The Envelope from Gordon

It’s good I’m not prone to heart failure or fits of apoplexy.  But it was more than a bit unnerving to receive a mystery box in the mail yesterday with an inner envelope addressed in Gordon Schoewe’s handwriting.  Gordon left us for the Great Martini Bar in the Sky three years ago. I did get a birthday card from him that year, though he had been gone for some weeks.  But I wasn’t surprised about that.  For the almost-fifty years I’d known him, he always had birthday cards lined up in advance for all his friends – addressed, stamped, and ready to go.  That they had been mailed by his loving niece, Karen Pugh, I readily understood.

Birthday Card

But a present?  Three years later?  The handwriting was Gordon’s right down to the return address – Gordon’s signature drawing of Ambrose-the-Rabbit.  There was a card with a photo of younger-than-Springtime-Gordon and an almost full frontal pose of Ambrose.  It was signed (but perhaps not quite with Gordon’s distinctive left-handed writing.) And the present – quintessential Gordon!  A small box labeled “The Wizard of Oz – Wicked Witch of the West – Light-Up Crystal Ball.”   There is no doubt in my mind that this was once part of Gordon’s Wizard of Oz memorabilia collection.

From Gordon’s Oz Collection?

Inside the box: a little figure of the WWoftheW and, sure enough, a light-up (green!) crystal ball operated by a teeny-tiny switch on its underside.  The accompanying 2½ x 3 inch booklet with a really-o truly-o sewn binding says that it may not be reproduced in any way shape or form, probably at the risk of being melted the next time you go out in the rain.  In pictures and words the little 20 page book re-captures some of the movie’s most memorable moments.

Also recaptured, at least for me, was the 1986 gala event that some of us put on for Gordon’s 60^th birthday.  We called it “Gordon’s Last Dance” because, of course, we all felt that at the venerable age of 60, this would, indeed, be one of the (if not THE) last dance for dear old Gordon. Someone must have taken pictures but I haven’t seen any for years.

We hired a band (from Astoria) and a hall (the old Legion Hall in Ilwaco), decorated the walls with larger-than-life rabbits, made a yellow-brick road and built a huge birthday cake out of which Dorothy (that would be me!) jumped when the time came.  I wore a blue and white gingham checked pinafore, red ruby slippers, and carried a stuffed Toto look-alike that my son had found somewhere in Hollywood and shipped up to me at the eleventh hour.

On that occasion there was no Tin Man or Scarecrow or Glinda the Good Witch and it goes without saying that there was no Wicked Witch of the West either!  Imagine her arriving by UPS all these years later.  And complete with a crystal ball, too.

The only hint as to its sender – a UPS return address: Sumner, WA.   That Gordon!  Such a gadabout!  Visiting his niece Karen, no doubt!