker Levene (an IWW member) was Editor of the Mendocino Art Center’s advertizine (a throw away) and the publisher of Captain Fathom’s Fables — a Mendocino favorite. He wrote movie scripts and several historic booklets. He leaves wife Gail, his beautiful daughter Tara Levene and his books. Smoke a prayer for him.”
Aside from some discrepancies — I don’t smoke a pipe, dislike brandy, two of the people mentioned are certainly not friends, I never met Paul Tulley, and Tara isn’t my daughter’s name — as an obituary it was pretty good.
Except that the letter wasn’t meant to amuse or give praise. Knowing that the AVA would publish anything he wrote, the writer with cunning, cruel and malevolent intent, was out to do harm. Which he might have done.
Soon after I took Laurel into my house and quieted her down, my wife Gail Lauinger came home. That morning Kate Lee, editor of The Mendocino Beacon, had phoned Gail, asking about my health. Gail’s first thought was that I had been in an automobile accident, which naturally caused her much distress, but Kate cleared everything up. Kate told Gail that she had first phoned the mortuary in Fort Bragg, then Bruce Anderson, publisher of the AVA, who said that the letter had come from Alan Graham (in the County jail in Ukiah) but that he — Bruce Anderson — had not checked it out.
Meanwhile numerous phone calls came to Gail from concerned friends and she explained that it was all a stupid nasty hoax.
Later that day, a friend sent this email to Bruce Anderson:
“Dear Editor Anderson,
“We strongly object to your publication of the bogus death notice for Mendocino Town citizen Bruce Levene. This has caused a great amount of anxiety and stress to us and others. We find your handling of this to be below what we would expect in a seriously run reliable newspaper. Have you heard of checking out facts before publication? The local Fort Bragg funeral home, Chapel by the Sea, could have confirmed the accuracy of this report. Check it out first and print only if it is accurate!”
—Richard and Pat Karch, Mendocino
Bruce Anderson replied to Richard Karch:
“It wasn't a death notice, it was a rambling letter to the editor from the incarcerated Cap Fathom. If people, including me, had read the letter with the skepticism its author should inspire, they would have known that Bruce (Levene) is probably much amused, and was still with us. I'm surprised you're all not relieved that he is, but if you'd prefer to flog me, please do.”
From Richard Karch to Bruce Anderson:
“It is interesting that people in Mendocino thought it was a death notice and that Bruce's friend was outside his house crying when he came home. I guess my question is why you chose to print a rambling unsigned letter from Alan Graham without figuring it could cause an emotional response in the community?”
—Richard Karch
Bruce Anderson to Richard Karch:
It is even more interesting that residents of "the village" of Mendocino are so upset. The Captain is a friend of mine. I don't happen to think he's as crazy as popularly assumed. I thought he would know something I didn't and, in his way, was honoring Bruce's memory. But now that I'm compelled to give the episode some thought, posthumously so to speak, I remember that the Captain once called me up to tell me that Anna Marie Stenberg had committed suicide. I'd been critical of the old girl over some long forgotten issue but the Captain's call implied that I'd driven her over the side. Future death notices from the Cap'n will be viewed here with heightened skepticism.
PS. Objectively considered, though, the whole show flatters Bruce (Levene) in that he's gotten a sneak preview of his passing. A person weeping at his gate? We should all be so intensely mourned.
Bruce Levene: That morning (Thursday) I had sent an article to Peggy Templer and on Friday she sent me this email:
“I actually had a couple of people phone me at home to ask me if I knew if you were dead or alive, which I got a chuckle over. I told them, dead men do not send emails…”
There are some people in our community who will find all of this amusing and continue to defend Alan Graham’s actions and lifestyle. If, and when, he preys on their good nature, they will think otherwise.
It is my belief that speakers should always leave their audience laughing, so here is the famous quote by Mark Twain: “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
Bruce Anderson: Bruce Levene’s account of his premature death notice got me thinking about an apology as the un-deceased had requested in an e-mail to me, as if I should have headed off Captain Fathom before he clambered aboard the paper’s letter’s page which, I concede, I would have done if I thought The Captain wasn’t seriously lamenting Levene’s ascent, as Bruce may or may not view whatever’s next, if anything.
But if someone writes in to announce a death I assume the writer is on the level. Why would I think otherwise? Death is no joke, I’ve heard. But I’m supposed to know that The Captain is so deranged he can’t even be trusted to write an obituary? I do know the guy and, in my experience with him, he’s been more of an eccentric than free floating menace. Anyway, apologize for what? We should all be so fortunate to find a person weeping in front of our house at our passing, even if we haven’t transitioned, as I heard a woman describe eternal oblivion the other day on KZYX, and even if the duped mourner is elderly, as if the elderly are more pathetic than the rest of us. Which they generally aren’t.
When I achieve pathetic elderly status, which I half-did in March of this year with a double tracheotomy that has left me mute, I remain mostly un-pathetic, but mos def on the edge of “transitioning. But in living fact, Levene was lucky to get a sneak preview of his departure, and a flattering one at that, so what’s all this posthumous keening about? Hell, most of us shuffle off unnoticed or, if noticed, unlamented.
Here’s a case more or less in point: some years ago, a Southern Humboldt fellow burdened with the same name as mine went to his reward. Joints were joyously lit, glasses raised, Gaia praised all on the assumption he was me until KMUD announced he wasn’t me. I thought that one was awfully funny, my amusement deriving entirely from the sorrow my many enemies would surely feel when they learned I was alive.
Further back, Captain Fathom himself left a late-night message on my nut screener saying that Anna Marie Stenberg had committed suicide, implying I’d driven AM to it because I’d been critical of her political behavior. I’d downed two celebratory cups of morning coffee and was gleefully carving another notch in my kill stick when I learned the old girl was still upright!
The Stenberg call was a pretty crazy thing for The Captain to have done, but it was a long time ago, so long ago I’d forgotten it altogether by the time of The Captain’s funereal assault on Bruce Levene. If I’d remembered The Captain’s Stenberg call in time I certainly would have called Bruce to ask him if he was alive, and you can be sure I wouldn’t have taken yes for an answer. But apologize? No way. I think it’s all very funny, as funny as life itself, and this has been so much fun, and Bruce Levene is such a good writer, I wish he’d die again next week so we could keep on laughing.
Note: Years ago I invited myself to make a presentation at the Vet's Hall in Garberville. My spiel made a number of people in the audience unhappy, especially a demented old bat who kept shouting, “Cointelpro!” Afterwards, as I stood around chatting with the few people who were pleased with my talk, a gaggle of old hippies — there's no meaner creature on God's dying earth than a hippie gone mean — gathered in the rear of the hall to chant their desire that I die on my way back to Boonville. I drove extra careful, I can tell you.
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