Earl Rovit                        April 23, 2013
New York, NY

Dear Dr. Rovit,

I'm not sure if you would remember me at all since I only knew you when I was a child in Louisville, Kentucky in around 1956 or so. I am the son of Gerald A. Cole and Jean H. Cole and we lived in Kentucky where my father, a biology professor, worked at the University of Louisville. They were friends of yours. My parents' closest friends in Kentucky were Bill and Mary Furnish.

I'm writing simply because I'm curious to know if my memory of so long ago is correct or not. I hope you might respond to this letter and I hope that you might find it of interest in any case.

Here's what I remember. You had a convertible, a big (yellow or beige?) beast and my two brothers and two sisters and I more than once rode in the back in comfort and style through the city to your house. It was a thrill for us to be in such a grand kind of automobile and to feel the air rushing by. It was so different from riding in the woody station wagon in which we traveled to Alaska and back again in 1955.

HERE'S WHERE WE MET THE FURNISHES ON THE WAY. THE BADLANDS OF SOUTH DAKOTA.

You lived on the top of a hill and my memory has no vision of any other house atop it. Only yours.

We knew you as "Buddy Rovit." You told us kids a tale of a magic marble, a blue one, with which you could communicate and get advice for yourself and for us. We were very young and were totally credulous and thus fascinated. We wanted to see the blue magic marble, but you said that it had been lost in the brush on the side of the house. Naturally the five of us immediately set to searching for it.

We came up with a green marble that had to suffice. You said that you knew the green marble and that it, too, was indeed a magic one, and held it to your ear and told us what it was telling you. I cannot remember what you said the marble had to say.

We children believed you to be fabulously wealthy living up on the hill and driving a three-hole convertible Buick (or whatever it was), and I have a vivid memory of sitting with you and your wife Honey in your living room. We were children and shy and naïve, not knowing much in the way of propriety and one of us asked aloud, "Why are you so rich?"

"I know," said my sister. "Because Honey is an artist."

We were under the impression that artists made a lot of money. Perhaps it was because Jon Gnagy in those days was an artist on TV and people on television certainly had to be rich, but that's only a guess.

Here's a THREE-HOLE BUICK



There appears to also be a "Four-hole Buick."

I remember years later in Tempe, Arizona I mentioned Buddy Rovit, and my mother said that you had published a book on Hemingway. I don't remember if she had a copy, but she may have as she liked Hemingway.

In 1961, when I was ten I was riding in the car with my mom driving and she suddenly blurted out what she had just heard on the radio, "Ernest Hemingway died!"

At any rate, these memories come to me when I think of my childhood and when my brother and I play "Let's Have a Hemingway Conversation:"
   
"You're a worthless rummy, aren't you?"
"True enough perhaps but you needn't say so to my face."
"You're a miserable rotter."
"You say the most bloody awful things..."

As you can see, we aren't very good at it, but it's fun.

I should have consulted my brothers and sisters to check their memories before writing, but I can ask them later. My parents have passed on, so I can't ask them.

Anyway, I'm only writing out of personal curiosity about some fond memories of mine. I'm hoping that you might be kind enough to reply.

Yours  truly,


Tom Cole