Love and Address Slips

Growing up, my relationship with my dad was often fraught. When I was very small, we argued about eating breakfast. He said I had to; I said I didn’t. When I was in grammar school he tried to teach me the multiplication tables. I’d get confused, he’d get impatient, I’d get upset, rinse, repeat. The subjects evolved but our interactions didn’t, except on the days I worked for him.

I started going into the city to work at Samuel French, the theatrical play publishing company my dad ran, for a day or two over vacations when I was about eleven. He and I would take the subway to 50^th Street and walk to West 45^th. The subway was commuter crowded, the kind of crowded that made you feel lucky if you got to hold onto a pole, never mind snagging a seat.

As a kid, I was put to work updating inventory stock cards—the good job, or sorting mailing list address slips—the bad job.

The mailing list was important. Every year Samuel French printed a catalog—War and Peace size—that listed all their plays with descriptions. They sent thousands of them out for free. I loved how a catalog could end up in one place forgotten and three years later discovered on a library shelf or at the back of a closet.

The job I didn’t like, updating the mailing list, had numerous steps. They were all miserable. The last step involved a dark machine with trays of metal address plates that lived in a back room under a tarp. But the first step of the process was the most tedious, sorting thousands of 6” X 3” paper address slips. We separated these into categories and then each category by zip code. One summer when my younger sister and I had spent the better part of a week organizing a huge box of them and proudly told our father we’d finished, he pointed to another box just as big. Sisyphus and his rock had nothing on us. I think we cried.  

Going to the office with my dad let me see how he spent his days and let me do something that made him proud. It created common ground by giving us things to talk about. His office crew was a motley bunch. One of my favorites was Everard who worked on contracts. Everard, who’d been a child prodigy on the pipe organ, spoke 11 (or was it more?) languages and studied hieroglyphics for fun. There was a switchboard operator, I think her name was Barb, who when I was 13 sidled up to me and said, “Just between us girls, how old are you?” Which made me feel adult and sophisticated to be part of an us girls.  There was Eddie in shipping—tall and skeletal thin with wispy gray hair—an alcoholic who sometimes slept in the stockroom. He could be mean as a tick but never to me. We always liked each other. At the end of our conversations, he’d quote a radio announcer who’d sign off his nightly shows by saying, “If no one said I love you today, I do, I really do.”  

It was at Samuel French that I learned my dad read comics in the bathroom. Apparently, there was always a stack in the men’s room. And once when Eugene Ionesco visited the office, Dad had him sign a copy of his play, Rhinoceros, for me.

My father’s desk was legendary with authors, agents, and other industry types. Large, heavy, and made of oak it was famous for the mounds of paper piled on top, chaos to anyone except him. He knew exactly where every envelope scribbled with his unreadable notes was located, as well as every manuscript, letter, and contract. You could test him.

For over fifty years Dad was president of Samuel French and loved every moment. He started as a boy in the stockroom when my great-grandfather ran the place and worked his way up from there. He never retired, never wanted to. When he hit eighty and started having health issues, he slowed down but still went to work every day to open the mail. By that time, I’d moved to California and we’d learned to say more than just hello on the phone.

My dad taught me many things. He taught me what it means to have a strong work ethic and how important it is to do something you love. He taught me that when you give your word you keep it, and a deal made with a handshake is as binding as one written in ink. He wasn’t a perfect father but he was a very good man. I’m grateful I got to go to work with him. Grateful I got to share a piece of something he loved, even if it meant sorting address slips.