Rick Dahms

In 1997, Tom Robbins was given Bumbershoot's Golden Umbrella Award for "lifetime achievement in the arts." The following, never before published, is his acceptance speech, which Robbins wants you to know is a piece of rhetoric, not an essay. "Had I intended it to be read rather than listened to, the writing would have been tighter of syntax and less bombastic of cadence," Robbins says. Nevertheless, it's an eloquent, full-throated tribute to the writer's sources of inspiration.

TWO YEARS AGO, my publishers sent me on a book tour of New Zealand, which included a reading at the huge Melbourne International Arts Festival. I shared the program with four other writers—two British and two Canadian—and as each of them was introduced to read, the emcee listed their literary honors: the Booker Prize, the Whitbread Prize, this, that and the other prize. I was last on the program, and my introduction was sadly lacking in the old literary trophy department. When I got to the podium, I told the audience, "I feel so naked standing up here: I've never won an award in my life. You are now about to find out why." And, after I read the bed mite scene from Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, they did.

But this evening, before your very eyes, I've lost my laudatory virginity. I just hope you respect me in the morning.

My first reaction when I heard Bumbershoot was to actually give me an award was, "What could they be thinking?" But now that I've gotten used to the idea, I'm proud and pleased and grateful. And I'm sincere when I say there's no other prize anywhere I'd rather have. After those Swedish meatballs made Henry Kissinger a Nobel laureate, I vowed that I'd never accept the Nobel Prize, no matter how hard they begged me. As for the other big one, well, in the wake of the lurid Palm Beach sex scandals involving Roxanne Pulitzer, I decided that my sense of morality and family values oblige me to reject the Pulitzer, as well. Unless, of course, Roxanne gave it to me in person. But, no, I'm thoroughly satisfied and entirely happy with my Golden Umbrella, and I thank mightily and amplitudinously everyone who made it possible.

When I moved to this distant outpost right out of college in 1962, I only knew two things about Seattle: one, it was a long way from racist, sexist, homophobic, hide-bound, purse-lipped, gun-toting, church-crazed, flag-saluting, bourbon-swilling, buzz-cut, save your Confederate money, boys! Richmond, Virginia; and two, there was reputed to be something not quite right about its weather. I harbored vague but irrepressible ambitions as a writer and Bohemian bon vivant, and I had no idea how my proclivities and priorities might be accepted in Seattle. Soon after my arrival here, however, I encountered, if only indirectly, three local gurus whose example provided me with encouragement, inspiration, and fortification.

The first of these was a man called Spike Africa, surely one of the great names of all times. Spike Africa had been declared a celebrated sailor and international boat racer, known in his prime, when he was based in San Francisco and Hawaii, as the Mayor of the Pacific Ocean. In his last years, his career in decline, he'd ended up as the harbormaster at the Seattle Yacht Club. Now, there was a wealthy gentleman in Tacoma, a top executive at the Weyerhaeuser Corporation—we'll call him McClellan—who moored his private vessel at the Seattle Yacht Club, and this McClellan, with the arrogance that sometimes marks those of his class, had a habit of ringing up the harbormaster on the phone, and as soon as the receiver was lifted, would yell, "Africa! Get a pencil!" And then he'd curtly list all the things he wanted done to his boat and slam down the phone. This went on for some time until one day the phone rang, Spike picked it up, and heard, "Africa! Get a pencil!" Seems that McClellan had decided he wanted his yacht brought down to Tacoma immediately.

So, Spike went out to the boat to alert its crew—which, as fate would have it, had been helping itself to the contents of its boss's liquor cabinet and the whole lot of them was drunk as skunks. Nevertheless, Spike passed them McClellan's urgent instructions, and shortly thereafter, the yacht weighed anchor and its thoroughly intoxicated captain gunned the engine full speed ahead. Alas, he'd forgotten to put the gears in reverse and the yacht slammed into several other expensive boats, took out the dock, and, after plowing through a flowerbed and several yards of manicured turf, came to rest on the clubhouse lawn, causing, in all, considerably more than a hundred thousand dollars in damages. At that point, Spike Africa went inside, dialed the direct line to the executive's office in Tacoma, and when it was answered, said, "McClellan! Get a pencil!"

The second inspiring figure I discovered in this area was a woman named Emily Carr. Ms. Carr was the first white artist to make use of Northwest Indian motifs, which she incorporated into her paintings in a dramatic, modernistic manner. Reclusive and just a shade eccentric, Emily Carr spent her summers among the Indians of Vancouver Island, living in a tent. As the weather cooled in autumn, she would move into the townhouse she maintained in Victoria. There she kept a monkey and a parrot. Not wishing to be disturbed, and answering machines not having been invented, she taught her pets to handle calls. When the phone rang, the monkey would lift the receiver, hold it up to the birdcage, and the parrot would squawk, in a German accent, "You haft der vrong noomber!" and the monkey would hang up the phone.