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Time now for StoryCorps, the project travels the country recording everyday stories. Today's interview comes from Milwaukee. That's where Jim Krawczyk grew up and fell in love with books. His favorite writer was J.D. Salinger. And in the late 1960s, Jim Krawczyk decided to go on vacation to meet his hero in the small New Hampshire town that the celebrated recluse calls home.

I don't really recall / a town or anything. It was like a building. That was like the post office, the gas station and the general store, all wrapped into one. So I went inside and I told the man, and said "you know, my name Jim Krawczyk. I’m from Wisconsin, I was wondering if you could tell me where J.D. Salinger lives." He said "Huh, you’re never gonna see him, even the delivery boy doesn't see him. He lives across the street in a garage and picks up the money in the envelope" I gosh “Wow!”You know, I came a long way to meet this guy.

So I talked to a retired school teacher. She gave me directions further. Now this is so far back in the little mountains, there is a dirt road. Amazingly, I didn't get lost. So I am driving along and coming up on this house and I look and it's his house. I had a biography of him that described where he lived and everything, I gosh, “Wow I can't believe it.” It just liked the book said, you know, as truly neat. I wasn't afraid you know like a bachelor or any like that. I thought I'm gonna to be cool about it. So I parked the car and went up, knocked at the door.

And ah…this woman came out and it was his wife. I said "hello, my name is Jim Krawczyk, and I am wondering if I could meet your husband. And she calls, “ Anything. he says he sets in his books." She slammed the door. I gosh, “Wow!” I’ve come a long way, wow, this is something. So I turned around and started to go down the steps. And she opened the door again and she came out of the porch she says, "he and I are divorced, and he lives across the road."

So I went down the road, I pulled in. Here is a driveway and I knocked at the door, He had a scream that was like a compromise, and I really couldn't see it, and I'm straining to see him and everything, and just then a crack of thunder came so loud that it felt like it was just above my head. And it started to rain. He came to the door, says"you'd better come inside." You know, I gosh, “Wow!”

He didn't sit down or anything, he didn't offer me, you know, you wanna a cup of coffee or something, nothing, you know, I’m just…”What do you want?” And so I told him who I was, and I asked him if he had ever been to Wisconsin, and he said yeah , he says he was there sometime during the war. I asked him "Do you think The Catcher in the Rye would be such a popular book?" And I don't remember exactly what he said. But I think it was "it's been a nightmare." And why a nightmare, I don't know. Maybe because he gets so much fan mailer. I don't know what, and I really wanna to ask him, “Can I see where you work?” But I didn't wanna be one of his phonies he writes about, so I a kind of held back, you know. And I said "Well, OK. Thank you very much", I shook his hand, and that was it. This is the somebody that nobody meets, nobody gets to see him, and I was in his kitchen. And I thought, man, this is the best vacation I’ve ever had.

Jim Krawczyk in the StoryCorps booth in Milwaukee. His interview will be archived along with all the others' at the American Folk Life Center at the Library of Congress, and you can subscribe to the StoryCorp podcast by going to npr.org. Support for Story Corps comes from ATNT with additional funding from the corporation for public broadcasting.