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Page 4
Frankly, I wondered at first whether Andrew E. Durham's letters
would arouse much interest in these days of globalization, the
Internet and a pop culture centered around sensational
audio/video special effects, but I agreed to at least look at a
few. Soon an Express Mail packet arrived with the first of
hundreds of pages of yellowed onion-skin copies of typewritten
correspondence, most of it dating from 1913 through 1954.
It wasn't long before I cracked my first smile over a clever turn
of phrase used to describe a domestic scene. The first good laugh
followed not long after that, upon reading how a former governor
colluded with a livestock speculator to run up the price of
breeding bulls. An account of a disastrous summer theater
production was downright hilarious. Then I found myself nodding
soberly in agreement over witty but forceful arguments about the
need to balance the budget and restore fiscal responsibility to
government an argument that could have keen made yesterday,
except that the deficits quoted were only in the millions, not
the billions. Finally, there was a story about an ill-fated love
affair of an old bachelor brother that produced a lump in my
throat.
I quickly discovered that Andrew Durham had a great wit, an
irrepressible sense of humor and untiring interest in his
surroundings--the people, the politics, the commerce of everyday
life--all of it studied thoroughly and recounted energetically
with a homespun irony akin to that of other humorists of his era,
such as George Ade, Mark Twain and Will Rogers.
In his day, Andrew was much in demand as a public speaker. A
brittle newspaper clipping included with the letters revealed
that at a reunion of his college fraternity, in 1929, he shared
the podium with legendary baseball manager Branch Rickey and
prominent Chicago attorney Roy O. West.
As demonstrated by his letters, Andrew was an irrepressible
storyteller who could not resist a jest even when ordering parts
for a stove. When writing in pursuit of a payment on an overdue
note at the bank, he would ease the bite by asking the debtor's
"help" in paying for a daughter's wedding. Andrew wrote
incessantly. I suppose everyone wrote more back then, when
telephone connections were often poor and always expensive, but
stamps cost only 2 cents. Letters were also a form of
entertainment in those pre-TV days.
Much of his correspondence was business-related, and Andrew was
evidently a very busy man. But he could still find time to type
out a five-page, single-spaced letter of advice to the son of an
old friend who had landed in jail. He had never even met the
young miscreant. In that and other instances, Andrew's prose took
on new energy, stressing the therapeutic value of character and
principles, as well as a good laugh.
Long before I stopped reading that first day, I was hooked. This
stuff is priceless. Some of it might appear exotic or dated,
particularly to nonagrarian folks who do not know what it is like
to live off the land or reside in small towns where everybody
knows everybody else--but even satisfied urbanites may be
interested in reading about a different way of life. And they
surely will see similarities to their own situations in the many
stories about eccentric relatives, surly waitresses, guileful
politicians, child-rearing and money woes. Far from being
outdated, I decided, much of Andrew's material has a timeless
quality--it addresses standards and values, family and community
foibles, human dignity and folly--universal themes that still
exist, even in our electronic age.
Editing the letters was the easy part. Frank and I never did
decide how to organize them for publication. His "Pap" had
corresponded with hundreds of people about a multitude of
personal and professional topics; several diverse activities and
interests would often be recounted in the same letter, sometimes
as they occurred but often in retrospect several years later. We
finally decided to present the correspondence in chronological
order, so as to best reflect the flow of Pap's life, including
his memories as well as his latest observations. I found it great
reading, and hope you do also.
Douglas N. Hay
Mill Rift, PA
April 22, 1997
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