The Woman Who Loved Richard X. Slattery

Richard X. Slattery

For many people the road of life includes spots where their dreams come up against the brick wall of reality.

 

Some simply recalculate their route and go on. Others back up and keep ramming into that wall over and over again. Every once in a while someone will break through. But sadly the usual ending is the wall comes crumbling down, burying their hopes along with them.

Such was the spirit-breaking plight of Twila Morgenstern, known along Patterson Avenue simply as The Woman Who Loved Richard X. Slattery.

Twila was just a young girl the first time she saw Richard X. Slattery when he played the role of a detective on an episode of the television show Route 66. He was a rugged square-jawed man with a gravelly voice who had actually been a New York City police officer before becoming an actor.

To Twila he was the epitome of manliness. In her mind, if you looked up the word masculine in the dictionary there should be a picture of Richard X. Slattery right next to it (There isn’t of course, but every year Twila would check out the new dictionary just to make sure).

Now, it’s safe to say a lot of people become infatuated with entertainers, but for most it’s just a passing phase on the way to the rest of their life. Not Twila. To her the greatest thing in her life would be to become Mrs. Richard X. Slattery.

Or, if that wasn’t to be, to at least have a torrid love affair with Richard X. Slattery. As the years passed it reached the point where a firm handshake and a pat on the back from Richard X. Slattery would have been enough. Maybe a smile and a wave from a distance. Or just a wave. Even a dirty look or an obscene gesture. Any type of recognition from the man she adored.

Every aspect of Twila’s life always came around to Richard X. Slattery. When she competed on the game show Jeopardy she was heartbroken when she realized there would be no “Richard X. Slattery” category.

Still, she managed to shout out “Who is Richard X. Slattery?” to a few questions, drawing puzzling looks from the other contestants and host Art Fleming, who at one point said “Twila, you do know you selected fruits and vegetables for $100?”

On a trip to Hollywood, Twila purchased a map showing movie stars homes, only to fly into a violent rage when she discovered Richard X. Slattery’s residence wasn’t shown. The young man selling the maps to pay his way through dental school might have been strangled to death if passersby hadn’t interceded.

Twila organized a Richard X. Slattery Film Festival and invited her hero to attend. He didn’t show up and Twila and two other fans, both of whom where there mainly due to the promise of free popcorn, ended up sitting in the local high school auditorium watching “Herbie Rides Again” three times.

She tried unsuccessfully to have Patterson Avenue renamed Richard X. Slattery Boulevard. She started a Richard X. Slattery Scholarship Fund for the Performing Arts, but after raising only $17.62 all she could do was buy a half dozen composition notebooks for deserving students.

Twila named her own son Richard, and at one point claimed he was the love child of Richard X. Slattery. This didn’t sit well with her husband, Marv, who, not surprisingly, went on to become her ex-husband.

It could be said that we desire things we can’t have in part because we would like to have them, but also because possessing them would make us feel better about ourselves. Sadly, in our minds, they would give us a sense of worth and a meaning to life that we think we wouldn't otherwise have.

 

Richard X. Slattery died Jan. 27, 1997, in Los Angeles. He was 71 years old. Twila didn’t come out of her house for three days.

At the end of that period, she watched the video of "Herbie Rides Again" one last time, and then continued on with the rest of her life.