Now that we’re no longer touring, I’m using the current quarantine time to clean out my filing cabinet. Some folders can be easily tossed, others create challenges and/or opportunities.
Today, I’m looking at a folder labeled “contacts.” Not contracts—those have already been shredded. These are mostly last-century contacts, before such things found their way into my iPhone for eternal convenience. So now I’m holding in my hand a smallish pile of business cards, napkins and scraps of paper inscribed with names, phone numbers, or other clues as to whom I might have in my hand.
This is a job with unpredictable results. Too many of the names, when searched on the internet, return links to obituaries, which is a major bummer. But some of them lead to rescuscitated contact with friends or potential friends long thought lost.
I recently wrote a piece about Charlie Waters, my first editor at the LA Times, who passed away not so long ago. But today I found the card of Ray Steele, Jr., who was publisher at the Fresno Bee, where Charlie was working when we came through on tour. The three of us played golf in Fresno, and Ray came with Charlie and their wives to see our show. I see that Ray is now something of a big shot at the Sacramento Bee—different bee, same hive? I’ve sent an email to what I hoped might be a right address. but it wasn’t, and the Sacramento Bee has no email contact information on its web site. I’m expected to write them a letter. Homey don’t play dat, but I’ve called and sat through a thicket of voice mail clues, and hoping for a call back. I guess McClatchy doesn’t think that internet thing is really here to stay.
Next was a card from Nick Coffey, who was at the time a senior reporter and presenter for the Today Tonight show in Ireland. I looked him up and see that he’s now retired, and his son has become a film producer of some note. When my wife and I met Nick, we were in Waterford, and he had a camera crew seeking out tourists to ask opinions about a scheme to make Waterford Crystal production to Czechoslovakia. Sarah spoke to them, and I knew she told them exactly what they wanted to hear. Nick and his cohorts seemed pleased, and we were told the show would air the following Thursday, and that we should watch.
We were doing some post-tour touring on our own, and were back in Dublin that Thursday. We had forgotten the interview, of course, and had a lovely dinner of Indian food at Rajdoot, just off Grafton Street, and started walking back toward our hotel. On the way, we passed a pub and decided to pursue a post-dinner pint. As we peeked in the door, everyone at the bar seemed to turn around at once to look at us, and somebody said loud and clear: “They’re the people on the telly!” That was not the only time that happened while we were in Dublin.
Turns our that Today Tonight was the Sixty Minutes of Ireland, and its audience is huge. I’ve sent an email to his son Mark, and perhaps I’ll hear back. Or maybe Mark will say “What the hell is this?” You never know.
Finally was a card from David Le Duc, who was a friend of Simon Stokes in Sydney, Australia. He ran a wonderful restaurant in the Crow’s Next area of Sydney, and he treated us, along with Ron Tutt, to an absolutely fabulous lunch one day a few tours ago, just before the turn of the century. He's the baldest guy in the picture above. Endless Indian dishes, each more dazzling than the previous one. The next time we returned to Australia, David seemed to have disappeared. But then I searched online today and found that he and his wife, after a time at another restaurant in the Southern Highlands of Australia, have returned to England and have a restaurant called the Drum and Bugle Curry Company. It looks like it’ll be another dining palace, although the odds of our getting there are a bit longer now. Hi David, if you see this, we still talk about that lunch!
That’s enough for today—I’ll dig deeper into the pile tomorrow. And if you know any of the people above, let them know we're looking them up.