Harry Crews

A very nice classmate of mine, who remembered that I was a Harry Crews fan, sent me a link to a column in the St. Petersburg Times, my favorite paper when I lived in Sarasota (the Sarasota and Bradenton papers were mediocre, and the Tampa Tribune endorsed George H. W. Bush for president in 1992) about one of my favorite authors, Harry Crews, written by excellent NPR commentator and FSU professor Diane Roberts (relative of, inter alii, former Florida Supreme Court Justice B.K. Roberts, author of the court's decisions in the Virgil Hawkins cases, and that link is to another excellent St. Petersburg Times column by the esteemed Martin Dyckman... but I digress—repeatedly).

(It's funny, having classmates who know my predilections, but whom I've never met and may never meet.)

The purpose of this blog post, however, is to relate my humorous Harry Crews anecdote.

I went to law school at the FSU College of Law (whose main building is named "B. K. Roberts Hall"—and people wonder why I'm not a proud FSU alumn?). I was on my way home to South Florida with a good friend. I became peckish as we were approaching Gainesville. I remembered that there was then a kosher delicatessen in Gainesville, conveniently near I-75.

So my friend and I stopped to get corned beef sandwiches. (My friend is from St. Lucia—I don't think she'd ever eaten Jewish-style corned beef before.) We were in line after ordering, waiting for our sandwiches, when a very worn-out looking man and a younger, good-looking woman got in line. The man had a strong Southern accent, but obviously knew a lot about Judaism—he was explaining some things to the woman. I looked at him, and a little light bulb went off in my mind. I said "Excuse me, but would you happen to be Harry Crews?" He said "I would."

I gushed for a few minutes, telling him how much I liked (for instance) A Feast of Snakes. He was polite, friendly, and gracious—a heck of a nice guy.

Then I had a bright idea: why not get his autograph. But what could I ask him to sign? I didn't have any of his books with me, and I wanted his autograph on something significant.

So I got his autograph on a Sammy's Kosher Deli menu.