GG: Slamming Door/Donchery

["Anne M. Marble" <amarble@abs.net>]

---- Original Message -----
From: John Hill <jphill@home.com>


> Ouch-o-rama!  A conductor *stepping* on his hands and a porter
> *slamming a door* on them?
>
> I don't remember either of those accounts.  Does anyone have a
reference
> for those anecdotes?  I can't imagine GG brushing that kind of thing
> off lightly.

I don't remember the conductor story. (I'm trying to imagine the
positions of GG and the conductor for the logistics of this scenario
to work out.)

I found the train incident in the Selected Letters book. In the
paperback edition, it's on page 6, and it's the "TO MOUSE POSSUM BANK"
letter. (I swear, I'm not making this up!) The porter came by to give
him his passport, and he pushed the door on GG's left thumb. OK, not
all the fingers as I remembered it originally, but still a painful
experience. (GG reported that his thumbnail was turning blue.) By the
way, in case you're wondering, "Mouse" was his mother, "Possum" was
his father, and "Bank" was his dog. (Hey, there's nothing eccentric
about addressing a letter to your dog, I wrote a letter to my parrot
when I was in summer camp. The strange thing was that the parrot wrote
back -- although his handwriting did look suspiciously like that of my
father.)

The Selected Letters books is great. I especially loved reading GG's
account of the Donchery incident. For those who haven't read about it,
that's the time when the young GG decided to rent a 26-room estate.
And the day after he did this, he suddenly realized that he had to
furnish a 26-room estate. The image of GG "testing mattresses" in the
department store and suddenly feeling conspicuous would make a great
vignette. (Why didn't they use *that* story in "32 Short Films..."?)