1952

If Charlie Blakemore could not find something to write when he had this column for eight years, he made things up. When the target classmates called to put the record straight, he turned the complaints into columns.

Charlie's career, is, as it was then, the creative side of advertising with Leo Burnett, a most successful agency. There was a brief period when Charlie had his own agency with another advertising colleague. Then somewhere in there, he ran a ski lodge in North Creek (say "crick") near Gore Mountain in the Adirondacks. He returned to Leo Burnett in 1988 and became creative director in Mexico City.

His advice: "Don't live here." The pollution in the air is vile, aggravating his allergies, and the xenophobia directed at Americans is as poisonous as the air. However, Charles finds the Mexican women bright and creative, and he has hired many of them. His Spanish is coming along, but he has difficulty, after French training at Dartmouth, paying attention to every vowel.

Charlie's long-term goal is to retire to the Northeast, preferably New Hampshire. He has writing in mind. It is his life. At Dartmouth he won the Grimes Prize and he was a cofounder of the Tabard Literary Club. He has been writing for a living, and now he is writing because "not to write is to die," as his late friend Tom Williams, a national book award winner, said to him.

Charlie's first book, The Subjective Truth, a novel about two fictional jazz musicians, has been published by Winston Derek in Nashville, Tenn. Julie Robinson wrote to say that Charlie was host of an opening party in Greenwich Village, and the book was a winner. Charlie was a jazz drummer in Hanover and a jazz fan, which brought him into contact with many musicians. They have been agglomerated into the characters of his book.

There is a second book, Wild Old WickedMan, perhaps an updated version of Travelswith Charlie, in which the WOWM travels around the U.S. The title is from Yeats. A third and as-yet unnamed book is just being started. The premise is that in the early twenty-first century, things are so bad in the United States that the space program has been reestablished and a capsule leaves the Earth, returning 20 years later. Time has been compressed, however, as the capsule approached the speed of light, and so the actual return is 175 years later. The space travelers emerge to find that a holocaust has left the Earth without the ability to generate electricity. What happens next? Buy the book!

Charlie is single after two marriages and six children. "Stick with the kids. They won't leave you." His brood ranging from age 19 to 38 is interesting and ambitious. For example, the youngest is at the University of Oregon and this year has worked with the National Outdoor Leadership School. She is going to Kenya.

In between visiting children and nursing his allergies in the heavy, stagnant air, Charlie sits chained to his computer. The screen glows and he creates another world peopled by horn players, continental wanderers, and space travelers facing a world emergency.

10 Grove Street, Pittsford, NY 14534

Charlie Blakemore was a jazz drummer in Hanover. The many musicians he met have been agglomerated into the characters of his book. -HENRY WILLIMAS JR. '52