Daily Excerpt for May Day (Workers' Day): Forget the Goal, the Journey Counts...71 Jobs Later (Stites) - President Johnson's Family
excerpt from Forget the Goal, the Journey Counts (Stites) -
President Johnson’s Family
One afternoon, as my part-time bookkeeper was leaving, she turned to me and said, “Don’t look now, but Lady Bird is coming down the hall.” In a few moments, two young men in black suits and dark glasses swept into the room, quickly scoped out the gallery space, then went into my office and workroom. I had seen Secret Service before and waited out their quick and thorough investigation of the premises. Lady Bird entered the gallery followed by Linda Bird, and I smiled a welcome. They spent a half an hour casually looking at prints and artifacts. Lady Bird complimented my gallery and started for the door. Linda Bird hopped up on a cabinet, told her mother she would be along later, and asked to have the car sent back. The young lady and I spent a lovely hour talking about early prints, the caricaturists Cruickshank and Daumier in particular, as she collected their original watercolors. She was intelligent, witty, knowledgeable about art, and a good conversationalist. We did get into a heated discussion about the differences between a griffin and a gargoyle which continued by letter. For a few months, Linda Bird and I kept up an every-now-and-then correspondence when she would challenge some assertion I might have made about an artist. She was a very nice young woman.
Early one Saturday afternoon, some months later, I received a call from John Fleming, one of the world’s great rare bookman in New York. (John’s full page ads, in whatever trade journals they might appear, were always simply “John Fleming, New York” on the page, nothing else.) He invited me to a birthday party he was giving for Linda Bird, mentioning she had asked him to invite me. I had to decline because people were coming from New York especially to see me late that afternoon and through dinner, and I had to be at the shop. John was astonished. “You cannot turn down a special invitation from the President’s daughter!” He was really nonplussed and considerably irritated. But I had no choice, and Linda Bird never came in the shop again. I suppose I should have somehow figured a way to get there; perhaps taken a late train.
Another celebrity who visited the gallery was Vincent Price, the famous villain actor who was also an art collector and connoisseur. He later lent his name and prestige in the art world to Sears Roebuck and became their art spokesman. Vincent used to come into the gallery after visiting friends who lived in the Georgetown House. He sat by my desk, and we would talk art and artists. We never did get around to talking about theater or the movies, but he was an interesting man in his own right. Many years later, and after his death, his wife opened Price’s Gallery on the plaza in Santa Fe, and I had the opportunity to chat with her about her late husband’s collection.
An incongruous group of visitors to The Foliophiles were a few members of the Washington Redskins football team who also lived in the Georgetown House. They found my gallery as a result of the Sunday afternoon pool parties I used to give. The owners of the apartment building did not want to maintain the large swimming pool over the winter, so I had arranged to run and maintain the pool facilities; my two sons were the lifeguards. I used to give great parties for 30 or 40 of my friends and residents on Sunday afternoons. Someone in the building knew some members of the team, and 8 or 10 of them would always show up for the party. Every now and then, a few would visit the gallery for a dose of culture. One evening Coach Vince Lombardi (the Redskins was his last coaching job) dropped in at the Eagles Nest Restaurant with a few friends, and elbowed up to the bar next to me, and we chatted briefly. I have always thought his famous phrase “Winning is not everything, it’s the only thing” typifies the American culture. Not a very enlightened comment, in my opinion, my enjoyment being in the journey, not in success, or achieving goals.
(editor's note: we have retained the original text with the name of the Washington Nationals as it was at the time of the writing of the book)
For more posts about Alfred and his book, click HERE.
For more book excerpts, click HERE.
For more May Day posts, click HERE.
Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter here or on our home page.
Follow MSI Press on Twitter, Face Book, and Instagram.
in exchange for reviewing a current or forthcoming MSI Press LLC book?
Contact editor@msipress.com.
Want an author-signed copy of this book?
Purchase the book at 25% discount (use coupon code FF25)
and concurrently send a written request to orders@msipress.com
Comments
Post a Comment