The problem with a failing memory is that you tend to forget things, if that makes sense. In last week’s column about the Sou’Wester Lodge and its owners, Len and Miriam Atkins, I erred in saying it was Dr. Spock who invited Len to Chicago when it was actually another doctor of equal fame and ability, Dr. Bruno Bettelheim.
I also didn’t get into the subject of how much fun it was for me to perform as Mark Twain there. Audiences were small. It was difficult to find room for more than 35 miss-matched chairs in that former living room with a huge fireplace at one end — but that was a perfect size audience. Over the years there I had a few people say it was better than Hal Holbrook’s performance.
That’s not true, of course, but I understood why it was said. Holbrook spoke before huge audiences and had to talk at them, but with such a small audience I was talking with them. I could make eye contact with each one. The evening became a conversation, not a performance.
I suppose there’s one more reason I went back there so many times; namely that I could stay overnight in one of the five funky self-equipped units squeezed into that former mansion. Each had a full bathroom as well as cooking and eating facilities. All one needed to provide were the groceries.
But there was a greater charm to the event; that of having breakfast with Len and Miriam the next morning after the performance in their private kitchen. If all the problems in the world weren’t solved in those cherished moments, they were at least listed and cataloged. It was a delight to sit there and listen to Len speak in aSouth African and Jewish accent. While Miriam had acclimated her accent to Americanism it wasn’t all that important on Len’s agenda. On no particular schedule Len would send out witty and brilliant items to friends, called “Sou’Westerings” filled with delightful observations. I wish I had saved more than five of them; his description of a computer problem was priceless.
When my son Matthew did a show there singing his songs of the sea — in addition to performing twice with the Whateverly Brothers — it was in that same room. Corine and I always made a point of joining them there— but were never charged for our room. After I put away my rocking chair and hung my white suit in the closet for keeps we didn’t find many oportunities to go there just to visit. Oh, once — before I lost my pilot’s license on a medical technicality — Corine and I rented an airplane and flew there. I made two circles around the Lodge (at a possibly less then legal altitude) to let Len know we were ready to be picked up at a small landing strip nearby. And after a few cherished hours, we flew back home.
Then tragedy didn’t strike, it just slipped in quietly and gradually. Len began having occasional hallucinations. He might get upset because he was certain all the toilets in the lodge had plugged up — or maybe that guests were stealing blankets and taking them home. He was slowly falling victim to Alzheimer’s disease. After a lifetime of helping other peoples’ mental problems he now had to fight his own.
The progress was slow but steady and eventually reached the unavoidable point where Len and Miriam moved up to the third floor and brought in a young man, Stephen Pearce, to manage the property. It wasn’t long, though, before they felt they had to sell their beloved Sou’Wester and move to Portland to be near their children. Matthew and I drove there one day to have lunch with them, and it was obvious — there would be no more witty and brilliant Sou’Westerings.
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Bill Moeller is a former entertainer, mayor, bookstore owner, city council member, paratrooper and pilot living in Centralia. He can be reached at bookmaven321@comcast.net.
