No need to be scared, but this week’s history photo began as a 2020 New Year’s resolution. I was determined, as always, to kick off the year by cleaning tons of old paperwork out of the attic. I’ve been lugging these files around since I was an English teacher and budding journalist in the dawning years of the 1970s. The frightening part is that – this time I did it. Brave young men in rubber suits just tossed nearly a dozen banker’s boxes of my old student essays and teacher lesson plans into a trash recycling truck. It was a bittersweet moment.
Not everything went. My collection of a hundred rejection slips from the nation’s finest magazines was too precious to part with. And among the color coded manila file folders, up popped this fading photo I took of novelist Stephen King. If memory serves, I was headed to Ogunquit Beach in 1980 where King was. Okay, I couldn’t remember why he was there, so I looked it up online. I’d forgotten that parts of his novel “The Stand” take place in Ogunquit, and King was on hand during the filming of the movie version.
Haven’t read somewhere that King liked the music of some rock band, like a devoted fan, I picked up a copy of that band’s latest album as a present for the renowned horror writer. King is holding the record album in his hand as he lunges toward my camera in this picture.
I have encountered few celebrities in my life. I once sat on the knee of Boston TV-artist Captain Bob Cottle. If you’re not on Medicare, you’ll have to Google him. I interviewed the Pepperidge Farm man and the organist in Vanilla Fudge. I recently posed for a selfie with INternet political satirist Randy Rainbow. Oh, and I wrote and once directed a radio commercial with actor Mason Adams, best known for his memorable voiceovers on ads for Smucker’s jam. You may need to Google him, too.
Suffice it to say, for a writer I’ve led a sheltered life. And with the exception of Stephen King and Linda Ronstadt, I’m rarely starstruck. My theory is that anyone famous enough to draw a crowd doesn’t need special attention from me. Which may be why, after chasing down Mr. King on the beach 40 years ago in 1980, my career as a celebrity stalker was over. The event was, in a word, embarrassing.
My files also reveal a brief correspondence. I wrote to King in July of 1980 requesting an interview. I noted that, like him, I was an English teacher and (minus a series of multi-million selling novels) was a fellow writer. I included the obligatory self-addressed stamped envelope.
King wrote back. He suggested I catch his upcoming speech at the Biltmore Hotel in Rhode Island. Maybe afterwards we could talk. I asked what kind of beer he preferred, and he said Miller Lite. But I never made it to Rhode Island. King kindly included his private phone number in a letter, and I must have called him back because this photo appeared in a local newspaper some 40 years ago. Or did I chicken out and never call? It’s cringeworthy either way. Like a body long buried, some memories are just too horrible to dig up.
Copyright J. Dennis Robinson, all rights reserved.
Political Poems for the Common Man