My mother introduced me to Pete Hamill. It happened on a summer day when I was sixteen years old, and she came to me with tears in her eyes, clutching her latest edition of the Reader’s Digest.
“You have to read this story, Charles,” she said.
It was called “Going Home,” and it was about an ex-con named Vingo who’d just been released from prison and was taking a long bus ride home to Florida. Would his wife take him back? He’d written and told her to put a yellow handkerchief on a big oak tree near the bus stop if she wanted him. If he didn’t see a handkerchief, he’d stay on the bus and keep going.
By the time the bus is approaching his stop, everyone aboard knows what’s happening. Suddenly the tree comes into view, and the passengers go crazy. Quote: “It was covered with yellow handkerchiefs, twenty of them, thirty of them, maybe hundreds…the old con rose from his seat, holding himself tightly, and made his way to the front of the bus to go home.”
So now my mother and I were both crying, and that’s when I noticed the byline on the story: Pete Hamill.
How did he do it? His story was emotional without being sentimental, touching without being touchy-feely. That’s a wire-walk not many writers can manage.
And to my delight, Pete had a newspaper column that ran a couple of times a week! His stories just kept coming!
Now we flash-forward to the early 90s. I’m a reporter at the New York Post, and Pete has re-joined the newspaper where he started. The first time I see him in the old South Street newsroom, it’s almost too perfect: Brooklyn’s favorite son is walking past the big windows facing the Brooklyn Bridge, a replica Brooklyn Dodgers cap on his head, a huge smile on his face.
I introduce myself and tell him how much the “Going Home” column meant to me, though I’m not crazy about the song it inspired. He chuckles.
“Heard the story in a bar,” he says. “Took out my notebook and wrote it all down.”
So it’s true, I said to myself. Columnists get their ideas in bars!
Well, not always. Pete quit drinking on New Year’s Eve, 1972, and his work got even better.
It was a joy having him as a colleague, and for a while we were fellow columnists. One day our columns appeared on opposite pages. The thrill of it, our faces peering out from those two pages! I felt like I was playing in the outfield next to Willie Mays!
Speaking of baseball, I figure I batted around .333 as a columnist - one out of three was good. No wonder I didn’t last. You hit .333 in baseball, you’re in the Hall of Fame, but to stick around as a columnist you’d better bat .900, as Pete did, as Jimmy Breslin did.
Pete once wrote me a note, telling me how much he liked one of my stories. A fan letter from Pete Hamill! Another time, he sent me a note when I’d written something slick and smart-ass. "Protect your talent, amigo," he warned me, and he was right.
That’s what set Pete apart. He cared about the rest of us. He was a star who didn’t behave like one. The words were all that mattered.
And now that Pete is gone, I’m suspending my longtime agnosticism for a little while. Thinking of him taking that last ride we all must take, imagining him wondering what’s ahead, and then seeing it. A big oak tree, maybe, covered with yellow handkerchiefs. Twenty of them, thirty of them, maybe hundreds.
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