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

If I had my life to live over, I’d join the Clementine fathers.

Jim […]

Journal, May 12, 1959

Last night we looked at the Colbert house on Third Ave. South and decided to rent it for June — July — August. $100 per mo. Fabulous clutter. But we can do no better. Betty, desperate to be somewhere else, is unhappy to be moving into the place. I understand her feelings. I had the same ones when I was walking around in the place. I couldn’t see a place to sit and read except on the porch — which figures as a crying room for the children in Betty’s plan, I learned. So it goes.

HARVEY EGAN

Suite 7

Tuesday, 10:00 a.m. [May 1959]

Dear Fr Egan,

[…] We found a place for the next three months, beginning in a week or so, over in the old neighborhood, students overhead, clutter where we’ll be, but … Betty still holds out in her heart for better places than this. As for me, I have cut away every last bag of sand and will begin on the members of my family if that is necessary to stay aloft, if you follow my imagery. […]

Jim

Journal, May 18, 1959

Out of gas — creatively … I feel absolutely powerless these days to prevent financial ruin. Ideas for stories don’t come.

Journal, May 26, 1959

Now living at 424 Third Ave. S. So far it has been very tough going. Betty and I never so out of harmony. Today I am back in my office for the first time since Saturday. I have the feel of the golf course story — came to me finally during Mass on Sunday — and am girding my loins to write it. Everything depends on it. The only things holding me back from Ireland now are leaving my parents and living with Betty under unsettled conditions. Perhaps if we went by air this time, we’d be in better shape when we got there. It will be killing, I know — but what is this here? What of the furniture? And so on? Into storage, I suppose. Money, money, money — this is the answer to every question confronting me.

HARVEY EGAN

June 9, 1959

Dear Fr Egan,

I am in receipt of yours and am pleased to provide you with our new address, namely: 424 Third Avenue South, St Cloud. Although the men on the radio persist in calling these days perfect days, comfortably warm, I do not find them so. In suite 7 the climate is intolerable, but I work on and on, whiskers growing longer, garments gradually falling apart, eyes reddening, and am in short a sort of walk-up beachcomber. But enough of that. I don’t know what to think of the coming Del go.6 You have the promoter’s old car and so perhaps know more than most of us. I do know, having read it in George Edmond, that it won’t be a decision. I suppose you’ll be there with your flask in Del’s corner. I have decided not to try to follow this one, being busy these days up in Duesterhaus. […]

My eyes are holding up, but everything else seems to be slipping, especially the old get-up-and-go that we Americans are just dead without. […]

Jim

HARVEY EGAN

June 18, 1959

Dear Fellow Fan,

Del had a pretty good battle plan laid out for Joey,7 but his one mistake was in not following through on it. Del isn’t the first fighter to have his well-laid strategy blow up in his face. It happens all the time in boxing. Nobody says that Joey landed a lucky punch, but the bout was too brief to prove anything. Del has made St Paul the fistic capital of the U.S., the talk of the country. So you might say he deserves a chance to redeem himself in the eyes of St Paulites, not all of them his well-wishers, by the way. If a rematch between these two topnotchers could be staged, would it prove anything? It just might. A lot of people might be surprised if Del could just get dried out or beefed up, could get proper sparring partners, and could come in at his best fighting weight, either 150 or 160, or both. Just one man’s opinion, of course. What’s yours?

A Real Ring-in-the-Nose Flanagan Fan

HARVEY EGAN

Suite 7

July 7, 1959

Dear Fr Egan,

Assuming you read this on July 8, it might interest you to know that I was born on that day, 1917, around five o’clock in the afternoon — in time for cocktails — and that I have been going ever since, but I have now reached the point where if success does not come soon, I’m afraid I will have seen the show. I have been working hard for the last five or six weeks and need a rest. I have a few days to go yet, but the story-chapter is in the nets, all except a paw or two. Now what can you offer me? I crave life, laughter: Do you suppose we could find a theatre where they still have a mighty Wurlitzer and still have the audience sing along to the bouncing ball?

Otherwise I have nothing to report. […]

Jim

Journal, July 21, 1959

Mailed off letter to Killiney nuns.8 … So now it appears we are pointed toward Ireland again. Of course everything depends on my story being accepted by The New Yorker .

Journal, August 5, 1959

Hot, humid — sitting in my office looking out the window, wanting to remember this scene and the people and the weather — so I’ll never be silly enough to wish I were back, for it is now almost certain we are returning to Ireland. Bats, the latest thing at home to keep us from getting any rest at night. This miserable, miserable summer. I now see our whole married life as a search for a home, and every child making the need more pressing and the prospects less likely … I hope this will be the last harvest I will reap of the failure of Betty to educate her parents and others in the meaning of her calling and mine (as writers, artists) and the few prerogatives attending same.

Journal, August 14, 1959

The startling news when I came home yesterday that the Dickehuts9 were moving out of the flat at Strobels’. Betty saw evidence of an immediate move — and Birdie told KA that she’s had two shocks that day. 1. D’s moving. 2. Our plan to go to Ireland.

JACK CONROY

424 Third Avenue South

St Cloud, Minnesota

August 21, 1959

Dear Jack,

I came across a note among my effects (as we published authors say) from you, dated Dec. 8, last year, and I wonder if I was going to reply to it or if I actually did. Anyway, you ask if we are still in Ireland, and the answer is no. But should be, on consideration of all we’ve been through since coming back: looking for a house and not finding one and meantime living with Betty’s family and — for the last three months — in a house owned by an undertaker who summers up the river, possibly because he can’t stand the heat and bats at home, we now think. So that’s it, Jack. We are now in the process of readying ourselves for another shot at Ireland. If we do not go, you may be sure this will not be known to us until we’ve got everything crated up for shipment, including ourselves. […]

All for now,

Jim Powers

The Strobels offered to rent Jim and Betty the two-floor apartment above their own in their large house on the Mississippi in St Cloud. The plan to return to Ireland was canceled.

Meanwhile, skulduggery was afoot at St. John’s, where the new Abbey Church designed by Marcel Breuer was being built. A number of architects had been considered, but Breuer was the one promoted by Frank Kacmarcik,10 who, apparently, collaborated with him on the design. Breuer and Kacmarcik decided they wanted a window in keeping with the brutalism of the church and tried to reject the agreed-upon design by Bruno Bak. They failed, and the Bak window was installed.

HARVEY EGAN

St Cloud

August 25, 1959

Dear Fr Egan,

You’ve been pretty quiet lately, and all kinds of news has been breaking that, frankly, I think we ought to have your ideas on. What about this third major league?11 I think that Branch Rickey (a great friend of St Paul, by the way) is the best thing that’s happened to it so far. Why should or shouldn’t the Minneapolis team play half of its schedule at Midway? What about football — this new league, the American League? The players are available for it, as they aren’t for another baseball league of the highest caliber, but you know what the expenses are in football and how the weather can play hob with the gate, especially here in Minnesota — where, however, the winters aren’t as bad as the summers. […]