Don Riesett

Excerpted from an essay about famous people in normal circumstances

Miss Charlotte couldn’t get over it. She’d known me for most of my 25 years, but suddenly I took on a new aura. “Don actually goes to the bathroom with Freddie Bartholomew?” she asked my mother. “That’s what he said” my mom responded.

For those of a certain age, this was quite something. Freddie Bartholomew was to the movies of the 30’s what Macauley Culkin was to Hollywood in the 90’s. But just as young Macauley, once the highest paid child star in the world, grew out of his adorable adolescence, Freddie did too.
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“South Africa,” he murmured.

I pushed back from the railing and turned, surprised to see him still standing there.

It was late November. A black-and-white day, with a bracing breeze pressing 40 degrees hard against unprotected faces. They said it might snow for Thanksgiving. It felt like it.
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