By BILLY MURPHY
Laugh Lines

I wonder how much someone would pay for any of my old love letters? If you haven't heard, a techno-tycoon from Intel paid $157,000.00 for some old love letters from hermit author J.D. Salinger to a former girlfriend some 27 years ago. She reportedly sold the letters to pay for her kids' colleges. To kill what could have been a great story, the Intel guy is just going to return them to the JayDee Man (as he likes me to call him).

The scenario makes for a pretty crazy story. It was 1972 and J.D. Salinger was 53. After reading a story written by the girl in question, an 18-year-old Joyce Maynard, he started writing her love letters. She quit college and they moved in together for a short period of time, but love didn't last.

I have admired a people from afar during my single life and even wrote a few letters of contact. I once was at a large flea market when I lived in Macon and saw a very cute, blond-headed girl selling knickknacks off the back of a pickup truck. I wrote her a note and took it back but she was gone. So I left it fixed to the mirror on the truck. A few days later I got a phone call. To her credit, I am pretty sure I wrote something witty enough that few women could have resisted calling. She told me her name, Sara.

So, we talked on the phone a few times and she sounded as delightful as she had looked. After about a week of talking, and I'm sure, lots more wit, we decide to go out. I go to her house to pick her up. A close-to-middle-age lady comes to the door and I say, “Is Sara here?” She answers, “I'm Sara.”

This was odd. Come to find out, the letter I left for a much younger, blonder girl had been found by her older sister. Ten years older than me even. I would have paid money right then to have that letter back.

Another time, still in Macon, (these were my lonely, depression years, circa 1983) I was washing clothes at a laundromat. These were the Lycra-Spandex days and there was a lady there wearing shorts and a tight Spandex top. It had a big star right in the middle. I was down to my last bit of clothes and was wearing some striped running shorts and a three-button cardigan sweater with no shirt under it. I was leaving and noticed that this very cute, athletic girl had slipped out, leaving her laundry basket all free, just begging for me to leave a note.

I went back to my car and scribbled a note that started, “Dear Star...” The middle section I do not recall but I am sure it was something witty. Then I closed with my phone number and signed it, “Stripes.”

I am a late night person and not much of a morning glory, and this is integral to the rest of this story. A few days later my phone rings at about 6 a.m. Easily hours before I normally rise, I pick up the phone grumpily and say things that were not all too witty. I hear a timid voice on the other end say, “Is Spike there?”

I basically yell at her, “NO! and please don't call again.” I fall directly back into my pillow in hopes of dreaming about the cute laundromat lass. Then I raise my head and realize. She was asking for “Stripes,” not Spike. “Stripes!”

Did she call back? Only a future discovery of Billy Murphy love letters will tell.

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