Good to be King
By King Harris ~
When I was a kid growing up, every year on Feb. 14 without fail, I’d get a Valentine’s Day card from this mysterious stranger who wrote, “Will you be my Valentine?” in handwriting I didn’t recognize. The card was always sent through the mail.
Of course, if I started making queries into who the sender was, or more importantly who would I like it to be, I took the risk of being rejected, which is not a state of affairs any youngster wants to confront.
After a couple of years, I finally solved the puzzle: it was my Mom. I guess she figured that getting one Valentine’s Day card was better than no card at all. When I asked her about the subterfuge, she replied, “You’re not supposed to know whom it came from.” That made sense, I thought, in a couple of ways.
First, I wasn’t about to admit to all my friends at school that the only person who ever sends me a Valentine’s Day card is my mother.
Second, I feared that if I acknowledged that I sent a card to a prospective girlfriend, she would, in all probability, after having asked her, “Will you be my Valentine?” say, “No.”
Mom was a true romantic, given her passion for great composers, like Rogers and Hart, who wrote “My Funny Valentine” back in the days (“You’re my funny valentine, Sweet comic valentine, You make me smile with my heart. Your looks are laughable, un-photographable, Yet, you’re my favorite work of art…”).
It’s no wonder she sent me Valentine ’s Day cards.
This having been said, it has never surprised me that when someone mentions “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre,” it’s not the vicious, 1929 historical Al Capone Chicago bloodbath or the movies made of it that first come to my mind, which is probably the reason I have never personally made a big deal like most people do about this heralded day of love and romance.
Neither has my wife Sara, who has never been fond of the idea of me spending a lot of money for something like roses that will end up being wilted within a few days. She would rather have a garden.
This I was to discover nearly 30-years ago while I was living in Carmel-by-the-Sea, in a tiny Robinson Jeffers-type cottage with a huge fireplace, small kitchen, tiny bedroom, one bath, and room for practically little else.
It was a rental on 10th and Delores, a few blocks from downtown, and within hearing distance of the ocean. I had taken a job as a midnight-to-dawn disc jockey in Monterey at the time, having parted ways with my first wife who stayed behind in Los Angeles.
One afternoon, while walking to the Carmel Post Office to get my mail, I spotted this beautiful and elegant woman named Sara who was working in a travel agency along my route. Definite Valentine material, I thought, until I found out she was married. And when the travel agency moved soon after, it didn’t enter my mind that I would see her again. Cupid had other ideas.
He was flexing his bow and I didn’t even know it. It was a year before Sara and I encountered each other once again, but she had seen me, because during that time, I had taken a position as an anchor on the local television nightly news.
When she told me her marital situation had succumbed to the same fate as mine, Cupid had let go of his arrow. I guess I should have seen it coming. After all, Sara and I had hit it off more than once in brief conversations, had similar backgrounds being from the same Northern California area, and would find out along the way that we knew many of the same people.
So it became little surprise that when we did re-connect in early 1978, it would be for more than just a moment.
“King, I’m leaving Pacific Grove.”
“I suppose you’ll be moving back up north,” I guessed.
“No. I don’t want to move back home.”
“Ah, then. Monterey?”
“No.”
“You’re not going to get another place in P.G., are you?”
“No.”
“Don’t tell me you’re moving to Seaside,” I said.
“No,” she replied.
“Where, then?” I asked.
“Carmel.”
Hmm… I should have known.
Sara had rented a small place not far from mine. Translated, that meant that I would inevitably need some closets in that tiny Robinson Jeffers-type Carmel cottage on 10th and Delores, with a huge fireplace, small kitchen, tiny bedroom, one bath, and room for practically little else. Except for a garden.
Which leads me to say that the next time you’re thinking about having roses delivered to your Valentine, you may get a lot more than you bargained for.
