ODE TO DALE HERD
It’s June of 2026 and I just recently learned
that you died in January.
I would have sworn we talked on the phone since then,
but obviously not, except in my mind.
All these months when you were gone
and I didn't know it, you’ve been alive
to me,
and so you will remain.
I initially learned of you in 1972
through your first book, Early Morning Wind.
I wrote a review of it in The Washington Post
in which I called you the Hemingway of our generation,
only better.
Despite that and other attention
(like Ginsberg in an interview calling you
his favorite prose writer), that book
didn't get as much notice nor accolades
as I believed it deserved.
Ten years later, in 1982, I moved to Santa Monica
with my two kids from my first marriage
and my second wife, Penelope Milford, an actor
poet Lewis MacAdams brought you to meet
at the house we rented there
to discuss a video project based on an excerpt
from a novel you were working on
and would continue to be for many more years.
When Lewis introduced me to you and we shook hands,
you looked me in the eye and said "Thank you,
that kept me going for another five years”.
Lewis and Penny didn't know what
you were talking about.
But I did.
In many ways we were opposites:
skinny East Coast black Irish jive talkin’
motor mouth let-it-all-hang-out city boy
and West Coast no-time-for-bullshit
keep-it-to-yourself all-American (to me)
athletic blonde steady-Eddie surfer boy.
But what we had in common was
we weren’t boys anymore
both in our forties by then
and we were both outsiders in the literary world
not just for the down and dirty subjects we wrote about,
but for our working class ways
that made us prickly around some fellow literary folks.
And we both wrote every day and
were both in LA to try and finally
turn our dedication to the word into
actual money you could live on.
We became instant friends.
You told me how you’d spent years
living out of a van, never more than a mile from the ocean
rising every morning to surf,
then sitting on the couch you slept on in the van,
doors open to the sea, you'd write.
The Spanish style one-story ranch house
Penny and I rented had a one-room second story
over the garage with electricity but no plumbing
that you moved into, becoming part of our family
coming down to the house to use the facilities or
join us for a meal or just to talk,
you and I having deep discussions about everything
but mostly about writing the scripts we were working on
and trying to sell, sharing strategies for doing so.
You often advised me on how to present myself
to the people who could green light projects.
Like when I was desperate for money to pay the bills
and felt the need to let anyone and everyone know
you told me the story of the Samurai warrior
roaming the countryside who hadn’t eaten for days
when he came to a town, before entering it
found a small tree and using his sword cut
a toothpick size splinter off a low hanging branch
and walked down the middle of the main street
picking his teeth as though he’d just eaten.
It didn’t change my TMI behavior
but from then on you were always that Samurai to me.
Our little mini-commune didn’t last very long
after my marriage fell apart and once again
me and my kids were on our own.
We moved into an apartment and I found
side hustles to pay the rent like driving a limo,
while you moved into a one-room storefront
with newspaper covering the big front window
for a little privacy in a neighborhood in downtown LA
definitely more than a mile from any beach.
When I visited you there I was always impressed
with how you’d have one phrase or sentence
written on a blackboard so you could sit and study it
a la Flaubert, as we both had read.
It was during this time that you met Deborah
your future wife and life mate,
an encounter you told me all about,
a writer too you were impressed by
how smart and talented she was,
and kind,
as you later would be also
by the three sons you two would have.
When in the late nineties i had another child
with yet a third wife, and moved back East
we kept in touch regularly by phone and email
and saw each other when i came to LA or you to New York
right up until recently, and always
the first thing you’d talk about would be
your sons and Debbie,
proud of their achievements and intelligence
and goodness.
You’d always be sensitive to my health challenges
but elusive when I’d try to get you to talk about your own.
Until, like I said I just learned, you died in January
though I could have sworn
we talked on the phone since then, yet
obviously not, except in my mind.
All these months when you’ve been gone
and I didn't know it, you’ve been alive
to me,
and so will you always be.
[most accessible introduction to Dale's writing is the short story collection Empty Pockets,
but his novel Dreamland Court is his greatest achievement (though formidable, once you commit it's totally compelling), and "A Seafaring Man", an eight-minute documentary his wife Deborah Blum made, is the best summary of his life story]
