Thank goodness it’s gone.
When a recent essay of mine appeared here, my photo appeared with it. When asked if that would be all right, I agreed. Why not, after all, my face has appeared next to my columns before, so sure, what the heck. I now know that other contributors are obviously more humble and smarter than I. So, dear reader, I apologize to anyone whose day may have been ruined by stumbling upon my aged countenance. I had no desire to offend. I should have known better.
It didn’t take long after my face appeared that one wag said they thought it was for my obituary. At least he wasn’t offended. Oh, the price of fame. This is not the first time my mug has been recognized.
Once a gentleman approached me and asked if I was the fellow who wrote in the newspaper. “Yes,” I responded. Whereupon he lambasted me up one side and down the other for having offended him and demanded an apology. Not knowing this person or what offense I had committed, I nevertheless apologized profusely, discretion being the better part of valor.
After a while, one builds up a defense to strangers approaching you, wagging their fingers inquiring about something I had written. My first thought is always to look for the baseball bat they may have hidden behind their back. One time however, my defense was premature. A white-haired older lady approached me in a library. She believed she had recognized someone she knew. I had written about a favorite teacher of mine in elementary school.
I described the teacher as “Mr. K,” who was my sixth-grade teacher. I said he was a bear of a man with a little head and a mischievous grin who waddled rather than walked. He always wore a suit jacket that hung to his knees, or so it seemed. About once a week he would pick up and hold unruly students upside-down by their ankles – always boys, girls wore skirts in those days – until all the “truck” (miscellaneous small articles of little value) fell out of their pockets. The class would roar with laughter.
Apparently, my description was right on point because she was sure she had attended graduate school with him. She was right, even though Mr. Kennedy taught in our own Mattapoisett Center School some 40 years earlier and 80 miles from that library.
I expect that sometime well-known people might wish they were recognized. An example of that happened right here in our own little village. Before there was a 7-Eleven and Dunkin Donuts near old Salty the Seahorse and before a Salvation Army outlet store vacated the location, there was an A&P grocery store.
A United States senator had a vacation home in our area where he came each weekend, presumably to get away from the madness in Washington. While driving from Connecticut one Friday evening, the senator stopped into the A&P to purchase some groceries. Being the busy man that he was with no doubt much on his mind, he forgot to bring his wallet with his identification on the drive north. Not until he reached the checkout counter did he realize his omission. His personal check was rejected, despite his protests and pleadings because it was from out of state. He left his bag of groceries on the counter and departed.
An old friend of mine, who worked at the A&P, claimed that all the while the encounter was taking place, the evening news was playing on the television in the manager’s office with the senator’s face front and center. Not until later did anyone realize that a participant in one of America’s historic episodes was in their midst.
The entire encounter was later confirmed to be true when Senator Lowell Weicker, a member of the infamous Watergate Committee, retold the tale in a speech at a United States Press Club luncheon in Washington, noting that the adventure took place in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts.
Sometimes having your face in the paper can work in your favor. When I ran for a local elected position some years back, my recognition factor increased exponentially. To my surprise, I won the election.
This time however, as Mark Twain is reputed to have said, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
Editor’s note: Mattapoisett resident Dick Morgado is an artist and retired newspaper columnist whose musings are, after some years, back in The Wanderer under the subtitle “Thoughts on ….” Morgado’s opinions have also appeared for many years in daily newspapers around Boston.
Thoughts on…
By Dick Morgado