J. Powers - Suitable Accommodations - An Autobiographical Story of Family Life - The Letters of J. F. Powers, 1942-1963

Fandel’s1 is absolutely out. I won’t go into why. If you knew anything about bookstores or department stores, you’d know why. It would be even worse in a hick town, selling Your Income Tax and Lloyd Douglas. In some ways whoever it was that wanted you to go to Chicago and get a job and see the world was right. I mean, working isn’t what it’s cracked up to be by people who don’t do it and by those who do but haven’t desire or imagination enough to know the difference. As for going to the Humphreys’, you have killed that prospect dead. I had not thought that it would be like that. I would go to Sandstone again before I’d go there. I am glad to know it is that way. I would have perished in the snow getting away if I’d gone there first and then found out.

I ought to write a happy letter, I suppose. I am awfully glad you love me enough to cry over letters for fear you’ll run against my grain. I respect that and love you for it. It is true, though, that you have nothing, just as Sr Mariella has nothing when it comes to a solution. It is always the same. I had thought this the time for me to get a head start. When we are married, the screws will be much tighter; then considering a plan to write would amount to nonsupport and desertion and six or seven other things that the state and church sit on you for. I ought to wind this letter up cheerily. I can’t. (My mother sent a clipping showing me where somebody got $125,000 from Hollywood.) I don’t want to live in your grandmother’s house. We’ll live here. I love you.

Jim

Let me say, Betty, I was sorry I put the issue up to you, especially the housing part. It was my responsibility. I don’t know how to meet it except to say we’ll live here. So we’ll live here.

BETTY WAHL

150 Summit Avenue

January 30, 1946

Dear Betty,

Wednesday. Your letter came, and I have read it. I trust you rec’d my letter of yesterday today. I did not feel like writing Monday, and that is why you didn’t get one yesterday. A card from Sr Mariella in which she tells me it is not necessary to come and see her as you would have told me everything she had in mind, which of course you have, and she concludes, however, with the thought that one must live one’s own life and it is my neck if I wish to risk it. In a little while I’ll be eating with Fr Egan. I called him a while ago and told him I was snowed under again (the last time I saw him, I was young and gay with the good news), and he said he’d pay me $80 to clean his pipes before he’d counsel sticking with the system. I do not plan to keep the hospital job if I can get anything else. If I can’t, I’ll try to get it down to five hours a day, but they won’t like it, and of course I’ll have to take less money, all of which seems like a damned nuisance to me. But, let it be clear so your heart can be at rest, I plan to get something, and I will keep the apartment, I am not going to do anything drastic, etc. Enough of that. I guess we are both tired of it. […]

It is snowing. I am not going on the retreat this weekend. I will need what money I have, I imagine, if my brother comes. Anyway, I am in no mood for it. As a matter of fact, I am not in the mood for anything good. I hope you didn’t dislike what I said in my letter about Fandel’s and so on. You must try to understand, Betty, that I have been through the old bookstore mill and it has left its mark on me. And about continuing work — for twenty-seven months, in jail, out of jail, carrying bedpans, sewing up corpses, sweating a lake of sweat with the sterilizer, and hauling a mountain of ice, all this time I have been looking forward to freedom. Or what I thought was freedom. Anyway, it is not easy, especially when you are as short on virtue as I am and long-suffering, to accept someone’s gentle counsel, even when you love that someone and perhaps recognize some truth in what she says, to continue the same old grind. I am lazy too. I hate regular hours. I like to walk when I want to. Sleep when I want to. Listen to music. I will go pretty far to get in a position to do these things. I love you, you know, and I’ll try to find some way.

Love,

Jim

Jim and Betty’s plans for the future included leaving St. Paul in September and renting or buying (with the assistance of others) a farm near St. John’s. This would take them away from the world of getters and spenders and bring them into the company of such friends in the Movement as Emerson Hynes and Don Humphrey. One possible farm would have made them neighbors of some committed Detachers — whose views Betty loathed.

BETTY WAHL

150 Summit Avenue

January 31, 1946

Dear Betty,

I just got up. It’s hotter than hell in the apartment. I have the windows open. But no cool air comes in. Your letter, one from my mother, one from Fr Garrelts. About the things in your letter. It will be a sad day old JF writes a letter to the abbot2 about a job. As any old pitchman will tell you … never give a sucker an even break. That is what asking for a job is like … anywhere and especially at St John’s. I have seen the abbot operate. He is a good man, but his last name is Deutsch, and if he’s like a lot of other Germans, and I think he is, he expects to get to heaven for not having made any impractical moves during his stay on earth. I have often wondered why they didn’t try to prove, somewhere along the line, that Jesus Christ received a gold watch for 33 years of service. I think, in short, you had better worry about your novel and stop thinking about me and a job. I love you for your interest. On the other hand you are quite young and innocent.

Present plans call for me to visit Stearns County on the 10th, all right, with Fr Egan. Our special end will be to see the Koppy farm.3 Whenever you find out about it, or your father does, just write the details quick. You don’t have to phone.

I see, on rereading your letter, that it was Mariella’s idea to write to the abbot. Please tell her to say the rosary 1,000 times for my special intention. Yes, I found the missal. Who would steal it? We had a good talk last night, Fr Egan and I, and I told him all about everybody’s plans. He had the phrase for the Fandel’s deal. “Fandel’s … Brentano’s,” he said. “Your life is a game of Monopoly. Pay the bank and go back to the start.” I think that takes care of that, except to say I’d have been ashamed to have you working there in the morning, as you suggested. I have always found these man-and-wife, work-and-win, and don’t-forget-to-say-thank-you-to-the-customer combinations very depressing. All right, all right, that’s enough talk about jobs. Please don’t mention them anymore and I won’t. The important things are: I love you; I wish you were here; I wish I were there; I wish we were both somewhere. […]

Love,

Jim

Betty Wahl to Sister Mariella Gable, ca. February 1, 1946

This is to stop you worrying about a number of things. In the first place, the farm was unfit for human occupation, so we have lost that future connection with the Detachers … Anyway, there is a 10-acre plot 2½ miles from St. Ben’s and ½ mile from the St. John’s gate … There, surrounded by Benedictines, and with Emerson only ½ mile off through the woods, all seeds of heresy ought to fall away effortlessly. Jim is only slightly touched by the Detachers. His writing is considerably more influenced by it than his life is. He is much more of an epicurean than a Detacher. He is a sucker for the viewpoint of the Detacher as far as making destructive comments goes …

I agree that Jim needs a conversion, to the positive side of the Church. Dante, Giotto, Gregorian chant, Augustine (used sparingly), Chesterton (large doses, for optimism), Benedictinism,… and the Hynes family. (Dennis gets butter and honey, all over the bread, and down the sides a little.) The plan is still indefinite. He and Father Egan are coming up Monday, but with Father E. listening to every word, I probably can’t do much then, unless I want to convert him too.