May 24, 2023·edited May 24, 2023Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV
I think your van book was featured in one of the Whole Earth Catalogs.
Last year, I was in danger of losing my house. Long story -- too long, but it had nothing to do with me not paying my mortgage and after many months and ridiculous legal fees, the issue has been resolved, I won't be tossed out on the street, etc., but it was tense. The only reason I didn't have a nervous breakdown was because I couldn't afford one -- but I DID buy a book about how to live in a van.
Handsome guy with pensive stares, you were. In September of 1970, I met a flaming redheaded man with a beard to match. He had just come back from Nam 3-6 months earlier. He had a VW van. It had no heat and this was Washington, DC at the time. We would go to Rock Creek Park and Georgetown bundled up under Army wool blankets. Decorated it with a bed and bells. Yep, we were unapologetic hippies! 1974, we moved to the Bay Area where this guy was from. One of his buddies had a dark green VW van equipped with a sink, a closet, and a bed. Had it for two years. Fast forward to 1976, that guy and I got married in Reno, NV and partied in South Lake Tahoe with 7 friends riding in a slightly newer used VW van equipped with a bed, a pop-up loft, a sink, storage spaces and a collapsible table. We thought we were the shit...until a drunken woman hit it in the rear, right in front of our house, totaling it out. I was devastated. The guy I married and am still with, bought a jeep instead and I hated it because I was pregnant with our first then. Bouncing on the freeways didn’t make me happy. Didn’t have that vehicle very long, happily. That is my tale. I sure loved yours.
Well, hell, who wouldn’t want to return to 1976, given what’s going on these days? It’s a nice invitation to leave today’s mishegas, if only for the time it takes to recall gentler days. My 1976 was writing a syndicated opinion column, often with humor and/or darts. It was also the year I interviewed Ken Howard, touring with “Equus.”
There's an interesting history to interview subjects marrying the interviewer. It doesn't always last - ie, Julia Cameron and Scorcese. Greg Peck and Veronique, Kirk and Ann Douglas lasted.
Ohmahgawd, "Equus". I saw that (standing room) with the original cast. Anthony Hopkins, Peter Firth.
I don't know what it is about really successful actors -- they seem to have more electricity in their aura (or something) but Anthony Hopkins has it (on stage), James Earl Jones (I was present at a reading) has it. All they had to do was stand there -- and speak.
I was at a comedy show this weekend where one of the comics spoke of the 70s as a luckier time. I'd go back. I wouldn't wear the clothes again (ugh) but if I was armed with the foreknowledge of the AIDS crisis, I'd be sure to misbehave MUCH more thoroughly!
Chaste makes waste, as they said in the 60s. But I "lost it" in 1976 -- I had to do SOMEthing to celebrate the Bicentennial.
You were lucky not to have seen Burton do it. He was drunk many nights, and one perf he went up and sang a Welsh folksong. The director nearly hit him.
May 24, 2023·edited May 24, 2023Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV
A girl friend took me to Equus in Chicago, starring Ken Howard. I thought the play was god-awful and super pretentious. Maybe Burton thought the same as I.
Ah, then the exciting life of this young writer in the early 1980s (while attempting to drink Manhattan dry) in my Lower East Side slum apartment and my flatmate gave me the paperback of "Dress Gray" and I really dug reading it. And thought, damn, that Truscott fella is a heluva n fine writer. Little did I even know back then just how fine he was and is.
I recently bought a hardcover used copy of "Full Dress Gray" and loved it. BTW, LKTIV, happy to send you the chump change royalty you woulda gotten if I'd bought it new.
May 24, 2023·edited May 24, 2023Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV
Ah, the 70s! And you lived it to the hilt. Besides your ingenuity at self-promotion in those days, what I really have to admire is your self-discipline to put that ass in a chair and produce publishable work. All your success is well earned. This took me back to my own 70s experience, as a very naive Ohio farm girl who moved at 26 with her Merrill-Lynch trainee husband to NYC on Easter Sunday 1973 and was too afraid to venture out on the street alone. The people I encountered seemed charmed by that Dorothy-in-Oz naivete and were mostly generous and kind and contributed to wonderful and memorable experiences I had when I scored a temp job as receptionist in the office of the president of CBS Radio at 51 W. 52nd, appeared as a contestant on "Jeopardy!" when most of my husband's fellow trainees couldn't pass the test to qualify, smelled marijuana for the first time while sitting on the grass in Central Park with 100,000 others at a free Carole King concert in the park, saw the inside of the CBS televison studio where to my disappointment Roger Mudd was sitting in for Walter Cronkite doing the evening news, saw my first Broadway plays including "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "The Changing Room" which showed me in the onstage rugby locker room the only other male appendages other than my husband's I'd ever seen. Oh, and how could I ever forget a face-to-face meeting with John Lennon and Oko Yono in the empty lobby of a Third Avenue cineplex on a Sunday afternoon? Also walking down to Wall Street on a Saturday in May to see the newly topped-out World Trade Center and watch the Kentucky Derby in a bar nearby, getting free drinks from the owner whose wife had just had a baby. What a time it was. Thanks for being one of the few voices I trust to accurately observe, analyze and comment on American life and the political scene. I feel fortunate to know you through the magic of Facebook. Love your life with Tracy and your rescues.
May 25, 2023·edited May 25, 2023Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV
What a charming reminiscence of being young and open in NYC in those glowing days! I spent the afternoon today with my college constant companion. Same class, same major, alphabetic siblings, fellow serious-minded goof-offs, we traveled as often as possible hundreds of miles with whatever car owner we could draft to chauffeur us on Greenwich Village pretend-beatnik weekends—before he got his MG-TD. We've made separate lives but have never been far from each other since we were teenagers. Today we made a take-out picnic Tex-Mex lunch in the Dominick Hotel (EX-Trump Soho) pocket park and marveled at how long it's been and on we go.
I love photos from the 60s and 70s so thanks Lucian. Another 60s and 70s world traveler is celebrating his 82nd birthday today, so I am mentioning Happy Birthday Bob Dylan 😎. May you both continue to live long and prosper (and both keep sharing your wonderful ways with words with us all).
I love that column, so many interesting observations and impressions of the inscrutable Dylan. Hearing about how and when his curiosity drives him makes me happy. I am very fond of Patti Smith as she presents herself to the world.
Hey Chick: Seeing your picture of the back of Dress Gray, reminds me of the time when the book came out. I was in downtown Kansas City shopping in the Jones Store with my mother. We had just finished lunch there and coming out the door and I look up and saw a copy of the book in a glass case. I thought “I know a guy named Lucian Truscott”. So off to the book store I went. Picked up a copy of Dress Gray, turned it over and thought “by golly that’s Chick”. Bought a copy which I still have awaiting your return to Leavenworth to sign my book!!!
Ah those were the days Lucian, we had survived until then and the world was our oyster, things look a bit different now, don't they. In spite of our impending doom, we are going to soldier on until the end, heads held high, I don't think we would have it any other way. It's been an honor getting to know you, I like how you think.
My late husband made a simple van from a VW Kombi in the early 70's. Your van book is available on Amazon for $98.99.
These days you can afford to keep a growing cat family in kitten food. The kittens provide a temporary distraction from all the ugliness in the outside world these days. All things seemed possible in the 70's.
Exciting time. quite an achievement too. The only professional writer I met was Harry Kleiner who wrote th screenplay for Fantastic Voyage with Raquel Welch as well as many other films. . A mutual friend had introduced us and he took our whole family to dinner and to a screening of the movie. By that time he was a script doctor for all the studios. Such a nice person, he even took the time to read an Oz story I wrote and said I was a good writer. He indicated it would be unkind of him to tell me I was good if I wasn't, that that wouldn't do me any good. He's gone now, but fond memories of him. He had a very generous heart, a very kind soul. More about him on Wikipedia.
Bullitt is a 1968 American neo-noir action thriller film[4] directed by Peter Yates and produced by Philip D'Antoni. The picture stars Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, Jacqueline Bisset, Don Gordon, Robert Duvall, Simon Oakland and Norman Fell.[5] The screenplay by Alan R. Trustman and Harry Kleiner was based on the 1963 novel Mute Witness,[6][7][8][9] by Robert L. Fish, writing under the pseudonym Robert L. Pike.[10][11] Lalo Schifrin wrote the original jazz-inspired score.
The film was made by McQueen's Solar Productions company, with his partner Robert Relyea as executive producer. Released by Warner Bros.-Seven Arts on October 17, 1968, the film was a critical and box-office success, later winning the Academy Award for Best Film Editing (Frank P. Keller) and receiving a nomination for Best Sound. Writers Trustman and Kleiner won a 1969 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Motion Picture Screenplay. Bullitt is famous for its car chase scene through the streets of San Francisco, which is regarded as one of the most influential in film history.[12][13][14][15]
In 2007, Bullitt was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[16][17]
Well, I was slightly ahead of you but not nearly as enterprising. The woman who became my first wife during the bus trip in our VW microbus(which we converted to a sleeping van but with no heat or water) and I lived in our van from 6/70-2/71. No interviews, just hippies on the road. US, Canada and Mexico. Some of my most vivid and fond memories. Thanks for taking me back! 🙏
I think your van book was featured in one of the Whole Earth Catalogs.
Last year, I was in danger of losing my house. Long story -- too long, but it had nothing to do with me not paying my mortgage and after many months and ridiculous legal fees, the issue has been resolved, I won't be tossed out on the street, etc., but it was tense. The only reason I didn't have a nervous breakdown was because I couldn't afford one -- but I DID buy a book about how to live in a van.
Congrats.
Wow, Marjorie!! So happy to hear you got your problem solved!💞
Handsome guy with pensive stares, you were. In September of 1970, I met a flaming redheaded man with a beard to match. He had just come back from Nam 3-6 months earlier. He had a VW van. It had no heat and this was Washington, DC at the time. We would go to Rock Creek Park and Georgetown bundled up under Army wool blankets. Decorated it with a bed and bells. Yep, we were unapologetic hippies! 1974, we moved to the Bay Area where this guy was from. One of his buddies had a dark green VW van equipped with a sink, a closet, and a bed. Had it for two years. Fast forward to 1976, that guy and I got married in Reno, NV and partied in South Lake Tahoe with 7 friends riding in a slightly newer used VW van equipped with a bed, a pop-up loft, a sink, storage spaces and a collapsible table. We thought we were the shit...until a drunken woman hit it in the rear, right in front of our house, totaling it out. I was devastated. The guy I married and am still with, bought a jeep instead and I hated it because I was pregnant with our first then. Bouncing on the freeways didn’t make me happy. Didn’t have that vehicle very long, happily. That is my tale. I sure loved yours.
We all lived interesting lives, that's for sure.
So evocative, Marlene. Happy start, happy ending.
Well, hell, who wouldn’t want to return to 1976, given what’s going on these days? It’s a nice invitation to leave today’s mishegas, if only for the time it takes to recall gentler days. My 1976 was writing a syndicated opinion column, often with humor and/or darts. It was also the year I interviewed Ken Howard, touring with “Equus.”
He liked the interview.
It's obvious that Ken did.
There's an interesting history to interview subjects marrying the interviewer. It doesn't always last - ie, Julia Cameron and Scorcese. Greg Peck and Veronique, Kirk and Ann Douglas lasted.
Ohmahgawd, "Equus". I saw that (standing room) with the original cast. Anthony Hopkins, Peter Firth.
I don't know what it is about really successful actors -- they seem to have more electricity in their aura (or something) but Anthony Hopkins has it (on stage), James Earl Jones (I was present at a reading) has it. All they had to do was stand there -- and speak.
I was at a comedy show this weekend where one of the comics spoke of the 70s as a luckier time. I'd go back. I wouldn't wear the clothes again (ugh) but if I was armed with the foreknowledge of the AIDS crisis, I'd be sure to misbehave MUCH more thoroughly!
Chaste makes waste, as they said in the 60s. But I "lost it" in 1976 -- I had to do SOMEthing to celebrate the Bicentennial.
You were lucky not to have seen Burton do it. He was drunk many nights, and one perf he went up and sang a Welsh folksong. The director nearly hit him.
A girl friend took me to Equus in Chicago, starring Ken Howard. I thought the play was god-awful and super pretentious. Maybe Burton thought the same as I.
Then they should probably give back the two Tonys they won -- for best play, and best director.
I liked Ken Howard. Have a pic of him at the Bing Crosby Pro-Am Tournament, I think, in 1984 at Pebble Beach.
Ah, then the exciting life of this young writer in the early 1980s (while attempting to drink Manhattan dry) in my Lower East Side slum apartment and my flatmate gave me the paperback of "Dress Gray" and I really dug reading it. And thought, damn, that Truscott fella is a heluva n fine writer. Little did I even know back then just how fine he was and is.
I recently bought a hardcover used copy of "Full Dress Gray" and loved it. BTW, LKTIV, happy to send you the chump change royalty you woulda gotten if I'd bought it new.
I earned plenty on that book, sold to Warner Bros, etc etc
Ah, the 70s! And you lived it to the hilt. Besides your ingenuity at self-promotion in those days, what I really have to admire is your self-discipline to put that ass in a chair and produce publishable work. All your success is well earned. This took me back to my own 70s experience, as a very naive Ohio farm girl who moved at 26 with her Merrill-Lynch trainee husband to NYC on Easter Sunday 1973 and was too afraid to venture out on the street alone. The people I encountered seemed charmed by that Dorothy-in-Oz naivete and were mostly generous and kind and contributed to wonderful and memorable experiences I had when I scored a temp job as receptionist in the office of the president of CBS Radio at 51 W. 52nd, appeared as a contestant on "Jeopardy!" when most of my husband's fellow trainees couldn't pass the test to qualify, smelled marijuana for the first time while sitting on the grass in Central Park with 100,000 others at a free Carole King concert in the park, saw the inside of the CBS televison studio where to my disappointment Roger Mudd was sitting in for Walter Cronkite doing the evening news, saw my first Broadway plays including "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "The Changing Room" which showed me in the onstage rugby locker room the only other male appendages other than my husband's I'd ever seen. Oh, and how could I ever forget a face-to-face meeting with John Lennon and Oko Yono in the empty lobby of a Third Avenue cineplex on a Sunday afternoon? Also walking down to Wall Street on a Saturday in May to see the newly topped-out World Trade Center and watch the Kentucky Derby in a bar nearby, getting free drinks from the owner whose wife had just had a baby. What a time it was. Thanks for being one of the few voices I trust to accurately observe, analyze and comment on American life and the political scene. I feel fortunate to know you through the magic of Facebook. Love your life with Tracy and your rescues.
Great times. Loved living that life. Love this one even more.
Contentment is sweet, isn't it?
What a charming reminiscence of being young and open in NYC in those glowing days! I spent the afternoon today with my college constant companion. Same class, same major, alphabetic siblings, fellow serious-minded goof-offs, we traveled as often as possible hundreds of miles with whatever car owner we could draft to chauffeur us on Greenwich Village pretend-beatnik weekends—before he got his MG-TD. We've made separate lives but have never been far from each other since we were teenagers. Today we made a take-out picnic Tex-Mex lunch in the Dominick Hotel (EX-Trump Soho) pocket park and marveled at how long it's been and on we go.
You caught the wind. How wonderful.
This story reminds me of a piece of wisdom given to me by an old business partner of mine from the music business.
"You can only be old once; you can be immature forever!"
I love photos from the 60s and 70s so thanks Lucian. Another 60s and 70s world traveler is celebrating his 82nd birthday today, so I am mentioning Happy Birthday Bob Dylan 😎. May you both continue to live long and prosper (and both keep sharing your wonderful ways with words with us all).
I lived upstairs from Bob's practice studio on Houston Street for about 10 years. See the column I wrote about it here: https://luciantruscott.substack.com/p/when-bob-dylan-practiced-downstairs
I love that column, so many interesting observations and impressions of the inscrutable Dylan. Hearing about how and when his curiosity drives him makes me happy. I am very fond of Patti Smith as she presents herself to the world.
Hey Chick: Seeing your picture of the back of Dress Gray, reminds me of the time when the book came out. I was in downtown Kansas City shopping in the Jones Store with my mother. We had just finished lunch there and coming out the door and I look up and saw a copy of the book in a glass case. I thought “I know a guy named Lucian Truscott”. So off to the book store I went. Picked up a copy of Dress Gray, turned it over and thought “by golly that’s Chick”. Bought a copy which I still have awaiting your return to Leavenworth to sign my book!!!
Mail it to me and I'll sign it for you.
Ah those were the days Lucian, we had survived until then and the world was our oyster, things look a bit different now, don't they. In spite of our impending doom, we are going to soldier on until the end, heads held high, I don't think we would have it any other way. It's been an honor getting to know you, I like how you think.
My late husband made a simple van from a VW Kombi in the early 70's. Your van book is available on Amazon for $98.99.
These days you can afford to keep a growing cat family in kitten food. The kittens provide a temporary distraction from all the ugliness in the outside world these days. All things seemed possible in the 70's.
It looks to me as if, after all those travels, you wound up in a very good place.
I wouldn't go back for a zillion dollars. Tracy and I have definitely found our place here in Milford.
Exciting time. quite an achievement too. The only professional writer I met was Harry Kleiner who wrote th screenplay for Fantastic Voyage with Raquel Welch as well as many other films. . A mutual friend had introduced us and he took our whole family to dinner and to a screening of the movie. By that time he was a script doctor for all the studios. Such a nice person, he even took the time to read an Oz story I wrote and said I was a good writer. He indicated it would be unkind of him to tell me I was good if I wasn't, that that wouldn't do me any good. He's gone now, but fond memories of him. He had a very generous heart, a very kind soul. More about him on Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Kleiner
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullitt
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bullitt poster.jpg
Theatrical release poster by Michel Landi
Directed by Peter Yates
Screenplay by
Alan R. Trustman
Harry Kleiner
Based on Mute Witness
by Robert L. Fish
Produced by Philip D'Antoni
Starring
Steve McQueen
Robert Vaughn
Jacqueline Bisset
Don Gordon
Robert Duvall
Simon Oakland
Norman Fell
Cinematography William A. Fraker
Edited by Frank P. Keller
Music by Lalo Schifrin
Production
companies
Solar Productions
Warner Bros.-Seven Arts
Distributed by Warner Bros.-Seven Arts
Release date
October 17, 1968[1]
Running time 113 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $4 million[2]
Box office $42.3 million[3]
Bullitt is a 1968 American neo-noir action thriller film[4] directed by Peter Yates and produced by Philip D'Antoni. The picture stars Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, Jacqueline Bisset, Don Gordon, Robert Duvall, Simon Oakland and Norman Fell.[5] The screenplay by Alan R. Trustman and Harry Kleiner was based on the 1963 novel Mute Witness,[6][7][8][9] by Robert L. Fish, writing under the pseudonym Robert L. Pike.[10][11] Lalo Schifrin wrote the original jazz-inspired score.
The film was made by McQueen's Solar Productions company, with his partner Robert Relyea as executive producer. Released by Warner Bros.-Seven Arts on October 17, 1968, the film was a critical and box-office success, later winning the Academy Award for Best Film Editing (Frank P. Keller) and receiving a nomination for Best Sound. Writers Trustman and Kleiner won a 1969 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Motion Picture Screenplay. Bullitt is famous for its car chase scene through the streets of San Francisco, which is regarded as one of the most influential in film history.[12][13][14][15]
In 2007, Bullitt was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[16][17]
Well, I was slightly ahead of you but not nearly as enterprising. The woman who became my first wife during the bus trip in our VW microbus(which we converted to a sleeping van but with no heat or water) and I lived in our van from 6/70-2/71. No interviews, just hippies on the road. US, Canada and Mexico. Some of my most vivid and fond memories. Thanks for taking me back! 🙏
Great column!
The kittens are adorable!
Oh, lord! Was that a different world for writers back then!