Category: TV

The Magic of a Letter (with a Touch of Grief)

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More than a week has passed, but my brain still swims in joy, appreciation, and disbelief.

It’s the understandable side effect of receiving a handwritten, personal letter from Carol Burnett earlier this month.

In it, she thanked me for sending I Think I’ll Prune the Lemon Tree to her as a gift for her birthday.

It’s my book of Arizona stories and St. Louis flashbacks, which includes a chapter on The Carol Burnett Show and the positive impact the program had on our family in the 1970s.

There is one other significant and unexpected side effect, which Carol’s letter has prompted: a touch of grief.

If you follow my blog or have read any of my books, you know that my mother–Helen Johnson–was the consummate letter writer.

From the late 1980s (when Mom retired) until 2010, she sent me more than a thousand letters laced with love and wisdom.

Some of them appear in From Fertile Ground. It is a three-generation writer’s mosaic about love, loss, and grief. I wrote and published the book a few years after my mother died in 2013.

Helen didn’t quite make it to ninety, the milestone Carol Burnett transcended recently. She came up six months short.

So, when Carol’s letter arrived in the mail it cued a few pangs of sadness and a familiar pleasure. One that has been missing from my life … missing from all of our lives … for a long time. That is the personal, human, and lasting connection produced by a handwritten letter.

With all of this as background, yesterday I pulled out the large blue plastic container that holds all of my mother’s letters–sent to Tom, Nick, Kirk, and me over the years. I have them classified by year.

I began to leaf through her 2003 correspondence. That was the year she turned eighty, on July 26, 2003, to be precise. My sister Diane and I hosted a big party for Mom that summer in Geneva, Illinois.

Family and friends traveled from near and far to attend Helen Johnson’s birthday dinner at the Mill Race Inn. We celebrated her first eighty years. Afterwards, we crossed a bridge over the Fox River to continue the party at the Herrington Inn, where many of our guests were staying.

At one point, a gentleman playing violin walked through the lobby. He asked my mother if she would like him to play Waltzing Matilda, her favorite song. (Matilda was her middle name.)

Mom’s eyes sparkled with glee as he stood over her. He slid the bow across the strings, and I watched her spirit soar. In short order, she began to sing … “Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda, you’ll come a waltzing Matilda with me.”

Ordinarily, my mother didn’t enjoy being the center of attention. But, looking back, that moment in a posh hotel on the banks of the Fox River surrounded by loved ones may have been the happiest and most spontaneous moment of Helen Matilda Ferrell Johnson’s life.

If you’ve been doing the math as you read this story, you know that my mother’s 100th birthday is approaching. It’s just two months away. One of the best ways I can celebrate the memories of her is to read her letters, which she mailed to me.

In this one from May 26, 2003–twenty years ago–she recounted for Nick (my older son) and me that she and my dad bought their first new car (a black, four-door Plymouth) in Texas in February 1951.

I must have just told her about Nick’s first car, a used Toyota Camry, which his mom and I had just helped him buy when he was nineteen.

Whether a letter comes from a legend of stage and screen like Carol Burnett or someone who lived a more ordinary (yet still remarkable) life like my extraordinary mother, the words and the movement of the pen on the physical page speak directly from one heart to another … far exceeding the temporary status of a text, email, or phone call.

That’s the context and beauty–the magic, really–of an authentic, handwritten letter.

The Cherry on Top

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This isn’t a story about cherries or ice cream sundaes–or even about the yummy gluten-free, 9 x 12-inch decadent chocolate sheet cake I baked over the weekend. (Tom and I are in the process of devouring it.)

No, it’s a tale about an unexpected, sweet, extraordinary exchange (shared from afar through snail mail) between this independent writer and a legendary actor of stage and screen, who recently celebrated a milestone birthday.

***

On April 27, I wrote a letter to Carol Burnett. I mailed it in a padded pouch with my book I Think I’ll Prune the Lemon Tree. It is comprised of thirty-nine essays … a mix of true stories and desert fantasies … which I published in 2021.

One of them (A Custodian, A Scrub Woman, and Me) is about the special meaning The Carol Burnett Show held in our suburban St. Louis family in the 1970s.

In the story, I describe how Carol’s weekly hijinks, madcap comedic troop, and sense of humanity brought joy to my father (a depressed janitor) and me (an emerging adolescent).

On April 26, 2023–Carol’s ninetieth birthday–Tom and I watched her birthday celebration and tribute on NBC. The program resurfaced so many fabulous memories. It also prompted me to draft and send my letter (and enclose the book as a gift) to Carol through her agent.

I really didn’t expect to hear back. The act of sending the book to Carol was gratifying enough. To share my joy of watching her variety show every week decades ago.

But then, the mailed arrived today. Wedged between our SRP bill and instructions for me concerning an upcoming routine health procedure, was a handwritten letter addressed to me in beautiful penmanship.

On the upper left corner of the outside envelope just one cursive word appeared in dark blue ink: Burnett. The street address was printed on the back flap.

I carefully opened the card without ripping the corners. Inside was this personal message from that kooky comedienne with a toothy smile and infectious laugh. The same one who captured my twelve-year-old heart and creative imagination more than fifty years ago.

Best. Carol Burnett … Is there anything better than that?!

In this world of incessant breaking news, a personal note from a star (who took the time to tell me she was touched by what I wrote) is just the encouragement I needed to keep writing. To tell and follow the story. To send cards and letters when I feel compelled to do so.

Because one hot evening in May–when you least expect it–you just might receive the cherry on top you never imagined.

Happy Birthday, Carol Burnett!

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Photo by lil artsy on Pexels.com

As a tribute to the legendary Carol Burnett on her ninetieth birthday, I’m repurposing and tweaking this piece, which I wrote on April 1, 2020.

It first appeared here that day. About a year later, I expanded it for I Think I’ll Prune the Lemon Tree, my book of essays.

Thank you, Carol, for your enduring sense of humanity and a lifetime of laughs.

I’m so glad we had this time together.

***

A Custodian, A Scrub Woman, and Me

At 9 p.m. Central Time on Monday nights in 1970–fifty years before the contagious Covid-19 stunned our world–a kooky comedienne with a toothy smile and infectious laugh captured my twelve-year-old heart and creative imagination. Her name was Carol Burnett.

Born April 26, 1933–in the depths of the Great Depression–this legendary actor of stage and screen first tasted success with her Tony-nominated Broadway performance in Once Upon a Mattress in 1959. Soon after she appeared as a regular on The Gary Moore Show.  My exposure to her madcap comedic skills began on September 11, 1967. That’s when The Carol Burnett Show debuted on CBS-TV.

Through the spring of 1971, the network ran the hour-long variety and sketch comedy format opposite two popular programs: NBC’s I Spy; and ABC’s The Big Valley. (Later in the seventies, as the show gained a larger audience and momentum, CBS moved The Carol Burnett Show into its Saturday night lineup following four other prime-time powerhouse comedies: All in the Family, M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and The Bob Newhart Show.)

Back in 1970, after I finished my homework on Monday nights, the lights on stage came up around Carol and were transmitted through our Zenith color TV in suburban St. Louis. Long before I first imagined taking flight in my dusty desert time machine, she proceeded to field questions from her studio audience and lead me and thousands of other viewers across the country on a metaphoric and comedic joy ride.

Every week we sat mesmerized. We watched Carol and her creative troop–Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, Lyle Waggoner … and later Tim Conway–perform their magical TV mayhem. Together they represented creative constancy in my life.

At that time, Dad worked the night shift as a custodian for a government agency in St. Louis: sweeping and mopping floors; cleaning toilets and urinals; emptying waste baskets.

It was a life of late-night drudgery my father, the ex-salesman and unfulfilled poet, couldn’t stomach and never dreamed of—especially when the rest of the world had Carol and the hilarity of her As the Stomach Turns weekly soap parody at their disposal from the comfort of their living room couches.

But like clockwork, at 9:30, Dad called during a break from his janitorial job. He craved a creative escape too. He wanted my color commentary on Carol’s show. The ringing on our kitchen phone was my cue to fill in the comedic gaps.

I stretched the curly cord into the living room and translated Carol’s hour-long variety show into something positive that might sustain him….at least for one night.

To put this in its proper personal perspective, Dad felt he was missing the important moments in life: a traditional schedule of evenings at home with his wife and children watching Carol’s shenanigans. All for the sake of a weekly paycheck and a job that clogged his ego like a stopped-up toilet.

As far as Walter Johnson was concerned, there was nothing else remotely funny about 1970. The Vietnam War was raging. Nixon was president. That was awful enough. Especially for a life-long Democrat.

I’d like to think our phone exchange during his break and my play-by-play of Carol’s comedy sketches and crazy Bob Mackie costumes he missed helped transform his melancholy spirit.

Ironically, over the course of Burnett’s career, she frequently reprised the role of a soulful scrub woman, who cleaned up after everyone else went home. It was Burnett’s tattered-but-enduring character, which became her show’s symbol of humor, heart and humanity.

Like the rotary phone that rang on our kitchen wall, I never imagined the show would one day disappear. But on March 29, 1978, after eleven seasons and 279 episodes (notwithstanding another nine episodes that aired in the fall of 1991) the curtain came down on The Carol Burnett Show.

In the mix, the Vietnam War ended. The troops came home. Nixon resigned in 1974. I graduated from high school and went on to college in 1975. Dad did his best to complete his night-shift janitorial duties.

In August of 1976, at sixty-two-years old—the age I am now—he retired from a job he despised but tolerated to contribute what he could to the well-being of our family. Remarkably, my father lived another seventeen years, despite his struggles with heart disease and depression.

“I’m so glad we had this time together, just to have a laugh or sing a song. Seems we just get started and before you know it, comes the time we have to say so long.”

At the close of each of her shows, Carol Burnett sang this familiar tune, tugged on her left earlobe, and signed off. Evidently, it was a signal to her grandmother to let her know she was doing okay.

I loved it all. Carol’s shenanigans, her show, her sidekicks, her song, her signal, her sentiment. Dad did too. Everything she represented … her physical humor, uproarious laughter and wacky demeanor … sustained us through difficult times.

Fortunately, Carol Burnett lives on. So do the best moments from her comedy sketches on her Carol Burnett and Friends shows that appear in syndication.

Beaver’s Pigeons

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At seven-fifteen in my Monday-morning, Me-TV, Leave It to Beaver universe, older brother Wally delivered sad news to Beaver from the other side of their closed bedroom door.

A mischievous neighborhood cat had killed Miss Canfield and Miss Landers, Beaver’s pigeons named after his favorite teachers. The crisis occurred during Wally’s watch as crestfallen Beaver quarantined with a case of chicken pox.

“Beaver’s Pigeons” (season 2, episode 20 of Leave It to Beaver) first aired on February 12, 1959, in an America long gone and mostly forgotten.

But it still exists as a comfortable escape for Tom and me–a lesson-laden gift from our past civilization that taught children right from wrong and nudged parents toward greater understanding through humor and humility.

Watching it over breakfast today momentarily softened the blow of 2022’s cataclysmic news tsunami: the U.S. Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v. Wade that turns the clock back fifty years in human rights; the stunning evidence of corruption unearthed by the January 6th committee that dwarfs Watergate; and the devastation of the war in Ukraine that has shaken the world.

Then, as the episode unfolded, I felt the velvet hammer of realization clobber me. What was it about Beaver’s loss of two ordinary pigeons that moved me to tears over my yogurt and granola?

Certainly, it was the kind response of Beaver’s friends Larry and Whitey. They told Wally–and Ward and June, Beaver’s idyllic parents–they knew it would help Beaver deal with the loss of his pets if he could watch from his second-story window as they dug a hole and buried the pigeons in the side yard.

As Beaver glanced down to view the pet funeral, my tears also were prompted by this harsh reality that slaps me in the face daily: I live in a country that has lost its way, dismisses innocence as weakness, and embraces conspiracy theories over truths.

Too many in this nation fight more vehemently to protect their guns than their youngsters, reject books and diversity in favor of fear, and resist proven vaccinations that keep safe our most vulnerable citizens.

I know I’m not alone in my observations, anxieties, and worries. The majority would agree with my assessment. But as I approach my sixty-fifth birthday next week, I wonder if we will find a way to turn the tide for our children and grandchildren.

Like black-and-white Beaver in the late 50s–now more than ever as the losses mount–we need to give our youngest citizens the love, guidance, truth, and protection they deserve to cope in an often-upsetting world.