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- You'll recall the time we met the couple from Buffalo (Mr. & Mrs. Hehir) and had a
meal at the Spanish Society (defunct several years now) over the Monroe street theater? He was a switchman on the NYC at Buffalo, retired a year or two before I did. In a letter dated March 18, she tells me that he died of cancer a month previous. They were living in Ft. Lauderdale since retirement. They came back to Buffalo a few times to visit, and I met them there last September while I was enroute to Boston. He didn't look sick then, but had had the shingles and a bout or two with ulcers some years before. I first met him while on the tramp - in Jersey City. Genuine Chicago "rails" always seem to interest the rairlroad men in far away towns,and I especially remember how the men in Salt Lake greeted a couple of us who were traveling west to seek employment in 1930. I had lost track of Hehir, whose real name was O'Leary, for some twenty years before he made a 'phone call' to the yard where I was working. He had seen my picture in the NYC magazine. An easygoing guy and according to his wife, a good, kind husband. He was operated upon and died soon after, and I bet the docs knew all the time in recent years that he had cancer, as there's so much lying goes on about "Bic C," mostly, I suppose, because people hate to face the facts. I think it was Guy Gil- patrick who killed himself when he learned that his wife was dying of cancer, and he was such a good writer of sea stories, mainly the funny kind. I remember he lived at Santa Barbara.
My son and his family and a small daughter of my daughter recently spent a week in
Hawaii, and he confirmed my thoughts about the high cost of Hawaii nowadays. Fred Allen, in MUCH ADO ABOUT ME, made a point of saying how glad he'd seen the place before WW 1, as he'd heard so much about the way the hotels and everybody else"takes" the tourists, and he didn't mean the Hawaiians were taking them.
Went with Jimmy Sheridan and a free-loading Jew acquaintance of his who fastens himself
onto Jimmy for therapy, went to AnnSather's restaurant and had a nice meal Sunday before last. I mentioned it to you before, I know. Last Sunday I visited my wife's grave, but too much snow and ice, so after uncovering most of the surrounding ground, left flowers, and I noticed some other frustrated people doing what I did. The cemetery is across the road from the big Grace- land cemetery, on Irving Park Blvd. (4000 North) and Clark street, not far from the Cubs' Park. For years I used to go by those two cemeteries, supposing they were both parts of Graceland. My wife's grave is just a short distance north of The Home of the Good Shepherd, R.C. home for wayward girls. On the Milw. RR., we used to deliver cars to the "L" road at Buena Park, a half-mile north of Irving Pk. Rd., so passed the cemetery back in the 20's. Our cemetery was originally a place for Germans, right next to a tiny one for Jews. Charles Dickens' brother is buried in Graceland, which you may have seen on the way to Evanston on the "L."
Talked with Bill Wedlake a short time ago this afternoon, ordering some books, one which
I'll take to England as a present to my wife's sister on her upcoming birthday, this one is A PROPER JOB, by Brian Aherne (wonder if he wrote it), a book I found interesting, but if I hadn't known so much about the English, it would have been puzzling. I sent my daughter a copy for her birthday, accompanying it with a large manila envelope to explain the meaning of so many words we either don't use or use differently - seven pages of explanation. Wedlake says that Studs' book, HARD TIMES, has as its first "story" the interview with Jimmy Sheridan, and Studs gives Jimmy a big five-dollar bill for that one; gave Fred Thompson ten, as Fred's a bit more fortunate. Wedlake and wife are leaving definitely on April for their new Michigan habitat.
Enclosed a clipping my daughter sent me - from a Long Beach newspaper.
Thanks once more for the books and trouble you took. Will be sure to go to Ireland, this
time maybe by ship (if my belly doesn't bother me, which a change of scenery often does for a few days; maybe too much Guinness), and will send you a sweepstakes ticket as a reward.
Best wishes to you and your family, your daughter and brood,
written in blue ink Mead
written in blue ink and underlined P.S. Storm more and more fierce so won't "post" this today Did I ever tell you of the time my wife and I went to visit Glasnevin cemetery in Dublin? B. Behans grave hidden .underlined