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Correspondence from Grady McMurtry to Un-Named Correspondent
[EXTRACT]
[Undated: circa December 1959]
[Regarding a meeting with Karl Germer on Saturday, 7 November 1959.]
I got there about 10 a.m. Saturday morning, Nov 7th, and we talked until 6 p.m. when I left for Sacramento. It is about a 2 hour drive up there from here. Everything went off very nicely, actually. I was pleasant but firm and, after he climbed down off his high horse, so was he. I made my position perfectly clear and he had some surprises for me, too. Unfortunately, and I knew this but I have never actually lived around him, an agreement reached with Karl today doesn't necessarily mean an agreement continued until tomorrow. I don't know whether it is his temperament or whether it is just that he is getting old and forgetful, and in any case with no one but Sascha [Sascha Germer] there to pour poison into his soul day after day and no countering influence, it is no wonder that he goes off his rocker. Not that this makes any difference so far as my decisions and actions are concerned, but it is a part of the background that I try to keep in mind in dealing with him. But I digress. As for the physical setting: during the morning we talked in his upstairs study where he has the library (you realize there is nothing pretentious about this. What they have is a 2 story cracker box farmhouse sitting on its end on the brow of a hill with several large pines, spared by the loggers, around. The view across the valley is pleasant, a wooded ridge, but nothing spectacular, which the fires have spared, to date at least, although there have been burns all around there.) After the noon ceremony and lunch we walked on the hill. Later I helped him in a fence mending operation, they have a problem keeping the deer out of their vegetable garden, and we talked in the garden and wound up back in his study in the late afternoon and dusk. When I first arrived I told him that I had come up prepared to stay over the weekend, but he said that this was not a good idea, saying that he is in "retreat" at the present time.
Sascha gave me the old silent treatment. I don't know whether she thought she was cowing me, or whether she was just trying to put me in my place. She was not in evidence when I first showed up, and when we went downstairs to go into West Point for the mail before lunch she was sitting in the yard. She kept gazing fixedly in my direction but saying nothing. So I walked over, said hello, and held out my hand until she finally took it, as otherwise I was obviously going to hold it there until she did. Having satisfied the amenities, and forced her to acknowledge my presence, I simply turned and walked away. Later she cornered Karl in the kitchen and started jabbering to high in German so I wandered off into the living room. When we came in for lunch she had obviously been eating so Karl asked if she had had lunch. When she said 'Yes,' we sat down and went on with Will whereupon she came bustling in scolding Karl unmercifully for having left her out. And so it went. But in any case except for the time we were at lunch, she was not near us at any time during our talks. Whether Karl did this to cut down friction with her I do not know, but anyway that is the way it was.
The first thing we straightened out, for all of one day anyway, was the matter of finances. He made a great point of my "magical honor," etc., claimed I hadn't made any payments in "the last 6 months," and threatened to go into his account books to prove it. As an Infantryman is reported to have said of General Grant at the battle of Shiloh, "Old Ulysses don't scare woth a damn," and neither did I. I told him to go ahead, I had the canceled [checks] to prove that I had been making payments and gave him a verbal out-line of my present financial situation.
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