For a time I sold the New York Times News Service by phone and occasionally on the road. Out of my territory, I was allowed to sell the low-end mail service (as opposed to the wire). One of my targets was the small Pine Cone Outlook and Review in Carmel, CA. Paul Finch was the big-wheel sales person for that territory. He became my arch enemy as time wore on. But that’s another story.

Here is a letter I wrote to Al Eisner, the editor of the above newspaper. He had repeatedly rejected my efforts to sell him the five-day mail. You can see I was looking for something to laugh about.

News Services The New York Times|Syndication Sales Corporation, 200 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017. 212-972-1070. Telex: 640-198

March 19, 1981

Mr. Al Eisner
Editor and Publisher
THE PINE CONE OUTLOOK AND REVIEW
P. O. Box G-1
Carmel, California 93921

Dear Al,

Paul Finch tells me you have bought the five-day mail and I assured him you had done it to confound me because I’d said you never would. He defended you because he is a softie grown mellow under the California sun. But us New York types are hardened through years of struggle and self-denial. We cope with filth that rivals New Delhi’s, cutthroats at every corner who can’t speak English (it’s not so lonely when you can communicate with your mugger), a subway system that provides 72.1 percent of all Bellevue inmates. I can’t go on, my lip twitches, my hand trembles.

But wait—Al Eisner has bought the five-day mail! A ray of light breaks through the gloom brightening a drab life, a bag lady is smiling, a rabid dog pauses in his rampage, a junkie keels over downwind in someone else’s doorway, Milo-next-door puts his drums away for the afternoon, the cabbie smiles when I tip him—well, maybe it was a smirk.

But I view all things with good will today.

Thanks, Al,

Best,
H… S…
Sales Representative

I typed in the details from our office stationery at the top. Isn’t it poignant to see a telex no.? It was the dark ages of technology. The Syndicate is long gone from 200 Park Avenue (that is the Pan Am Building which connects to Grand Central Station). Jay and I actually had a neighbor whose son, Milo, played the drums incessantly.

When I think of New York City, I am sad because my piano mentor Sophie is gone, it was ballet Heaven and I am no longer up to professional level classes, and if I was there I’d be a guest at a friend’s or in a hotel – no place of my own, no haven. What is New York without an exciting job and piano and ballet studies? I’d have to re-invent a way to be there. I cried when I switched my driver’s license to Florida (to qualify for tax exemptions). My identity is New York, still.

I think if I lived there now, I’d go to a museum every week – the Met, MOMA (Museum of Modern Art), the Guggenheim. I’d go to ballet performances, and the opera, and to Broadway shows and I’d talk to waiters in foxy little bistros because most of them are out of work actors. I end this with endless sighs.

xx, Teal