Dear Neighbor,
Many years ago, after a chance encounter that changed my life, I came up with the phrase “God playing chess.”
People meet for a variety of reasons, usually circumstantial: coworkers, neighbors, classmates — situations we sign up for aware that unknowns will become knowns.
Sometimes, though, we meet someone in the oddest way at just the right time, and life is better, richer; the person lives on, weaved into one’s life forever. That is God playing chess.
It was January 1981, and I was in graduate school in St. Louis. That morning, I was in the cafeteria having coffee, preparing for my first class. A few months earlier I’d discovered H.L. Mencken (1880–1956), my all-time favorite writer.
Ready for class with time to spare, I pulled out my copy of “The Vintage Mencken” (my version of American Express’ slogan “Never Leave Home Without It”). If it’s possible to fall in love with a dead writer, I was head over heels.
At the next table sat an older gentleman smoking a cigar (remember the roaring, no restrictions ‘80s?). Mencken was rarely photographed without a cigar and though this man looked like Albert Einstein, the cigar captivated me.
Unable to hold in my enthusiasm, I said, “Excuse me, but you remind me of H.L. Mencken.” Surprised, he asked, “You read Mencken?” “Yes; I love him!” Astonishingly, he replied, “I met him.”
“You did?” My questions flowed. He began to answer, then asked me to join him as he was hard of hearing and shouting wasn’t his style. I moved to his table, and he told me how, as a teenager, he’d entered a nationwide writing contest sponsored by the Baltimore Sun, Mencken’s stalwart employer, and was one of 12 winners, each of whom was whisked off by train to Baltimore for an audience with the judges who included Mencken.
And thus, our friendship began. His name was Isaac Gurman. And that’s the last time you’ll read his first name. I was raised in a household where anyone older than 30 went by Mr., Mrs. or Miss (the term Ms., though coined in the 18th century, was not popularized until the late 1980s). As he was 50 years older than I, his first name — the only one I’ve ever used — was Mr.
Mr. Gurman was a law professor, but it was Mencken, and all things literary, that connected us. We began meeting in the cafeteria regularly, fueled by coffee, curiosity and conversation. I came to learn that he was a widower and had a son who lived in Florida. I was at that age when acquiring friendships is breezy; Mr. Gurman was at an age when new friendships are curated, meaningful connections. Nonetheless, we were made for each other. There was never a lull; our encounters ended only when one of us had to get to class.
When the semester ended in May, Mr. Gurman proposed we meet for lunch, and that summer every Wednesday at noon we met in the downtown department store Stix Baer & Fuller’s Missouri Room.
We always had the same individual garden salads and shared a club sandwich. Our drink was iced tea. But the real sustenance was conversation. A ritual was established at the end of our first lunch. Mr. Gurman handed me a book, a biography of Max Perkins, the renowned editor at Scribner’s who turned into gold works by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and many more, adding that he hoped we would discuss it next Wednesday.
I began the book on the bus ride home and hardly put it down until it was finished. So much to talk about! We did, and then another book, another lunch, another book, and so on until September when we were back at school. He smoked a cigar throughout our book discussions. I learned more that summer than in any class I’ve ever taken.
Though I offered, he never allowed me to pick up the tab: “A gentleman always pays.” I needed a generosity end run. His birthday was in August, and to celebrate we had dinner at Blueberry Hill on Delmar Boulevard. Over dessert I presented him with a silver cigar cutter. He cried.
In 1983 I finished my degree and moved to St. Paul where I’d gotten a job. We wrote letters often and then his stopped. I kept writing to him until I received a letter from his son telling me that Mr. Gurman had died, and thanking me for making his final years happy ones. I cried.
Mr. Gurman lives on in the part of my soul reserved for those special people who have made me smarter and wiser and kinder and a better person. God’s checkmate.
