My favorite author, Ernest Hemingway, was an American novelist of note. Eddie Doherty, my second favorite author, wasn’t. I was introduced to his work by our high school librarian, a stooped, seemingly frail, but quick-witted Franciscan nun whose steel-rimmed eyeglasses kept falling down her nose. Invariably, she’d push them back up again. She was so unlike the other Sister Mary Bust Your Knuckles I’d known.
One day, reaching beneath the counter that separated her from students, she smiled almost wickedly as she raised and revealed a tome with the title, My Hay Ain’t In. “This one’s especially for you,” she said.
Taking the book home, I finished reading it that night. Eddie, son of a Chicago police lieutenant, was a well-known Chicago newspaperman. He crafted gritty, well-honed, hard hitting sentences which ended up in one heck of an interesting story. Hemingway had also learned his craft as a newspaper reporter. They’re the reason why I applied for a reporter’s job.
The Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune’s managing editor advised me I’d be covering both city and county governments. Each weekday morning, I’d visit City Hall, which housed the mayor’s office, Department of Public Works, and police department where I read police reports from the preceding twenty-four hour period. The Mayor, a former coach at my alma mater, Assumption High School, assumed I was his scribe and it was my task to make him and his ideas look good.
After finishing with City Hall, I drove across town and visited the fire station. After I chatted with fire fighters for a short while, I checked their log for any new information, including any ambulance runs.
Next, I drove a few blocks to the County Building and visited the sheriff’s office, circuit courts, register of deeds, and clerk’s office where my mother still worked. Most employees were helpful.
In addition, I had to cover various meetings, including those of the common council. My first night, I less than half-listened to aldermen discuss untold, mundane matters, including what they were going to do with sewer laterals. Sewer laterals? You’ve got to be kidding. I darned near fell asleep. The next morning, I wrote my piece, handed it to the managing editor for approval, after which he asked about the laterals. I shrugged.
I could see he wasn’t pleased as he phoned the mayor. “This is important stuff,” he advised me after he finished with the mayor and the story I should’ve written. If I had the nerve, I could’ve assured him that in the world of importance, sewer laterals were as essential to me as watching paint dry.
What of Ernest and Eddie? Would they have given one hoot about sewer laterals? Thankfully, I was able to write a human interest series about AFDC, Aid to Families with Dependent Children. I interviewed six women, individually and together. Readers apparently liked the series.
Next, I asked for permission to write a possible series about a local eccentric who had recently stuffed a freshly dug potato on to the end of what looked like a shotgun, pointed the barrel at a school bus filled with kids who were taunting him, and pulled the trigger. Bang. The potato splatted against the back of the bus. Afterward, cops told the kids to stop calling the old man names before they confiscated the old man’s gun, which he had apparently made, and warned him not to do that again.
The shooter, Reuben Lindstrom, hardly ever said a word. And was he a sight. With his dirty grey-black beard, his face a mass of blackheads, lines in his neck etched in dirt, and long, matted, oily hair, he apparently believed soap and water would harm or kill him. Invariably, while riding his bike through town, he looked straight ahead and never at people.
When I was a youngster, Reuben was struck by a car while he was on his bike. Injured, he was taken to Riverview Hospital by ambulance. He was none too happy as nurses held him down and force-bathed him. Because his hair was a tangled jungle that defied cleaning, nurses cut it. “You look almost human,” they told him.
Because Reuben couldn’t handle what they’d done, he went round the bend, nuts, whacko. A circuit court judge ordered Reuben to be placed in the county’s insane asylum in Marshfield until at such time Reuben was deemed sane.
In time, he was released. He retrieved his bent bicycle, repaired it, grew his hair back into a tangled mess, became as filthy as ever, and said hardly a word to anyone.
The editor laughed. “Go ahead and if you’re successful in getting close enough to Reuben, which I don’t believe will happen, be sure to take a bath before you enter our building because I don’t want any of his cooties here.”
One day, reaching beneath the counter that separated her from students, she smiled almost wickedly as she raised and revealed a tome with the title, My Hay Ain’t In. “This one’s especially for you,” she said.
Taking the book home, I finished reading it that night. Eddie, son of a Chicago police lieutenant, was a well-known Chicago newspaperman. He crafted gritty, well-honed, hard hitting sentences which ended up in one heck of an interesting story. Hemingway had also learned his craft as a newspaper reporter. They’re the reason why I applied for a reporter’s job.
The Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune’s managing editor advised me I’d be covering both city and county governments. Each weekday morning, I’d visit City Hall, which housed the mayor’s office, Department of Public Works, and police department where I read police reports from the preceding twenty-four hour period. The Mayor, a former coach at my alma mater, Assumption High School, assumed I was his scribe and it was my task to make him and his ideas look good.
After finishing with City Hall, I drove across town and visited the fire station. After I chatted with fire fighters for a short while, I checked their log for any new information, including any ambulance runs.
Next, I drove a few blocks to the County Building and visited the sheriff’s office, circuit courts, register of deeds, and clerk’s office where my mother still worked. Most employees were helpful.
In addition, I had to cover various meetings, including those of the common council. My first night, I less than half-listened to aldermen discuss untold, mundane matters, including what they were going to do with sewer laterals. Sewer laterals? You’ve got to be kidding. I darned near fell asleep. The next morning, I wrote my piece, handed it to the managing editor for approval, after which he asked about the laterals. I shrugged.
I could see he wasn’t pleased as he phoned the mayor. “This is important stuff,” he advised me after he finished with the mayor and the story I should’ve written. If I had the nerve, I could’ve assured him that in the world of importance, sewer laterals were as essential to me as watching paint dry.
What of Ernest and Eddie? Would they have given one hoot about sewer laterals? Thankfully, I was able to write a human interest series about AFDC, Aid to Families with Dependent Children. I interviewed six women, individually and together. Readers apparently liked the series.
Next, I asked for permission to write a possible series about a local eccentric who had recently stuffed a freshly dug potato on to the end of what looked like a shotgun, pointed the barrel at a school bus filled with kids who were taunting him, and pulled the trigger. Bang. The potato splatted against the back of the bus. Afterward, cops told the kids to stop calling the old man names before they confiscated the old man’s gun, which he had apparently made, and warned him not to do that again.
The shooter, Reuben Lindstrom, hardly ever said a word. And was he a sight. With his dirty grey-black beard, his face a mass of blackheads, lines in his neck etched in dirt, and long, matted, oily hair, he apparently believed soap and water would harm or kill him. Invariably, while riding his bike through town, he looked straight ahead and never at people.
When I was a youngster, Reuben was struck by a car while he was on his bike. Injured, he was taken to Riverview Hospital by ambulance. He was none too happy as nurses held him down and force-bathed him. Because his hair was a tangled jungle that defied cleaning, nurses cut it. “You look almost human,” they told him.
Because Reuben couldn’t handle what they’d done, he went round the bend, nuts, whacko. A circuit court judge ordered Reuben to be placed in the county’s insane asylum in Marshfield until at such time Reuben was deemed sane.
In time, he was released. He retrieved his bent bicycle, repaired it, grew his hair back into a tangled mess, became as filthy as ever, and said hardly a word to anyone.
The editor laughed. “Go ahead and if you’re successful in getting close enough to Reuben, which I don’t believe will happen, be sure to take a bath before you enter our building because I don’t want any of his cooties here.”
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