I picked the wrong time — the mid-1930s — to come into Sherwood Anderson’s life. By then, Anderson, who surely lived by his credo that “Life not death is the great adventure,” was near the end of his fifth decade, well into his fourth marriage, and past his writing peak. Truth be told, he was too troubled to tolerate a rowdy kid, out for a little adventure himself.
He no longer heard the music of the spheres with intensity, and he was restless and depressed. When he wasn’t traveling, or debating, he lived at Ripshin, a two-story stone and chestnut log house he built on Ripshin Creek in the hills of Southwest Virginia near Troutdale. Winesburg, Ohio, his most significant work, had appeared 16 years before.
When I showed up in 1935, he was not a man inclined to indulge himself in a grandchild. But I was too young to pay much notice. The few times we met, I’m certain we got on each other’s nerves.
The first meeting I can remember came in 1938 or 1939 when his only daughter (from his first marriage) visited him at Ripshin one weekend. She arrived shortly before noon with her three kids—my brother, 2, me, 4, and my sister, 6—after a drive from North Carolina. During lunch Anderson got the idea that it would be good for me to spend several days, perhaps a week, at Ripshin with his caretaker—for the experience. But after we three children spent the afternoon running through Ripshin, playing hide-and-seek, knocking things over, flushing toilets, opening drawers, and bringing snakes and frogs into the house, he didn’t mention it again. He had trouble masking his distress that day, I am told. My mother, no fool, thereafter left us at home when she visited.
But strange to say, Anderson visited us in North Carolina at least once after that, in about 1940. I remember it better than the visit to Ripshin because of what transpired. He arrived early, so my mother had time to put on a sumptuous Southern supper even though the Depression was far from over. I was ravenous from a hard day at play as we sat down. So, I did not fail to note the gusto with which Anderson loaded his plate, heaping on mashed potatoes, gravy, greens, peas, and two pork chops, plus a brace of biscuits. When everyone else was served (one pork chop each), I noted that one remained on the meat platter.
I knew my father, sister and brother were no slouches as eaters, and I sensed that Anderson, faced with such fare, would be fast with his fork. My plan was to eat quickly, and thus get the last pork chop before anyone challenged. So, I laid into the food, keeping a watchful eye on Anderson. But my anxiety soon faded when I saw that he had a fatal flaw as an eater—he talked. He got to talking and I got to eating and my plate was empty before he got going good.
Sensing victory, I reached for the meat platter, and was sliding it quickly toward my plate when a voice I recognized as my mother’s said, rather loudly it seemed to me, “Mike, where are your manners? Aren’t you going to ask your grandfather if he wouldn’t like that pork chop?”
Done in by my own mother. Anderson, who had been talking almost without letup, grew quiet. I think I looked across the table at him and said in a hesitant drawl: “Uh, you don’t want that pork chop...uh, do you?” He looked at me a minute, smiled, and allowed as how he didn’t. I was beginning to warm up to him.
But the battle wasn’t won, for my mother said next, “Then how about your father, and your brother and sister?”
Them? When I looked around, my father declined, but my brother and sister didn’t. Then Anderson, still watching and maybe a bit bemused, said suddenly, “Hell, cut it three ways!” A reasonable solution, no doubt, but I felt betrayed. And I noted that by the time my portion was served to me, Anderson was off again on some topic that held little interest for me. And so it went until late in the night.
An hour or so later, after dessert, Anderson was still talking, but we managed to get away from the table and into the living room where he took up a position in front of the large wood stove and continued. While he hogged the heat—it was deep winter—and the conversation, I looked for ways to avoid having to go to bed. I soon realized that Anderson was a help there. Anderson’s talk apparently had my parents mesmerized, for they took no note of us kids as it grew late.
As we lazed on the floor near the stove, not unlike hounds, paying little attention to what Anderson said, I noticed that he rocked back and forth from his heels to the balls of his feet as he talked. I hadn’t seen anyone do that, and I found it irritating. I figured that this pendulum motion was caused by his huge stomach, which I knew was filled with food, including two pork chops, and for some reason, this was causing him difficulty with his balance.
When my mother eventually realized how late it was and dragged us off to bed, Anderson was still holding forth. As I went off reluctantly to a cold bedroom, I did not know that he would be gone before I awoke the next day and that I would not see him again. I also had no way of knowing that I would one day, in a manner of speaking, avenge an unkindness done him.
Anderson died of peritonitis in the Canal Zone a year or so later while on his way to South America. He’d swallowed part of a toothpick, some think at a party while devouring hors d’oeuvres and quaffing martinis before his ship left New York. By the time he got to the Canal Zone and into a hospital at Colon, it was too late.
Curious that I would remember that meal so long ago and almost nothing of what he said. I cannot even remember the sound of his voice, and to date I have been unable to find tape recordings of any of his lectures or debates, if they exist. I don’t think I ever called him grandfather, and if he called my grandson, I don’t remember it.
What I know of Anderson comes largely from his books and family lore. Our family was always pleased that he helped struggling writers get published, including Faulkner and Hemingway, even though they later parodied him in books. When our family set up the nonprofit Sherwood Anderson Foundation several years ago to help young writers as Anderson had done, we got an indication that Anderson’s influence on writers may have been more widespread than we realized. Norman Mailer, among those who lent their names to the foundation as honorary trustees, wrote: “It must be 40 years since I read Winesburg, Ohio, but I still remember, not only the excitement and the beauty of Anderson’s work, but the pleasure he inspired in me at the thought that one day I, too, might be a writer.”
Which made me glad that I had attempted to avenge one slight done Anderson by Hemingway. I should say first that Faulkner eventually apologized to Anderson for his parody Mosquitoes. Lucky for him. But Hemingway never apologized for The Torrents of Spring. So I parodied him some years ago in a two-page newspaper feature that got a surprisingly favorable reception. I figure Anderson would have smiled, and, no doubt, he would have said, “Pass that boy another pork chop!”