It was the early summer of 1972 and I had just finished my junior year at UNH. Since the job market in the Claremont region was not good, I was forced to take various odd jobs between my interviews at the woolen mills and factories in the area. My father, Wilbur Hodgman, was an interior decorator at Bourdon's, a small family-owned mattress and furniture business in Claremont. One Saturday morning, as we sat in the family kitchen, he asked me in his sixth-generation New Hampshire accent, "Do ya wanna help me deliver some furniture up in Conish [Cornish]?"

I say "interior decorator," but it wasn't quite that glamorous a job. His Depression roots had taught him the ability to handle any number of tasks in this firm beyond his main job of dealing with customers—upholstering furniture, making draperies, constructing mattresses and often delivering furniture and goods on Saturdays. While working at the firm as a boy, I was always amazed at how easily he shifted from meeting customers in the showroom of the modest clapboard-sided factory, to dealing with fellow workers, to skillfully creating the various products of the firm. He had a down-home way with people no matter what their station. He was Yankee to the core.

"OK," I said hoping for a little extra pocket money, hurriedly running upstairs to throw on some work clothes. We drove down to the shop where we loaded up the old International truck and headed along South Main Street to Route 12A and north towards Cornish. As we were bouncing along in the old truck, I looked out at the sky on this warm summer day and casually asked, "I wonder if it's gonna rain later on?"

My father looked over at me with a slight upturn of the corner of his mouth and then looked straight ahead and replied, "Well, we'll have to ask J.D."

"Who?"

"J.D."

"J.D. who?"

"J.D. Salinger...you're studyin' English at college and you don't know who J.D. Salinger is?"

"What are you talkin' about?"

"We're deliverin' this stuff to J.D. Salinger's."

"You're kidding!"

At this point in the conversation the truck had turned off 12A onto a road leading up from the Connecticut River Valley. "What the hell would J.D. Salinger want with stuff from Bourdon's? He's famous."

"Well, even your famous people gotta have furniture and curtains," he said in his level Yankee tone.

The truck slowed to make a turn up a dirt driveway, and then the Swiss chalet style dark-stained house came into view. It had a wrap-around deck on two sides overlooking the valley. The garage was a poured concrete bunker-like construction at the end of the drive. As the truck rolled to a stop and a salt-and-pepper-haired man emerged from the house. I saw my father transformed from a Lempster farm boy whose education had ended with the sixth grade into someone who knew J.D. Salinger.

"Hello, Wilbur. How are you?"

"OK. J.D., I'd like you to meet my son, Stephen. He's studyin' English at UNH."

"How do you do?" he said as he extended his hand to shake mine. I mumbled a stunned "Hi."

With his characteristic close-lipped grin, my father said, "Well, where do you want the furniture?"

"Right up through the garage here, Wilbur. I think this is the best route."

As we were unloading the furniture and following J.D., I was furiously processing what was happening. I had read in several publications that J.D. did not grant interviews, the last contact with the press having been a short piece in the Claremont Daily Eagle in the early '60s. I remembered a professor at UNH saying that he was a recluse living up in western New Hampshire and rumored to have written many more books like Catcher in the Rye but not having published any of them. Slowly I clomped up the steps, holding one side of an upholstered easy chair, furtively sneaking glances at the lanky figure leading the way. Every now and then I would look at my father, and I knew he was pleased with the shock I was feeling; yet I could not see anything to indicate his satisfaction other than a glint in his eye.

Having made three trips with the furniture and depositing the pieces in various parts of the large central living room, we paused, the three of us, and my father said, "Steve likes your books. He wants to be an English teacher."

Turning to me and smiling, "Oh, that's nice. Would you like a beer? Wilbur? Steve?"

"Yes, thank you," said my father before I could open my usually well-oiled mouth.

"Thanks," I nodded weakly.

As J.D. disappeared into the kitchen, my father busied himself with arranging the furniture. I gazed around the space, which reminded me of the Boy Scout lodge at Camp Carpenter in Manchester, where I had spent several summers. I tried to etch every detail into my brain, most of which, of course, have long since vanished. This is J.D. Salinger's living room, I thought. The more I can remember of this encounter the better chance I will have to someday be the great writer he is.

J.D. re-emerged with three bottles of beer of a forgotten brand, further evidence of my foolish attempt to record it all. My father immediately walked over to J.D., my signal to approach as well. I was now less than two feet from a genius, I thought. Can he read my thoughts? Will he suspect that I am a phony like Holden, pretending to be cool but yearning for fame and fortune? We all took a swig. "That hits the spot," my father said. "Sure does," said J.D. I nodded again, trying not to let the phoniness show.

"Here, come out onto the deck." We followed J.D. The grand expanse of the Connecticut Valley opened up with the ever-present Mount Ascutney dominating the southern prospect. "It's a never-ending view," said our host. Now begins my literary career, I thought. Just hold these words, exact order, exact tone—they will come in handy when you write your Great American Novel.

He slowly dropped his gaze over the trees and bushes surrounding his house. "Yeah, I didn't know whether to go for the wild look or the manicured look here." I was waiting for the big cosmic connection in the next utterance. The house had to be a microcosm of the macrocosm—the synthesis of man and nature that Holden was yearning for—yes, yes, that's it.... J.D. continued gazing out at the valley, as did my father. I had the first two chapters already written, I was convinced. Boy, would my English profs, Lew Goffe and Michael DePorte ever be impressed with me!

"So you want to be a teacher?"

"Yes." I glanced at my father, who had the look of a dutiful monk bringing a new recruit.

"Public school?"

"I don't know. I guess so." Damn, I knew I had blown it. This was a test. Holden's private school, Pencey Prep, was phony. Public school was the only choice.

"That's great. My two children are still in school. They went to public school in Plainfield and Hanover but now are in private school. I struggled with that, but it's easier." Again the nod, long before the bobble-head doll had become a fad. What was he saying? That compromise was OK? That Holden would finally have to make his peace and wed realism with idealism?

I looked over at my father and wondered if he were having the same intellectual eruptions and plumbing the same depths of this enigma. How could he? Sixth grade education? Lempster, N.H.? And yet, he brought me here. He knew J.D. He was contentedly sipping his beer, and he was talking to J.D. right now about the drapes and what color was right and what kind of awning would be best. I could not hear every word. Maybe they were exchanging details of their World War II service in Europe, J.D. in the Army and my father in the Navy. So much for my aspirations for a great literary bond.

We finished our beers and went back down the stairs through the garage to the truck. "Well, Wilbur, I'll call you next week about those drapes. See you. Nice to meet you, Steve."

Slowly the International backed down the drive to a spot where we could turn around. "So, how did you get to know him?"

"He just came into the store one day. I waited on him, and now I'm the only one he wants to deal with at Bourdon's."

"Dad, do you realize how many people would give their eye teeth to meet that man? He's one of the greatest writers of all time. Why do you think he trusts you?"

"Probably because I don't carry on about him like a lotta people do."

"Yeah, but he's J.D. Salinger."

"He still needs furniture and curtains."

Over all the years since that day, all the reminiscing at family gatherings, all the quiet boasting to students and colleagues down through my 37 years of teaching from Australia to New Hampshire, my modest attempts at writing, the small irony of their both passing within the last year--over all those years little did I realize that the story was really more about my father than about J.D. Salinger. The priest at Trinity Episcopal Church in Claremont once said about my father that he had a "genius for people--he could connect with anyone." I think J.D. would have agreed. ~

Steve Hodgman '74 was born and raised in Claremont, N.H., and majored in English at UNH. After a 10-year stint of teaching in Australia, he has been teaching drama, English and Latin in New Hampshire for the last 26 years, currently at Souhegan High in Amherst. He lives in Bedford with his wife, Isabelle, who is also in education. They have two children: Mark, a graduate of Marymount Manhattan, and Caitlin, currently a junior at Keene State.

Return to UNH Magazine Fall '10 web extras