(this is a temporary copy of the one in the zettelkasten.)
Here's another "queer family" story. Warning, it's a little long, it needs context.
In the 1960s my dad was the plumber in our town, Barrington Passage, Nova Scotia, Canada - the photo is me with him. Our phone number's on the truck: One Five Two Ring Two.
Of his hundreds or thousands of clients, there were maybe fifty who had seasonal properties, and in the spring we'd get the cottages ready before they arrived: turn on the power, make sure the pump, toilet, water heater, everything worked. (In the fall we shut it down and frost-proofed them.)
One bunch of those seasonal clients was an enclave of lesbians in a tiny non-village named Coffinscroft. Their summer place was a cluster of small hundred-year-old homes in the woods on a big property owned by a woman named Maria Leach - from one of the grand families of the town. Sister, I think to the very wealthy pharmacist with whom my Dad was friends, handyman and sailor on his schooner. My Dad had converted the huge barn on the property into a party and studio space; somewhere there's a picture of me standing up in the enormous just-completed fireplace; the mantle was twelve feet wide. Here's a pic of me when I was two, on the barn / studio / party space with their cat:
The lesbians were all writers, publishers, researchers and artists with homes on Manhattan; Aunt Mamie and Aunt Tessa had lived at the same address on Christopher Street since 1929. They had hung out with Ginsberg and Burroughs and had met Gertrude Stein and Truman Capote and.. well, everyone.
In the summertime, my dad was their handyman, and they adored me and so we spent a great deal of time there. They drank bourbon (and the mix, stumpwater; it was my job to fetch it from the swamp at the back of the property) and smoked cigars, and I called them all "Aunt." My parents knew that they were lesbians; they never used the L word, but referred to them quite lovingly as "Old Maids" which in my teens I realized was the code term.
Marion Robertson was a local anthropologist; my primers were not Dick & Jane, they were her books on Mi'kmag culture and the petroglyphs in Kejim’kujik, published by the provincial museum in the '60s, and even now I am probably one of the few people who know the Mi'kmag legend canon really well.
Maria Leach was also an anthropologist specializing in North American post-colonial culture with many books on American folklore, from children’s books of tales and riddles, to Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology & Legends. The band, The Grateful Dead, got their name from this book - so in ways Aunt Maria named the band.
Aunt Mamie and Aunt Tessa were scholars of fine art and had spent a decade together in Rome researching for the Grolier Encyclopedia of fine art, and their main work was editing art books. Their house was all books - there was no visible wall space, even over the door lintels.
One of Aunt Mamie's was used for decades in art schools all over North America, called The Natural Way To Draw.
There were lots of others -- very often artists and writers and book publishers would come to visit -- but I was closest to these three.
Anyway, from these amazing women I developed a lifelong passion for books, words, native legends, folklore, writing in general and the ineffable joy of research for its own sake.
JoanCzapalay writes: While in Rome, did you know that Mamie and T , who were my friends, too, lived in the Roman Wall? I have SO many of their stories, too, and must get them written. I met Maria only a couple of times. She was so intelligent. And Marion was a great historian. Did you know Viola Sperka? She was a Coder for the US military in Washington, DC. from 1941 and on. Lived with her mother (Anne ?) and cat Elizabeth on Brass Hill. And there was an Ann and John from NYC who visited in summers. What interesting folks. You bet! I visited them often and they came to my place for Thanksgiving, as my husband went salmon fishing that weekend and I cooked a big turkey. All the "maids" and my dear friends, Marion Abbott and Beulah Burman would come too. In later years I visited them whenever I could to talk of art, music, great books and travel. A joy to have known them. And Beulah Drohm and Alice Cheska as well, who simmered at Sebim.
well there’s a thousand more threads but weaving them into a story is the work. here are some snippets:
I didn’t really punch it up in the first story but I think subconsciously must have made the connection: I’m gay —> Aunt Mamie and Tessa are too —> they are good friends with Mom and Dad —> it’s safe to be gay. This obviously made a HUGE difference in my whole life.
I don’t have any photos of them at the moment, but Aunt Mamie looked a LOT like Mrs Doubtfire, say this image of her.
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/10/17/arts/16doubtfire-item1/16doubtfire-item1-articleLarge.jpg
… big smothering bosom, lots of lavender. Aunt Tessa was the butch one.
Aunt Maria’s cottage… house, now that I think about it, I guess she lived there full time - was not twenty yards from Mamie & Tessa’s, on the other side of a stone fence. It had lots of books but it wasn’t *full* of books.
On their cigar-and-bourbon regular fare they super gravelly voices.
As an adult, when a trans woman asks if her voice sounds like a woman I really can’t answer - they sounded like a woman, like themselves, so does my trans friend. I really have no concept of what a woman is supposed to sound like.
I never figured out they were lesbians until I was 21 and heading to New York for Stonewall 25 and my parents said, “Oh if you’re going to New York you have to visit Mamie & Tessa” so I got their address from her - maybe this place:
.. Christopher Street. They lived in the top flat, had rented the same flat since 1929; Tessa was at the family home in New Jersey, Mamie took us up onto the roof and we looked over and she pointed out where all of the gay and some non-gay literati had lived on the street for the last half century.
Anyway when my mom gave me the address, that’s when the penny dropped. Living together for the last 50 years… Greenwich Village, Christopher Street…. DUH. YA THINK :-)
Mamie & Tessa had a clockwork roasting spit just like this one, I think:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8qY8SNj8cs
which they said they would give to me when I was grown up. But I lost contact with them when we moved away.
Here are some pics of me at age 2 or 3 on their barn / studio / party space doorstep (my mom’s handwriting.)
https://bonmot.ca/~daniel/pics/Mamie_and_Tessa/1966_Dan_barn.jpg https://bonmot.ca/~daniel/pics/Mamie_and_Tessa/1966_Dan_barn_back.jpg https://bonmot.ca/~daniel/pics/Mamie_and_Tessa/1965_ca_Dan_barn.jpg
You can google "Mamie Harmon Artist"
The book The Natural Way To Draw was edited and completed by Mamie Harmon in 1941. It launched her writing/editing career.
Nephew, Tom Harmon, b. 1927, saved Mamie's artwork from the dump after her death and transported it all to their home in Greensboro. The University of North Carolina at Greensboro's Art Museum's curator, Will South was enthusiastic.
Mamie Harmon grew up in Macon, Ga., the youngest child of a Methodist minister. In the 1920s, she traveled alone to China, Egypt and across Europe before settling in New York in the early 1930s, where she became a student, artist, folklorist, editor and freelance writer.
Written for LauraShepherd 2018-04-10
When I was growing up, the two women who took charge of my classical education were Aunt MamieHarmon & Aunt Tessa, TheresaBrackley. They weren't the blood relative kind of aunt; they were the very close friend of the family kind. Mamie was from Brooklyn, Tessa from.... rural Tennessee I think, and they both had exotic American drawls. They'd been partners since the early 1930s and both worked for big New York book publishers, and in the winter they lived in a tiny 3rd floor apartment on Christopher Street. In the summer they had a house in a lesbian artists' enclave in Coffinscroft, Nova Scotia, for which my father was the handyman.
Physically Mamie and Tessa looked a lot like Mrs. Doubtfire: busty and muscular, and they lived mostly on on cigars and bourbon, and as a result the sound of their voices were a half octave or a full octave below my dad's, and I never thought twice about it. They sounded like them.
In fact I never thought about a girl- or boy-sound at all until I was a full fledged queer, and trans friends would start asking me about it, and I realized that although I'm not colour blind -- far from it -- I am voice-sound-gender-sex-blind, er, deaf. Aunt Mamie & Aunt Tessa sounded like them; all of my trans friends sound like them; everyone sounds like themselves.
I loved your old sound, I'm sure I'll love your new sound. I'm looking forward to continuing to hear your voice.