This is a story from my heart, mind, and sole for my deceased husband, Harold R. Robinson Jr. Hal passed away 41 years ago. I like to think he went to a beautiful paradise and can read the following letter.
He was a near saint and very deserving of all good. Hal was a very gifted cartoon artist, caricaturist, and custom bike illustrator. He loved what he did and considered it more fun than being a regular artist (if there is such a thing). Even though he left behind so many wonderful cartoon masterpieces and illustrations, he still had so much more to give in the way of talent to the art world. He was starting to do works on canvas using color. He was always interested in expanding his skills and abilities as a one-of-a-kind cartoonist and artist.
Dear Harold,
I am very lonely for you and still in love with you after all these years. You passed away from lung cancer and it took you fast. Leading up to passing away from cancer, your appendix burst. It required several operations to rid you of infection. Oat cell carcinoma attacked your lungs in the form of a large tumor. Your breathing became increasingly labored. Your doctors helped to keep you from suffering with morphine. I was there with you when you passed away.
You had so much to live for and so many people who loved you for your kindness, hilarious, unique cartoon characters, panel jokes and gags as you use to say, and of course various custom bikes, Harley-Davidson choppers, caricature drawings and illustrations.
I so much wish you were here but feel fortunate that Damon and I have such happy and poignant memories of you. What a cool, one-of-a-kind father, friend and husband you were. Damon has really missed having you here to give him advice and be his pal. Can’t find anyone else like you.
I know it is hard to believe, but your great and one-of-a-kind cartoon drawings are even more popular than they were when you passed away. They will live forever, so you will live forever too. I admired your “Seal Beach” and “Avalon” caricatures years ago; also the many other drawings you did for popular magazines such as “Easyriders” starting in 1971. The world is in love with your works.
Now you come alive at art fairs and internet websites. Keith Ball also has your works on his website called Bikernet.com. I see your drawings on peoples’ arms, chests, backs, etc. on tattoo websites, in art exhibits, etc.
I put your drawings on Instagram and Facebook so people can enjoy them and know where to see your originals. Lou Kimsey Jr. told me about a cartoon art gallery where I can post and sell the prints of the works you left for me. This will be at the top of my list for 2025. People want to write books about you and your famous drawings.
I like to write about you too. I find old relics of yours and go places we use to go inspiring me to write about us and when we were married and lived in Bellingham and Southern California years ago. People study your works and drawing techniques. Some bootleg your works.
People miss you and some try to imitate your drawings and your characters. Some will sign your name on these drawings and try to make it look like your signature. No one can draw just like you no matter how hard they try, but the attempts are a compliment to you. This is what you told me once. Anyway, I keep an eye on what is going on. You wanted me to follow your work and, I do and I want to do as long as I can.
Seal Beach, California is where you lived when I first met you. I sell the, “Seal Beach” and “Avalon” posters and some of your other pictures, shirts, bandanas, etc. at the art fair every year and at various shops on Main Street. You are the Seal Beach Famous Local Artist. The people of Seal Beach really love and appreciate you. And you very much help Seal Beach become even more well known because of your famous caricature of this really cool town next to the ocean.
Damon and I took a trip North, up the coast on Hwy. 1. Our destination was Cambria and San Simeon near Hearst Castle. We loved visiting the very small place called Harmony (population 18). It is famous for its beautiful glass objects. You can watch the craftsman teaching others how to make beautiful glass objects while blowing on a long tube. Visitors watch and look around for something to buy or just enjoy visiting.
It was a beautiful day while being there, and it did feel very harmonious. I tried some of their organic, psychedelic coffee. It was far out, and it really lit up my head. I think the three of us drove through this place years ago but didn’t stop. We loved the sights and smells of eucalyptus, salt water, and sounds of the waves and elephant seals bellowing and sparring for mates at the rookery near San Simeon.
We played oldies in the van as we drove along, and they brought back nostalgic, bittersweet memories. We stopped to visit the places we use to go when driving up and back from Bellingham, Washington and Long Beach, CA. We especially loved listening to the songs of Al Stewart. Remember the albums, “Year of the Cat” (1976) and ‘Time Passages” (1978)? We still have these albums and all the other albums, VCRs, and tapes you left us. We played Al’s songs mainly for you because you introduced his music to us back in 1980. You always said that Al was one of your favorite artists. You also really loved the group, Manhattan Transfer. Remember when you and I shared a joint in Seattle while at one of their concerts in ‘82.
As we drove along, the beauty that enveloped us, and the music of the many greats of the past transported me into a heavenly paradise with you. I want to go back to the same place to be with you again. Damon and I walked along Moonstone Beach and looked for the moon shaped pebbles. I found a few to keep in my car for good luck. When on this beach in the evening, I felt your presence when looking up and seeing a perfectly round, unique, bright, but foggy, misty, mysterious moon. It was unique and mysterious just like you.
Being there was a different and out of this world experience. I felt I had levitated into an ethereal, delicate, fragile but beautifully different reality. This reality is always around, and one picks up on it if ready to receive it. I was ready. Not all pebbles on the beach are moon shapes. You must look carefully for the ones with a dip resembling half-moons.
Damon took a picture of me with his cell phone. I stood with the moon behind me. I felt the moon to be my good friend lighting the way, so I could look for moonstones when the sun went down. Was it you? There was plenty of old and beautifully grooved driftwood on the beach, and some people built small tepees and lean-to shelters with this driftwood. They were used by the people who built them, then left for others to use also. Damon and I loved being there because it was so clean and cool in the heat of Summer, and so rugged and natural.
There is a continuous fog that lingers on the beaches along this part of the coastline near Cambria and San Simeon. Too, this misty fog was here years ago when the three of us traveled Hwy. 1 on our way North and back again. This time, Damon and I stayed at the Fog Catcher Inn. Our room was at the front of the inn and just across from the beach. You drifted into our room with the fog when the door or window was left open. We felt it to be you who had come inside to be with us. Again, we were taken by how real your presence felt.
I have had to live without you now for over 40 years. This hasn’t been easy to do because I loved and still love you so much. I still have the notes you left in different places at home telling me how much you loved me. I found them when moving from our place on Adams St. in Huntington Beach after you died. You knew all the right places to put these notes, places where you knew I would look. I cried every time I found a new note. I still have all the letters you sent me when you and Damon were in Washington State. Remember? I was looking in Huntington Beach and Long Beach for a new place for us to move into when you and Damon returned to Southern California.
I was 39 years old when you passed away. Now I am quite a bit older. No one has been able to steal my heart or hold a candle to you. In my heart, mind and sole, I know I will be with you again when it’s my turn to leave this place called Earth. I will meet you at a special place where all people meet when they still love each other; when the one you love is taken away early and the other must stay around on Earth for a reason, but misses the other one terribly, and then goes through a long test of love for the other which I have done and am still doing.
I strongly feel it is true about going to this special place. You were taken from me in 1984, but in our case, not really, because of all your special works that remain here. I stayed behind to watch out for them. So, I will see you again at this special place where all lovers go to be with each other again. Please wait for me there when it’s my turn to leave here and I meet you again. If I’m a tad late, it’s only because I don’t walk as fast as I used to walk. I will bring your drawing masterpieces along with me. They will be permanently engraved in my heart, mind, and soul. The pen and ink drawings on Earth will stay on Earth and will live on forever. A line goes on forever. Greatness does too.
Today is October 31, 2024. The trick-or-treaters in Belmont Shore will be here soon. It is a favorite spot for candy treats, great home decorating, and Halloween appreciation. We were married on this day back in 1980 on Cherrywood St. in Bellingham, Washington. I always spent Halloween with my mother after you passed. She always loved you too. We were married by a Unitarian Minister provided by your sister, Nancy, when living in Bellingham. Remember? The minister married Nancy and Ed a few years earlier. He was their friend and a Harley rider too. Nancy’s husband, Ed, is in one of my favorite panel jokes of yours. Ed is having trouble with the clutch on his bike. Ed was a cool dude.
I remember all the people who came to our wedding at our home in Bellingham. My mother, Gwen, flew up from Long Beach with Lisa who remembers your kindness to this day. My mother lived to almost 100. Her mind wasn’t real good at 99 years old, but she never forgot who you were,
“Do you remember Harold?” I would ask her. Without hesitation she would say, “Oh, yes! I remember Harold!”
I remember that your father was at our wedding too, and he liked my mother. He said he knew I was a nice girl because I had a nice mother. Also, I remember that Lou Kimsey of “Easyriders” sent us a nice wedding gift, and all the other nice gifts we received from other people were much appreciated too. All the people who came were old friends who appreciated you and loved your drawings. People also loved it when you would write something to them after drawing their caricature and then you would sign your name.
Jake Thompson did a portrait of you at my request. He used a black and white snapshot of you smoking a Benson and Hedges cigarette. He did your skin color from memory. I thought he needed to tone down the rosy looking skin he gave you. You had freckles and not a reddish, rosy complexion. Jake had the rosy complexion and gave it to you too. He missed you a lot. He changed the background color of your portrait, and it did help somewhat because it appeared to tone down the reddishness at first glance. The cigarette helped capture your expression, Jake said.
I learned some things about painting with color and achieving the right expression that was characteristic of the person being painted. You smoked a lot at your drawing table and so that was the expression you had most of the time. Jake did a good job. I have always liked this portrait of you. Damon said it was a really cool painting and portrait and looked like you. He said he felt like you were really in the room when he first admired it. Jake liked hearing that. Jake was an outstanding portrait artist. Pia Pizzo was married to Jake, was Italian, and a fine artist too. We called her Pia Pizza. She liked it that we called her Pia Pizza. She was my good friend.
I loved it too when you called me your California Fox. It started with your daughter, Louise. She said I was a fox when I met her for the first time. Now I’m an older fox, but strive to have a young thinking mind , stay young at heart , continue to do my best and write about you and post your works for others to enjoy and be able to see the real, original work that you did.
I’m just about done writing, so I’ll be seeing you later at Moonstone Beach with the continuous and light, misty fog, the unique and mysterious moon (just like you), the pebbles that are moon shaped, the beautifully grooved driftwood, and the tepees and lean-to shelters. The beach is just outside the main part of the town of Cambria, across from the Fog Catcher Inn, and not far from San Simeon on Hwy. 1. We’ll collect moonstones, when it starts to get dark with the help of moonlight. We will enjoy clam chowder and fries at Linn’s Cafe down the way if you like, and then we will drift back to our room together at the Inn. We will spend the night together which will never end. My love for you will never end.
Forever free, and always in love with you in spirit, in heart, in mind and in sole.
Your loving wife,
Ann
