Carol Kirkpatrick, possibly the brightest writer I ever met in a writing group (proof positive being her ability to scribble out a pithy, brilliantly crafted story on the spot) had the additional charm of treating me to an oral history of Brooklyn whenever we walked its streets together. Combining warmth, depth, humor, and subtlety well into her 90s, she will always represent perfectly what I’d like to be when I grow up. My hope is to charm you with this sample of her writing:
Dumpster Diver
“But it’s for Frank,” I protested as my husband ranted and raved over the latest relic I had dragged in off the street.
In spite of himself, he had to laugh. It was an 1890s wheelchair as big as a Barcalounger but infinitely more graceful. Reminiscent of a Thonet rocking chair, cane back and all.
He had to laugh. Frank, his boyhood friend, was the world’s biggest hypochondriac. His shenanigans of helplessness and his manipulation of my husband to mother hen him…and my fury at that…had almost cost us our marriage.
Needless to say our friend Frank did not want the piece. But another friend, Randy, did.
Randy was an artist and a Renaissance woman. She painted, she wrote (later published a book), she took fabric remnants and transformed them into dresses which Saks Fifth Avenue and similar stores snapped up and sold for many times what they paid her…
