You can’t look out beyond the helm of a small boat, stand at the end of a dock and gaze out on a sunny day – or a stormy night – without seeing something that brings to mind that indefatigable sailor, Don Street. And on the sunniest day that might bring forth a tear, and on the stormiest night a smile. And at any time, and in any weather, a story or two.
Here are a couple of memories of Don, passed on to us by our founding editor Sally Erdle, from letters to her (and other friends) from Don. They say laughter can be a special form of prayer, and perhaps the best way to summon up memories of those departed. So here in these notes are some of Don’s laughter, and some of his thumbing his nose at convention.
Here’s Don answering the question of how he became a writer.
My writing career started when having dinner with a charter party in Caneel Bay, St. John, in the USVI.
John Fearnley, casting director for Rogers and Hammerstein, and Burt Shevelove, who wrote the play “Something Funny Happened on the Way to the Forum,” were our hosts. Their other guest was Fearnley’s old friend John Steinbeck.
After dinner they started arguing about writing and talent.
Finally Steinbeck said, “Talent? Bullshit. To become a writer it is a case of putting your ass on a hard wooden chair and banging away on a typewriter six hours a day six days a week.” Then to me, he said, “Kid, you tell a good story. Why don’t you try writing?”
To which I replied, “I cannot spell or do punctuation.”
To which Steinbeck replied, “What the hell do you think secretaries and editors are for? Try writing!”
And thus my writing career was launched.
My father had a sequel to that story.
He was at Princeton not only at the same time as F. Scott Fitzgerald, but in some of the same classes.
At a class reunion he said to a classmate who had become a very successful artist, “Bob, you and I were in some English classes with F. Scott Fitzgerald. I thought your writing was as good as or often better than Scott’s. Why did you become an artist rather than a writer?”
To which his friend replied, “Don, to become a writer or an artist requires doing the same thing over and over until you get it right. I decided that it was much nicer to stand in front of an easel looking at good-looking naked women than it was to sit in a chair and pound on a typewriter.”
I think the friend made the better choice!!!!!
(But he became a writer anyway.)
Someone asked Don if he’d like a Viking funeral, where the deceased is placed on a boat which is turned into a funeral pyre, then launched into open water. Here was his whimsical response.
NO. I do not want a good boat to be lost burying me at sea.
I would like a traditional seaman’s burial, sewn up in a CANVAS (not Dacron) sack, weighted with 50 pounds of scrap iron as son Richard says he will not waste 50 pounds of good lead on me, last stitch thru the nose to make sure I am dead, dropped in the sea outside the 100-fathom curve, as bodies dropped overside inside the 100-fathom curve sometimes reappear.
If the body reappears, there are all sorts of difficulties identifying it, and making sure it was buried at sea after a natural death, not as a pay-off in a gang war!!!!!
In the Isle of Wight a few years ago, a couple of bodies turned up and they had the above problem.
On May 1, 2024, Donald MacQueen Street Jr. died at his home in the loving care of his wife and family at Rock Cottage, Glandore, Ireland. He was 94. Funeral services were held at Christ Church of Ireland, Glandore.
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
