Sitting in an airport, thinking about luck

The Column: 01.16.24

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I once, in Detroit, discovered I’d left my anti-seizure meds and blood thinner back in New York and needed to step into a drugstore and negotiate with a pharmacist for an emergency refill. He was dubious about emergency meds, wanted to see a prescription or at least an empty bottle, but a lady pharmacist recognized my voice from the radio, having been a fan of my show, and she also was his boss so thanks to a long radio career I was spared a stroke or a heart attack that morning.

Life offers us magical connections, which astonish us and for which we are grateful. I loved that show, did it for forty years, and it was all because my fundamentalist family refused to buy a TV back when everyone was getting one so I was left with a Zenith radio and listened to the last of the old radio shows, Fibber McGee and Gunsmoke and Fred Allen, which I loved, and twenty years later I launched a show with cowboys and a detective and small-town folks in it, and enough time had passed so that it was considered a novelty, not an imitation, and suddenly I had a career, one I never planned on.

My hero John Updike liked the show and even sent me a fan letter — to be praised by a man I revered was a tremendous shock — and he snuck me into the American Academy of Arts & Letters, of which he was president, and I went to the ceremony up on 155th Street and stood among my betters and behaved myself and tried to look distinguished.

I do believe, though she will deny it, that my Academy membership was one reason my beloved decided to marry me, not that I went around wearing a badge, but I invited her to an Academy dinner and Calvin Trillin came over and said hello, which impressed her, and also David Sedaris and Francine Prose and Jane Smiley. And Philip Roth was there, the author of Goodbye, Columbus and Herzog. He didn’t say hello to me but he said hello to John Updike who said hello to me. It was only one factor in her decision, there were others — good looks, correct pronunciation of difficult words, good manners, the fact I was infatuated with her — but being an academician set me apart from other guys from Anoka, Minnesota.

I was 50 when I met her. I had had two marital learning experiences and was ready for the grand finale. By sheer good luck, I had outlived Fitzgerald by six years, Buddy by 28, my cousin Roger by 33. Talk about terrible luck: he had dived off a boat to impress a girl he had a crush on, forgetting that he couldn’t swim, unaware that she wasn’t attracted to boys. Back then, “gay” simply meant “lively and vivacious.”

It’s bad luck to say it but I say it anyway: I’m the luckiest person you ever knew. I was brought up by fundamentalists who spent a great deal of time in Jeremiah and Isaiah but I made a career as a humorist. In high school choir, Mrs. Hallenberg asked me and a few others to only move our lips, please, and not sing. Despite a strict upbringing, I’ve written dozens of pretty good limericks and a few excellent ones, including:

And now today, my flight out of JFK was delayed and I missed my connection in Salt Lake City and had to spend five hours waiting for the next flight to Tucson and in that time, I wrote this column and I also discovered the best macaroni and cheese I’ve ever had in my life. Macron à la fromage.

Every mishap leads to good fortune. And so I conclude that there is no reason to plan ahead, scope things out, seek recommendations. I met my beloved because her sister was a classmate of my sister and I ran into her one day and when she heard that I lived in New York, she said, “My sister lives in New York” and I said, “Oh, really?” andit wasthe luckiest Oh, really of my life. Good things come in threes. Everyone is the judge of their own good luck. Nothing bad but what there is some good in it. God never shuts one door but what He opens another. If ifs and ands were pots and pans there’d be no trade for tinkers. What else can I tell you that you don’t already know?

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