Lester Blackiston was one of the co-owners of Coffee 'n Confusion and a Beat Poet himself. Later he moved to Richmond where he held forth as a big fish in a small pond of artists,writers,poets,drunks,etc.
Both Bill Walker and Lester Blackiston came to DC in 1969 and did a poetry reading at George Washington University. It was sort of a great reunion of the DC Beat poets.
Afterwards we went to the One Step Down Lounge which was a first class jazz venue and small bar and restaurant. Lester had 50 or so copies of his new poetry book with him. He told me he left several copies in the Men's Room on the toilet. I told him I would help him with distribution. He said,"Distribution? I will show you distribution". He then threw all the remaining copies of his poetry book(hot off the presses)over his shoulder and into the crowd seated behind him at tables. Most of the copies hit the floor as I recall. I was greatly impressed. Lester was the real deal. He was no fake and no phoney.
Later in Richmond,Va. he held forth has King of the Beats. He gathered around him a large assortment of painters and poets and writers and hangers on.
Thinking back to the times I met Lester I can't recall ever seeing him at his homes when a party wasn't going on. He seemed to be the center of whatever artistic activity was going on in and around Richmond.
Some years later when visiting him I heard him say he had made a fortune in real estate just because he was bored.
Lester was a friend of Norman Mailer's and used to correspond regularly with him.
After Bill Walker died(he had worked as a major domo or something for Norman Mailer in NY)Lester somehow got Walker's ashes and would tell people "Here is Bill Walker" holding up the urn.
When Lester and his wife Lilly lived on their houseboat on the James River in Richmond he held his parties there. He made dandelion wine and held forth there.
This is the same Lester Blackiston that I mention in the post below about Ezra Pound. Lester told me he used to visit Ezra Pound at Saint Elizabeth's Mental Hospital in the 1950's when Pound was being held there accused of being a traitor during WW2. Saint Elizabeth's hospital is known as "Saint E's" to all local DC residents.
Click on the link below to hear a person tell of a boat trip with Lester and Lilly.
http://www.prx.org/pieces/36639
The above link will also take you to the website to hear a 6 part audio about Lester Blackiston.
http://www.youtube.com/user/eddiehs47#p/a/u/1/P8PBEb7zDc8
Click on the above link to see a Youtube video of the paintings Lester Blackiston donated to the Longwood Museum in Farmville, Va.
Lester died in October 2007.
Here is a link to a photo titled The Funeral Of The Beat Generation.
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/83952100/Premium-Archive
Here is some info on Lester.
Lester Blackiston: The Pirate of Shockoe Bottom, Part 1
NARRATIVE 1
This is the story of a dead man. He gave up the ghost a little over year ago. And some who knew him might say he never had a ghost to give up in the first place. That he was a man without a soul. I’ve heard that said, on more than one occasion, by people who knew him.
His name was Lester Blackiston and he was many things. Though it’s hard to say which of those things he really was.
Lester made things up about himself. A mythomaniac. A liar in the pathological sense. He’d written poetry, but that was many, many years ago. And he never wrote that much of it. A couple of slender volumes, all out of print for decades now. But he had written it, and he did love poetry nearly as much as he loved cheap wine.
Lester had a genuine passion for Shockoe Bottom. He began living there when few others did, when it really was an old commercial district that housed more rats than people. Lester was the latter not the former, though some, and these were his friends, would argue otherwise.
Lester did receive a captain’s license for six-packs, which means he could take out small charter boats with no more than six passengers, excluding mate and captain. It’s fairly easy to get one of those, a test and so many hours logged on a boat. A lot of people have this kind of captain’s license.
Lester was neither a great navigator nor an able-bodied seaman. I’d been out with him on the Chesapeake on numerous occasions and each time I had to take the wheel from him, set a course, steer us back to shore. He was almost always too drunk to handle a boat. He’d suck down pint after pint of Thunderbird, always carried a bottle in his back pants pocket like a silver flask, like some sacred family heirloom. If there were a sandbar Lester would find it and ground the boat. I once suggested he consider taking people out on clam charters since he seemed to favor the shallows. Lester never owned a charter boat. He’d lease them. And more often than not the vessels would sustain considerable damage. A twisted propeller shaft. A gouge in the hull. Few ever let Lester take their boats out more than once. Regardless how much he offered to pay them.
All this said, Lester Blackiston was a pirate. A real one. A dubious sort. Merciless. Egotistical. He took advantage of a lot of people over the years, those who were closest to him, mainly. He was cunning and charming, a short man with a furze of tight curls ringing the dome of his skull. His neck and arms were thick and his legs spindly and bowed. He wore the goatee of a jazz trumpeter and sometimes his temper was like a volcano. At such times, he spewed invectives and threats. Swung his balled fists. Fired a 357 magnum into the sky and waited for the rain of a single lead droplet. At other times he’d pull a switchblade on you. No reason. Just to flash sharp silver within centimeters of your face. If he was at home in the Bottom he might grab his Samurai sword, unsheathe it and slice at the air.
A while back I talked to some of the people who knew Lester. Among them was one his oldest friends—the artist Bill Kendrick. He was one the three Bills in Lester’s orbit, along with Bill Amalong and William Fletcher Jones, artists all.
ACT 1
1:10
(from Bill Kendrick Track 1; 4:07-4:37)
I encouraged Lester. You see I met Lester in 1955 no 1954. He had a little place up on Laurel Street near the big auditorium there what’s it called. (The Mosque). The Mosque in that block on Laurel Street on Oregon Hill. It was up on the top floor and that was sort of a gathering place for all the artists and writers. He just attracted them cause he knew art fairly well and of course he knew literature very well.
(from Bill Kendrick Track2; 0:00-0:35)
Oh that’s when I met him and he was writing poetry then and he said you’re very fortunate in being an artist you can at least hang your pictures on a wall and sell some of them and he said I can’t sell my poetry. So what he would do is walk up and down the aisle of the Village and the Eton’s Inn that was across the street next to the Lee Theatre, he’d walk up and down the aisle reading his poetry and said is that worth 25 dollars? And sometimes he’d walk out of there with almost a hundred dollars. It was amazing. So that was my introduction to Lester.
(from Bill Kendrick Track2; 2:46-2:51)
This is before he really broke bad.
And you knew about his father.
NARRATIVE 2
0:25
I never really knew much about Lester’s father. He spoke of him infrequently and then with guarded fondness. The man had been dead for years when I first encountered Lester. In the best circumstances relationships between fathers and sons are strained and a little sad. There’s a mutual regard but a lack of understanding. The chasm of a generation is as deep and wide as the grand canyon. And you can never bridge in that void of time and experience. Lester had told me that his father called him Newt. But that’s about all I knew.
ACT 2
0:45
(from Bill Kendrick Track2; 3:00-3:19)
He lived on Floyd Avenue and he owned a lot of property in the market and how he acquired it I don’t know. But Lester inherited all that that’s how he survived. That place he lived in on 17th and 18th street they belonged to him and he was not a very good businessman, Lester.
(from Bill Kendrick Track3; 1:15-1:40)
His father and he had a very what’s the right word a sentimental relationship not a shallow, Lester was smarter than, wicked smart, you know, and his father never got that. You know what I mean I hate to use the term redneck but he was a country guy, you know what I’m saying.
NARRATIVE 3
0:15
Bill knew Lester when the two were up in New York City. It was at the height of the Beat generation, and Lester knew, at least peripherally, Jackson Pollack, Thelonius Monk, and his favorite subject—Norman Mailer.
ACT 3
2:01
(from Bill Kendrick, Track 1; 1:47- 3:48)
Lester’s hang out in New York was the White Horse Tavern which is where writers, people with the newspapers, journalists types all hung out and it was famous for Dylan Thomas, they say he died there or near there an that made it a sort of a landmark. But besides alcohol they made the best hamburgers in New York I’ll never forget that but he wanted us to meet Norman Mailer, so we all congregated there one night, Norman Mailer came in after several hours of sipping suds and as soon as he walked in and sat down he introduced himself and wanted to know how a Virginian thought of New York City and immediately a man came through the front door, and dived across the table and grabbed Norman Mailer around the neck. I asked Lester said what’s going on he said wherever he goes he attracts violence, so we had to leave there because they had a war in White Horse Tavern. So we went up town to some place on 23rd street. I’ll never forget that. And the same thing happened again, as soon as we got out of the taxi cab he was attacked again by a Puerto Rican with a knife. And he said you see what I mean. So Bill Jones got frightened and left but I hung around awhile because I wanted to hear what he had to say, you know he was famous buy that time, let’s see, how did that night end. We eventually left and went back to my place and the next day that’s about the time I did the portrait of Lester and he decided it was not presentable portrait so he ripped it up. I was used to it. Where can I go from there.
NARRATIVE 4
0:15
You never do know where you’re gonna go when you get involved in the Lester stories. Bill’s wife Deborah is sitting with us in the Kendrick’s living room. When there’s a momentary lull Bill remembers the time Lester’s houseboat was boarded by a buccaneer.
ACT 4
1:00
(from Bill Kendrick, Track 3; 2:19-3:28)
What about the story about the guy swimming across the channel. (When they lived on the houseboat, that’s one of my favorite stories.) You know Lester lived on a houseboat. He and Lily. And what was that boy’s name. (It doesn’t matter we don’t have to give the name, just tell the story.) Well this guy got high on drugs and he swam across where was it down on the James, (the canal) the canal. And he got on the boat and he said Lester I want all your dope, I want your woman (well he had a knife, didn’t he?) Yeah, had a knife. (And he boarded the ship like a pirate and said I’m taking over, I want your houseboat I want all your dope and your money). Now this actually happened, this is not a contrived story. That’s bizarre. (That’s not the end of the story.) Well eventually this guy he really went out. (But it was kind of a pirate encounter.) It was one of those relationships Lester went through where the other person couldn’t take it and he went out, you know.
NARRATIVE 5
0:10
That houseboat takes me back to the first summer I spent in Richmond back in the mid-1970s. Lester and his wife Lill were still living down there. And I’d heard a story about how that houseboat came to be.
ACT 5
2:40
(from Bill Kendrick, Track 3; 3:28-3:40)
Do you know the story of how Lester built the houseboats. (He built the houseboats) (Now you know the story, well tell us.) It was this guy named Barham.
(from Bill Kendrick, Track 3; 4:20-4:25)
Lester and Barham were down in the bottom and this was during one of the big floods.
(from Bill Kendrick, Track 3; 4:44-5:00)
They noticed across the river these massive pontoons that had broken free somewhere way upstream you know some larger city on the James to the west. And he and Barham
(from Bill Kendrick, Track 4; 0:00-0:10)
had a big old truck. They went over and they pulled them out of the water, they set them in the canal and then with scrap lumber that’s how they built those things. (Oh my gosh)
(from Bill Kendrick, Track 4; 0:21-1:23)
I think he had four of them total. What he did was he leased them to VCU students except the one he and lil lived on for like a hundred dollars a month, a hundred and fifty dollars a month. Five dollars a month gave you water hook up and electrical hookup. So that’s how they came to be built. One of the things Lester loved because it had that Huck Finn kind of feel to it is that in the morning he or Lill, probably Lill more often than Lester, because Lester was pretty trashed the night before. They’d toss a line off the side and catch themselves as many blue gills and crappie you know sometimes a small mouth bass as they wanted and they’d have breakfast, they’d have lunch. They’d have dinner. Well one year and this was I think in the early seventies there was an algae bloom on the James and the water was stagnant so algae was everywhere and it effected the Kanawha Canal as well so all the fish just went belly up white.
(from Bill Kendrick, Track 4; 1:29-2:21)
So Lester called the city and said can you drain the locks? Well the locks hadn’t been drained in fifty years. No we can’t drain the locks. and the guy said from the city the only way we can drain the locks if there is a health hazard. Lester thought about it, contacted Barham, they drove out to Barhamsville Lester took a shot gun and killed a cow, they took the cow they put it in Barham’s pickup truck drove it back to the city and they threw it in the canal. Well within a week it was putrid and bloated and the entire place stunk and they called the city had a health inspector come out and say yeah, this is a health hazard. They ended up draining the canal for the first time in fifty years. (Oh my lord, Oh my god)
NARRATIVE 6
0:05
And a small seed embedded within this story begins to germinate in Deborah’s mind and she says.
ACT 6
0:38
(from Bill Kendrick, Track 4; 2: 22- 3:00)
Well that does remind me of a Lester story when he talked about putting a line in the river weren’t you down town one day when Lester lived down there in the market and Lilly was on the second floor and she would let a line out the window with marijuana on the end of it and Lester was smoking and she would bring it back up. (So he didn’t get busted.) Yeah un huh, she’d drop it down. Didn’t you see it, Yeah I remember She’d drop it down on a string and then bring it back up. (That’s when they were down there on 18th Street right there at Walnut Alley. Had you heard that one before. (No I never had that’s a beautiful) You saw that. Yeah I saw that.
NARRATIVE 7
0:25
We’ll rejoin the Kendricks later. Right now we’re going to visit Richard Bland. He’s an artist who lives in an old ice house in the lower Fan. We sit on the partially enclosed back deck on the second floor. You can hear all the city through the conduit of the alley below—bird song, rustling leaves, sirens, traffic on nearby Floyd Avenue. Richard is fully a generation younger than Bill Kendrick, but he did know Lester. And as our interview begins, Richard does something that surprises me.
ACT 7
1:21
(from Richard Bland, Track 1; 0:27-1:48)
We’re going to start with a prayer, so dispense the cigarette. O reverend God we are your creation you are our maker and of all things that we have known in our lives, all the persons that we’ve known and I know that my friend Chuck has sought to honor all men all women he has known and in as much as he is able oh lord I pray that as we look over the life of Lester Blackiston, I pray for your leading me and guiding my heart. O Lord I’m not a person that is prepared to examine lives but we have to look at what is around us. We live in a realm of corruption, of sin, I pray that you lead me in wisdom and understanding in this interview in Jesus name Amen. (Amen)
NARRATIVE 8
0:05
After his benediction, Richard begins giving me his take on Lester.
ACT 8
2:05
(from Richard Bland, Track 1; 1:55-2:58)
So when Lester would seek for improvements of things around they’re often to his own advantage and in some cases he would bait people. (laughter) in crossing over to his corner in life and there were no particular loyalties. He certainly found that there were people that would be able to hold him in esteem. That worked greatly to his advantage. A poet manipulator of the manipulator of the word, language.
(from Richard Bland, Track 1; 3:57- 5:00)
He probably would have thought of himself as a conjurer of language but also a conjurer of making of way and means that were available to him, forming the people around him. He tried to have his dynasty of life and figures and courtly figures about him yet he was not a compassionate king though he could shine his counterfeit light, he could captivate with his voice, he knew how to sensationalize the moment with exaggerations.
NARRATIVE 9
0:05
Richard, who as an oil painter is an observer, scrutinized Lester.
ACT 9
2:30
(from Richard Bland, Track 2, 0:07-0:17)
He sang a little song when you were with him. He danced a little dance. He entranced you, he brought you into a lie.
(from Richard Bland, Track 2, 1:08-1:23)
If you get somebody’s mind, questioning itself through doubts, with doubts, you can sometimes put a ring in their nose and lead them.
(from Richard Bland, Track 2, 3:53-5:00)
So Lester also sought people that would be devoted to him. It doesn’t take many people, three, four or five people, to accommodate that kind of need. An d that changes becausepeople recognize what an unreliable character he was. But something about the stench of death attracts certain people. (Did he emit that stench of death) Well he balanced it with what the rest of the world does they balance it out with other
(from Richard Bland, Track 3, 0:00-0:32)
Lures, baiting lures sensual things. Lester was certainly no lover boy or Don Juan kind of individual and so yet he would joke, men joke, I mean they, they try to puff up and be powerful and haughty.
(from Richard Bland, Track 5, 1:37-2:03)
He had this sort of concept of honor among the thieves and they knew that and some of them were just really lonely and desperate and he had a place that he put them up maybe.
NARRATIVE 10
0:10
Just as distant church bells begin tolling, Richard tells me that he had an inherent distrust of Lester. Most times, Richard avoided him like the plague.
ACT 10
2:00
(from Richard Bland, Track 8; 0:02-0:31)
I personally stayed away from Lester. As soon as I met Lester, very soon thereafter, I recognized this is someone to keep your distance. He will ruin you.
(from Richard Bland, Track 8; 1:09-1:29)
Maybe in some ways at that time I was surviving and I knew Lester was someone who what not help my survival. (So you realized that pretty early o.) Oh very quickly
(from Richard Bland, Track 8; 2:13-3:21)
The first time I met him was in the Village in one of those high backed booths and he set on the outside because he arrived. I was already on the inside and I can’t help remembering this because he was sitting there and here was this man in his forties maybe his early fifties. I’m not a great storyteller but I needed to get something and I wanted to go out in the aisle but rather than have him get up I pulled myself up on the booth and stepped on the table and stepped across from the table and jumped into the aisle. Now that kind of show of course it shocked Lester he was real surprised and in a way he was outraged by my behavior. I had no reverence for him.
NARRATIVE 11
0:05
Regardless of Richard’s feeling about the man, he did paint a quick portrait of Lester.
ACT 11
1:40
(from Richard Bland, Track 8; 4:45-5:00)
So it was later that Lester and his party came to one of my studios I had in those days and I pulled out some paints.
(from Richard Bland, Track 9; 0:00-0:29)
I pulled out paints and some canvas and I said well I’ll paint you and said well, I’ll paint you and I did a painting of Lester I pained it I sort of divided it down the middle in a way it was a long sort of vertical painting. It was really more painted in a loose painting style, a colorful sketch.
(from Richard Bland, Track 9; 3:21-3:45)
After I did that painting I really learned by example because when I wouldn’t sell that painting to him that painting disappeared a few weeks later when somebody broke into my studio and stole it. I knew then.
(from Richard Bland, Track 9; 4:04-4:08)
He didn’t do it though. It was one of his kronies. One of his addicts.
(from Richard Bland, Track 9; 4:26-4:49)
But this particular fellow took his own life a few months later. He put a hood over his head by a gas heater, put out the pilot and let himself drift away.
NARRATIVE 12
0:05
In the smallest of nutshells—the husk of pistachio—Richard describes his painting of Lester Blackiston. And as pirates used to say, even of themselves, there be some good and be there be some bad.
ACT 12
0:25
(from Richard Bland, Track 9; 0:30-0:56)
And half of it he had a sort of angelic look and the other half of it very devilish look and that’s how I envisioned Lester. Partly that angel of light and partly that angel of darkness and doom and distrust.
OUTRO
:55
This is Charles McGuigan for WRIR and I want to thank you for listening. And a special thanks to song writer and guitarist Charles Arthur who provided the music. And my co-producer Brad Kutner. A Grain Of Sand is produced in the studios of WRIR, Richmond’s independent radio.
I hope y’all’ll join me next time for part two of Lester Blackiston, Pirate of Shockoe Bottom. Until then, remember, you can always find the universe in a grain of sand, heaven in a wildflower. All you need to do is listen. Smell, taste, touch and see. It’s all there for us. Every waking moment of every
Lester Blackiston, Pirate of Shockoe Bottom, Part 3
NARRATIVE 1
1:05
Lester Blackiston was a pirate. Almost everyone I talked to told me as much. And like a pirate, Lester plundered. He couldn’t help himself, it seemed. If there was something he desired, he would take it.
I’m back with artist Bill Kendrick and his wife Deborah. Bill had known Lester most of his life. He is a gentle man, sensitive, a painter to the core with a love of beauty and a desire to know the other. In his living room we’re surrounded by artwork. It cushions the environment. Many of the paintings, which exude a love of life, were done by Bill Kendrick. Some of his paintings ended up in the hands of Lester Blackiston.
There is no doubt that Lester loved art, or at least, wanted to possess it. And he could sense which paintings had value. Over the course of his life Lester amassed hundreds and hundreds of paintings and drawings, maybe thousands. He paid as little as he could for these works of art and sometimes stole them outright. His theft of what he desired began early on when Lester was studying literature in Washington, D.C.
ACT 1
1:26
(Bill Kendrick, Track 7, 2:23-3:26)
Now Lester when he went to Washington or Georgetown University. (GW) He used to go to the Phillips Gallery, do you know about this. (No). He loved art, literally did love art, he was crazy about me. And always wanted me to make a picture of him. He’d say here’s a hundred dollars make a quick sketch. And hopefully some of those are in the show. You know little quick sketches of him. He loved that. But never any big commission type thing, he couldn’t handle that. He’d go to the Phillips Gallery to study and one day he was sitting below a painting, I can’t remember who it was, I think it was a Modigliani the one he loved to write poems about. Amadeo. He stole it. He took it home. Have you been to the Phillips Gallery. (Yeah I love it) There are hardly any guards there. It would be easy to take something.
3:55-4:18
(Bill so what happened, he took the painting and then what happened?) He took it home and kept it for quite a while. And he got scared because it got a lot of newspaper coverage and he took it back and hung it and you know proceeded to study again.
Bill Jones was panic stricken he couldn’t believe it.
NARRATIVE 2
0:25
A year or so before Lester died, he felt compelled to somehow give back some of his ill-gotten gains. Artist Eddie Peters urged Lester to make a gift of his artwork to Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia. It would become known as the Lester Blackiston Collection in memory of Lilly Blackiston, who preceded her husband to the grave. Johnson-Bowles, director of the art center at Longwood, tells me how it all began to unfold.
ACT 2
2:05
(Johnson Bowles Track 1, 1:07-3:10)
A couple of years ago I got a call from Eddie Peters and he said that Reuben Peacock said to call me and Reuben Peacock of course is a sculptor and his work is in our permanent collection and I think a lot about Reuben he’s a good guy and a lot of our donors think a lot of his work and so I said well great so what’s up? And he said well II have some work that I want to show you I have a friend who wants to give you some art work. And it was the week before Thanksgiving and we had just spent two weeks getting a collection of work out of I don’t know if you know Jack Blanton, he was a vice president at the federal reserve bank he lived over off Cary Street and he’d given us his whole collection basically and we had just spent weeks kind of clearing out his house and it was the week before Thanksgiving and I thought wow I’m really tired I don’t know if I can do this and I don’t really know anything about it but what the heck I’ll go it could be interesting so I dragged a friend of mine David Whaley who’s also on the board of the Art Center and we went into Richmond into the Shockoe Bottom area and we went into this old dumpy kind of storefront that clearly hadn’t been lived in since the big storm that flooded Shockoe Bottom and we went in there and there was basically no light, lot of mold, lot of mud kind of six feet up and then there were all these paintings and they were beautiful and I couldn’t believe our luck and Eddie said Well pick out the ones you want, take as many as you want, and so in the course of half an hour I picked out about 50 pieces. And Thanksgiving came and went and the Sunday after Thanksgiving Eddie showed up with Lester and they delivered the paintings and that’s sort of the story.
NARRATIVE 3
0:05
Not the entire story though.
ACT 3
0:35
(Johnson Bowles Track 2, 2:47-3:21)
The second part of this is that we also have another probably ten works, that Lester and Eddie called me up probably about nine months after we received the first gift and said we have more don’t you want to take some more of these. And I said well we’ve really got a lot here and we need to do some restoration on them but yeah sure I’ll come and look at the next batch and I took about ten of those and then Lester died not very long after that maybe five months.
NARRATIVE 4
0:20
Now Johnson Bowles is accustomed to accepting gifts from fairly staid donors, stalwarts of society, unblemished pillars of decorum. Their artwork has pedigree, a trail of paper attesting to when purchases were made and for how much. That was not the case with the Lester Blackiston collection.
ACT 4
1:35
(Johnson Bowles Track 3, 0:51-2:26)
You know at first of course you know I’m used to for the most part the donors showing me the bill of sale and say this is what I paid for it and this is where I bought it from the artist blah blah blah and so I guess I thought it was on the up and up but as I’ve talked to the artist, they say oh that’s where that painting went. I mean I know that Bill Amalong I talked to him recently and he said yeah I saw him on the website and I was like I forgot about that painting where did you get that I remember I left it in some you know Lester had a bar or something and he had some artwork up there and he could never get these paintings back from Lester and so Lester kind of confiscated them never gave them back or then I hear he kind of cheated them out of a painting by they needed money or they wanted maybe they were all drunk and he said I’m gonna give you fifty bucks or a case of beer for this painting which obviously it was worth much more but so it’s hard to tell how drunk everybody was or how stoned everybody was to decide what was what. A lot of them are going to say oh that’s where that went yeah. But on the other hand I think after the initial shock of these artists figuring out that we had them I think they were pretty pleased that somebody was going to take care of them and that they were all together and somebody’s going to do something with them and people were going to enjoy them so I’m glad for that.
NARRATIVE 5
0:25
Pirates steal by hook or crook. That’s part of their persona. And Lester, being one of them, had to play the role. Sharon Hill, former wife of the late William Fletcher Jones, remembers Lester and his penchant for taking what was not his. We’re seated on a moss green sectional couch in Sharon’s anything but traditional living room as she tells a story about Lester when he was wrestling demon that turned out to be himself.
ACT 5
1:05
(Sharon Hill Track 3, 2:57-3:59)
Lilly was not well mentally and he said the devil had possession of her. And while he was visiting us he went down to the sub floor level it’s just a dirt floor under a Shockoe Slip warehouse and he said the devil was down there, the devil. And so we were upstairs not paying much attention and I had to go out, I left Bill there and he spent hours down there he said he was wrestling with the devil for Lilly’s soul. And actually he was going through my through all my boxes of stuff that I didn’t have room to store and old suitcases of things from my childhood and he was going through my stuff looking for knickknacks which I later found in his refuse pile outside of his apartment on 17th Street.
NARRATIVE 6
0:10
Sharon reminds me that Lester would steal from anyone, even his own mother. But I never realized to what extent he robbed her.
ACT 6
1:30
(Sharon Hill Track 4, 2:09-3:35
Yeah I don’t know what Lester’s problem was. He was complex and I can understand, I mean a man who can steal from his own mother is really and had completely lied to her for years she believed he was managing her house as a rental property and he’d send her a little money and then well the tenants moved out one month he’d miss and then you know. (When he had in fact sold it.) He had sold it pocketed the money himself was sitting in a bank account.
Yes he got her to sign thing and she thought she was signing over something that allowed him to manage her property. And he sold her house. (Wow, I didn’t know that) Well she talked to me on the phone and cursed him up and down about how awful he was and that he had stolen her house. And told me how he did it and for years she didn’t know that he had stolen it. He had taken the house and sold it and sent her some kind of monthly money that was supposed to be rental income.
Sharon Hill Track 4, 3:38 -3:41
He had thousands of dollars in the bank, tens of thousands of dollars.
NARRATIVE 7
0:15
The art collection that Lester eventually donated to Longwood University is now valued at more than $250,000. For Johnson Bowles the worth is not simply in the paintings themselves, but their stories and the tale of the man who acquired them.
ACT 7
0:45
Johnson Bowles Track 1, 3:36-4:24
The more I learned the more complex the story and the more fascinating it becomes. And of course I’m used to donors really coming from the heart and saying I’ve collected this for a long time and I just want you to have it and it means so much to me and I think it will do good. So that’s the kind of place I was coming from. Which you know over the course of doing the research I find out it’s much more nuanced.
(Well, elaborate a little bit on that if you would)
Sure, sure, I think people are really complicated, and as they grow older they may want to rewrite history a little bit, they may want to think differently about what they’ve done or what they haven’t done.
NARRATIVE 8
0:05
As Johnson Bowles prepared the Lester Blackiston collection she began hearing story after story about the donor’s proclivity for theft.
ACT 8
0:25
(Johnson Bowles Track 3, 2:41-3:07)
I heard another story where a friend went over to Lester’s house and there was this table and she was like where did you get that table and he said you know I just have it. And it was the table from her back porch that he had actually gone and stolen and she had been missing and wondering where it had went but he would not fess up that he had actually stole it. Kleptomania, I don’t know.
NARRATIVE 9
0:40
What she does know is that at the core of it all was Lester’s relationship with his wife Lilly. I’d met Lilly on a number of occasions. It was late in her life and she was alcohol-ravaged and a devoted pothead. She had dark, squinty eyes and pale white skin with a smattering of freckles. Her red hair was short and unruly as her husband. Lilly’s movements could be jerky and in all she reminded me of a marionette at the hands of a none-too-talented puppeteer. When she spoke she was almost always incoherent. Yet her nature was often sweet and she rocked her head almost constantly to a tune only she could hear.
ACT 9
1:05
(Johnson Bowles Track 1, 4:37-5:00)
Lester and Lilly had a pretty tumultuous relationship, it was intense. Someone told me recently you know they kind of attracted each other kind of the intensity and the eccentricities of both of them kind of attracted each other but it wasn’t a calm relationship. It was pretty, it could be brutal.
(Johnson Bowles Track 2, 0:00-0:42)
At times. I did hear a lot of stories about guns and pointing and shooting at each other. I’m not sure if any of the bullets actually hit each other. I haven’t heard that yet. So it’s pretty complicated. And I think Lilly was I’m just learning about her she was pretty complicated, eccentric maybe a little unstable, unpredictable and was even very jealous of any woman who got near Lester. But on the other hand he didn’t really treat her that well either emotionally or physically. So I guess that’s the polite version.
NARRATIVE 10
0:10
Tragedy followed Lilly like a shadow. She made certain that changed the outcome of her life. And these decisions were frequently made to placate her husband.
ACT 10
0:25
Johnson Bowles Track 2, 1:29-1:53
Someone had told me that Lilly actually had two children but Lester didn’t want to have anything to do children and basically said if you want to be with me then those children can’t be a part of it. And gave them up to the state gave her children up to the state. And I think that’s really tragic.
NARRATIVE 11
0:20
Lilly seemed to worship and loathe Lester. He’d entrapped in a sort of prison when she was very young and had somehow managed to keep her holding out for a fantasy relationship with him that would never occur. When she was much younger she flared with jealously and rage.
ACT 11
0:10
(Bowles Johnson Track 2, 0:58-1:07)
I have heard about Lilly pulling a gun on another woman and chasing her around shooting at her and wondering if she was going to have to jump into the James River to get away from Lilly.
NARRATIVE 12
0:05
Sharon Hill knows the real story. She was the one Lilly was trying to shoot.
ACT 12
3:50
(Sharon Hill Track 12, 0:02-3:52)
Lester had just re-tarred and fixed up the roof on the houseboat down at the canal and so we were going down there just to hang out, party a little, with Bill my husband, and while were there, and there were other people there I don’t exactly remember how many two or three other people beside Lester Lilly, myself and Bill and so we went up, we climbed the ladder to get up on the roof of the houseboat to see what a good job he had done and while we were up there it was just so pleasant and a view of the city and we were smoking a little and drinking a little and everybody was happy and full of life and Lilly was coming up the ladder and while she was coming up I had just lit a joint and it was Lester’s pack of matches and I passed it to him and he was holding onto it and he was holding a drink a can of beer or whatever in the other hand and I was holding on his pack of matches so I reached over and tucked it in his pocket and while I did that Lilly saw me and her fantasy took over and she thought there was something between us which there was not but she was very jealous of her because at that time he was having an affair with Susan Washburn, bill’s ex, fourth wife so she found out about it so she was very jealous so she went down into the houseboat and got the revolver and she came up the ladder and I don’t remember if she fired once but Lester saw that she had the gun and that she was aiming it at me and Lester ran up to her before she had a chance to climb onto the roof and started stomping his feet and yelling Lilly get down, back down. Yelling at her and screaming at her to go back down the ladder so she did and she went into the house boat and she fired up through the roof and I don’t remember once or twice but I’m looking at the water as if it were a very inviting possibility. That horrible old sewage down there yes I will jump into that rather than get shot and then he yelled down not the roof, not the roof, I just fixed the roof Lilly, not the roof so he could hear her rummaging around and he got the bucket of tar was sitting there and what he was planning on doing was when she came out he was going to drop it on her. Well she came out and he didn’t do it fast enough he dropped the bucket and missed her and she walked down the gangplank to the walkway and started firing at us standing up on the roof. Well I hit the floor of the roof in no time, flat as we could be at the farthest edge we were all lying down and she’s shooting at us and finally I heard Lester say that’s six she’s finished.
NARRATIVE 13
(0:05)
But the story wasn’t finished.
ACT 13
1:05
(Sharon Hill Track 12, 3:53-4:58)
And we saw her heading down the walkway towards the parking lot and she got in the car and she drove off and we were all recovering and finally someone said where’s she going and we thought about it and Lester thought about it and we couldn’t figure out where would she was going He said she’s going to Susan Washburn’s apartment, she’s going to call Susan so we got all upset and Lester made phone calls and found out that she was in fact there at Susan’s with the gun and Susan didn’t know what was going on so she invited Lilly in gave her something to drink and they were just sitting around talking an Lily had put the gun down and Lester told Susan to get the gun because Lilly was on some kind of jealous rage. So we were all relieved eventually that that was happening but I was thinking this is something that I will never forget.
NARRATIVE 14
0:10
No one forgets a story like that. Not ever. Particularly if you were there. And this episode illuminated something about Lester, at least in Sharon’s mind.
ACT 14
0:40
(Sharon Hill Track 13, 0:20-1:02)
I felt for a moment there I must be in a movie this not really happing. But he had the courage the come and confront her. Rather than let here climb up that ladder and shoot at us all. He had the courage to come and confront her she could have shot him right there a foot away and I always admired him for challenging her and standing up to her with a gun pointed at him.
NARRATIVE 15
When looking at the paintings in the Lester Blackiston collection, Johnson can’t Bowles help but see reflected, in a round about way, the duality of Lester’s nature.
ACT 15
1:20
(Johnson Bowles Track 2, 4:19-5:00)
Is how people, one’s choices and one’s lifestyle starts to effect other people. And then there’s I’m not sure, I’m still grappling with all of this to try to figure out the nuances and who’s truth is who’s truth and how does that all kind of come together and what it all means and how can these people live such incredibly wild lives, I mean off the charts and then there are these beautiful paintings, I mean truly beautiful, calming, lovely you would never put the two together.
It’s a real
(Johnson Bowles Track 3, 0:00-0:39)
Dichotomy and when I hear about Lester and I hear people talking about someone one of the artists said oh he’s a monster a Jekyll and Hyde and I think wow that makes a lot of sense in some ways I mean the art work is sort of Jekyll and Hyde. You look at the personality again off the chart intensity. And then you know hardcore living, drinking, smoking dope, doing acid just the whole gamut and then you look at these beautiful still lifes paintings of flowers of little stuffed bunnies and you go wow this isn’t easy, people aren’t easy at all.
NARRATIVE 16
0:10
People aren’t easy and it isn’t easy being one of them. Sharon Hill saw both sides of Lester Blackiston’s soul and she weighed, like an ancient goddess with a feather of truth, the good and the bad.
ACT 16
0:10
Sharon Hill Track 8, 0:30-0:38
He was colorful he was endearing in many ways, he was interesting but ultimately he was revolting.
OUTRO
:55
This is Charles McGuigan for WRIR and I want to thank you for listening. And a special thanks to song writer and guitarist Charles Arthur who provided the music. And my co-producer Brad Kutner. A Grain Of Sand is produced in the studios of WRIR, Richmond’s independent radio.
I hope y’all’ll join me next time for part four of Lester Blackiston, Pirate of Shockoe Bottom. Until then, remember, you can always find the universe in a grain of sand, heaven in a wildflower. All you need to do is listen. Smell, taste, touch and see. It’s all there for us. Every waking moment of every waking day. Even in our dreams. Take care.
