Ms. D.'s Interesting Adventure

 

Opens with two teenagers during the great American depression.  When America gets into the Second World War, both turn 20.  D. is poor and struggling, wanting to be a reporter.  Taylor's the most likely to succeed at the small-town high school.  He has his family name.  WWII reversed all that.  His family was wiped out.  He goes from a devilish, wild seed to a do-gooder.  She is commissioned as an officer, because of her Oberlin degree in journalism.  In High School she worked on the school paper and wanted to major in journalism.  She got straight A’s through college.  She got a job back at the Bisbee Bee.   When the war broke out, she enlisted in the Army and worked in public relations for the next five years.  She became a Captain and the editor of the Stars & Stripes newspaper.

She married a full bird Colonel after the War, who was a part of the O.S.S.  His family came from Santa Rosa and owned the local County-wide newspaper, The Press-Democrat.  He went to work for the paper when they returned from the war, taking full control in the mid-fifties.

She quickly had three children.   They grew and when the last of them finished college and married, D. wanted to go back to work.  She had a nice life for the fifty years with Clark.  During that fifty-year period she had dropped back into journalism.  Since Clark owned the paper, she decided to fill a gap as an investigative reporter. 

Taylor grew up with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. 

He was athletic, good-looking, and just to rub it in, he was smart and rich.  His family owned the largest factory in Arizona.  They manufactured tack, all the leatherwear for horses, like halters, bridles, reins and saddles, and held the Army contract since the end of WW-I.

Taylor was his high school class president and went on to graduate with honors from Yale.  Taylor’s family had slowly gone bankrupt as the US military prepared for war with motors rather than horses.

Taylor enlisted in the Marines and led his company from island to island across the Pacific.  The horrors of war with its insanity and wastage of millions of young men’s lives devastated Taylor.

Taylor never married. 

He became a small-town school teacher in his war-time buddies’ old home town when he left the Army.  He coached baseball.  He was forced to retire at the age of 65.  The forced retirement didn’t provide Taylor with enough to live on, so he began a new career, one he had dreamed about since the end of the War, writing idyllic fantasy tales for adventurous teenage boys.  He used the pen name of Gordon James for this writing.  He struggled for the first few years, but these days, he is publishing a book ever year or two.  He also taught a class at Sonoma State University in creative writing and mentored a protégée student each year.  This year it was Armando, a Guatemalan graduate student.

D. had mourned for a few years after her husband died and stayed out of the newspaper business.  But then she decided that if she was going to live into the 21^st century, she had damned-well better re-invent herself and find something significant to do.  So that’s when she decides to again become the paper’s investigative journalist (under a pen name, Margo St James.) She also decided to pass on what she has learned over a lifetime and teach a class on journalism at Santa Rosa Junior College.  Her protégée student was named Jennifer, a 3^rd generation Japanese American good at getting right to the essence of things. 

D. is in the lobby of the Palace Hotel, waiting for her friend Liz.  There’s a noisy conference in next room, just ending.  Someone shouts, “D.?” – It’s her friend, Liz.  She lives in S.F. these days, so D. doesn’t see her often anymore. – While Liz is almost screaming her name a second time from the bar, a strange man, one of the conventioneers she supposes, gives her a piercing, thoughtful stare, up and down, and then says, “D. Tomlinson?” – She says, “It hasn’t been Tomlinson for over sixty years. I’m D. Parker these days.”

The man is old, as old as she is. But he has his hair and there’s a twinkle in his eye.  “I’m Taylor Benchley – from your hometown of Bisbee, Arizona.”  She looks more closely at him and says, “I do believe you are.”

“I’m here at the annual meeting of the California High School Baseball Coaches.” “I’ve been retired for almost twenty years, but I am sometimes asked to give a speech. I coached at Salinas High School for forty years.”

“Well,” she says, “What a strange coincidence. Do you remember Liz Johnson?  We’re having lunch here at the Garden Court.  Can you join us?  We’ll talk over old times.”

 

Time has passed.

Jen is sitting quietly in the corner of D.’s PD office, while the Executive Editor is shouting at D., “How do you want to manage this Pope-Death thing, D.?” “We’ve got to have at least 300 column inches every day for a week, so there’s got to be an over-arching theme.”

“He was a man of peace. The world’s a better place than it would have been without him,” D. says. 

When the editor leaves, Jen reminds D. that she is over-worked and needs a change of pace.  Also she has skipped the last seven social events which are supposed to be, at her age, her main contribution to the paper.

There is a “NorCal Tribute to the Arts” benefit wine-tasting and dinner at Copia tonight and you are taking me so I can meet some nice men,” says Jen, so authoritatively that D. agrees. “Let’s go get something to wear,” says D.

The party is fun, and they are both right in the middle of it, seeing and being seen, when who should say hello but Taylor.  “Why are you here,” D. asks.  Sheepishly, Taylor mumbles that he is getting an award and is going to have to deliver a speech during dinner.  Jen & D. weren’t going to stay for the dinner, but when Taylor says that, “It would help me through my jitters, if I had an old and trusted friend to focus on at my table,” she agrees.

Later:

Reviews are done of him, by her friends and her:

Jen: “That man was nice.” D, “What man?” Jen, “You know who I mean, Taylor.”

Lawyer Collin says, “Watch out he’s not after your money!” D, “I have no money. Everything is in trusts. Even the house isn’t mine anymore; belongs to the kids.  I get to use it until I die, but I have no real assets.”

Best Friend, “What will people say? You’re still the grieving widow.” D, “Balderdash.”

Son: “Your lifestyle might overwhelm him, a high school coach and a society matron.” D, “He was wearing a tuxedo before I owned my first bra.”

Jen, “Go for it. At your age, you don’t have much to lose, but you’d better be quick about it.”

Still Later:

Reviews are done of her, by his friends and him.

Publisher: “You’ll never be taken seriously again!  You’ll be Mr. D., your books reviewed on the society page.”

Kid Sister: “You can’t go home again. It’ll never work.”

Fellow professor: “Are you kidding? You’re each 83 years old! Are you planning on having kids?  Can you even still have sex?  You haven’t enjoyed a meaningful relationship in decades, everyone thinks you’re gay!”

Armando: “It’s so romantic.”

Their students meet and immediately sleep together, then decide to hook-up their respective professors.

The “Kids” – a meeting at the Berkeley Student Union between Armando and Jennifer.

They each explain to the other their passion for their chosen field, journalism for Jen and adventure writing for Armando.  His fantasy adventure is to discover what’s under the poles, north and south, since:

they’re melting fast and much more accessible than in the old days of Perry and Michelson, technology has progressed so far in the last 100 years.  Her fantasy is to edit and publish an international quarterly magazine dedicated to in-depth stories about world socio-political events. Her magazine would have no advertising, so not like Time, more like Foreign Affairs.  And it would be paid for through the Internet, $5 a copy, quarterly.

They go to his house to see his adventure photography.  The kids contrive a get-together meeting for their bosses, guaranteed to be romantic.  The contrived meeting fails miserably.

D. goes to Washington D.C. at Diane Feinstein’s request, taking Jennifer with her, to confer on World Peace prospects, D. being a leading advocate.

Taylor goes to Jerusalem on a lead for an interview with Osama Bin Laden.

D. is sent to Israel, since she is the world’s leading “honest” broker, and fully trusted by both sides to resolve their differences and achieve peace.

D. and Taylor meet again.  They put together a world peace pact.  The two kids re-unite and are in love.  Everyone marries everyone else.

The End