The interview with the young woman completed, I suggested that we two go to lunch. The graphic designer was new to St. Louis, Missouri and was in town to apply for a position in the advertising department of the Famous-Barr department store. I oversaw the work of the people who designed the newspaper ads and the photographers who recorded the models and merchandise to be displayed in the catalogs. With the completion of the formal interview, I thought that it would be relaxing to introduce the candidate to the part of the city where she might work. We stepped onto the street, I offered her my arm and she graciously accepted.
I do not have a cultured background. I learned nothing about the ways of so-called polite society and could not distinguish between the salad fork and the “get down to business” fork. But I did learn to read, and to properly deliver the English language to listeners and readers. And somewhere, sometime, I picked up some other cultural habits. When seated in a booth with a woman, I always sat on the outside. With my first bride, I trained myself to eat with my left hand, as she was left-handed and when seated on her left side in a diner, we did elbow battle. When walking down the street with a woman, I always walked on the street side (though there was no need to protect the lady from the splash of mud from the horses stomping by). And always offer an arm. But the offer of an arm was not practiced often and most memorably with two people in my life. The first was the young graphic designer in St. Louis, and the second was toward an artist who became my lifelong friend.
I met Nancy Mahanes in March 1996, at the wedding of her sister-in-law, who was my best friend. We talked and laughed and at the end of the ceremony and celebration, she made her leave. She had delighted me, and when she took her leave, I accompanied her to her car. I offered my arm, she accepted it and as we traveled the path from the newlyweds’ house, we stopped to look at the blue Robin’s egg that lay smashed on the brick pathway. On the street, I opened the door to her car, she seated herself in it, and drove away. We wrote letters to each other for 27 years. Neither before, nor since, has my proffered arm been graced by such sweet acceptance, and never has a greater flower of friendship bloomed from that simple gesture. When I visited with her sister-in-law and her new husband, I would also visit with Nancy. I shopped for her, cleared the clinging ivy from around her bathroom window, repaired the wallpaper in that bathroom, learned how to work with oil pastels from her, and was introduced to the singer Eva Cassidy. I would call her, and if I got her answering machine, I left a message. “This is your Stevie Wonder call: I just called to say I love you.” One of her texts to me was this: “Hey Stevie, call me if you have a few (minutes).” I also sang to her, just as Frank did: “No one can ever replace my Nancy, with the laughing face.”
I hired the designer who strolled with me in St. Louis, and we are still friends, primarily through a social media platform. Nancy died on May 9th, 2023, so I can no longer call her. But I will long remember her quiet acceptance of my offered arm.
cjon3acd@att.net