Kokomo Kid's Kronicles

Cowboys and Indians

2010-09-02T09:48:00.000-07:00

As a kid in Indiana, the state with a somewhat misleading name since even in the 1940s there were no tribes of the noble indigenous to be seen, most of the play time was spent recreating World War II over the hillocks and kid-dug caves of the vacant land across from the tank factory.

We fought Germans and Japanese soldiers with stick rifles and machine guns, not to mention an occasional grenade-like rock.

But sometimes we would switch off to the older, more exotic experience of Cowboys and Indians. In my neighborhood in Kokomo, most of the kids wanted to be cowboys -- mostly Gene Autry or Lash LaRue with an occasional Roy Rogers thrown in. The cowboys would gallop around, shooting at the Indians. The better-off ones with shiny cap guns and the rest with any piece of wood that could emulate a six gun.

The Indians mostly would use home-made bows and arrows and spend most of the game improving their representation of dying from cowboy bullets.

The Indians, just as the Germans and Japanese, were always the losers. What's right is right.

Nowadays, it is different. For the past few years the tables have been turned.

Today, the old Cowboy and Indian game has a new wrinkle. The Indians have casinos and instead of bows and arrows, they use slot machines and card tables to take on the cowboys.

And unlike the games of my youth, the Indians almost always win.

And the cowboys just keep coming back.

Strange.

The Devil Weed

2010-03-21T22:58:00.000-07:00

I guess I could blame my first experience with tobacco on the movies (everyone smoked in them, particularly the manly heroes), my admiration for an uncle and grandfather who near chain-smoked or my dad's occasional cigarette, El Roi Tan cigar or use of his hookah with its water bowl and snakelike tube.

Or perhaps I was in a hurry to grow up. After all, it was during World War II and we were all in a hurry, even those of us in our single digit years.

I first met the Devil Weed when I was 8 or 9. At first, I would appropriate a Lucky Strike from my father's pack and sneak out to the coal shed at the back of our Home Avenue place for a few puffs. I enjoyed smoking so much, I decided the share the experience with my little sister, Bonnie. That association came to an abrupt end when Bonnie, so buoyed by the experience she felt it necessary to report to our parents: "I smoked cigarettes with Bobby in the coal shed."

My father, ever into modern child raising, decide to treat my budding addiction in a modern way.

"So you like smoking," he said.

Unsure if it was a question or statement, I remained mute.

"Well, we'll see about that," he concluded as he handed me a Lucky Strike, instructing me to smoke it.

I did and thoroughly enjoyed it. In an apparent effort to make the lesson stick and possibly to provide added impact by making me ill, he provided me with one of his El Roi Tans. I had not partaken of the cigar experience before and found it a bit more than I could take.

But the effect my father had sought did not occur. Neither of the smokes made me ill.

Not sure how that ended, although it was before he hooked up the hookah. I never had a chance to puff tobacco through the water jar and the snakelike tube, although it looked like something a sophisticated person like my father would enjoy.

That failed punishment only whetted my taste for tobacco. Mostly it taught me to avoid smoking with my rat of a sister. After a few experiments with corn silk and newspaper burned my throat, I determined I had to have some of those Lucky Strikes. But I couldn't filch my father's or I would have to endure another smoke 'em if you got 'em punishment and embarrass my father again.

So I did what had to be done. I forged a note which read: "Please send a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes home with my son, Bobby. (signed} Mrs. Weaver. I took the neighborhood store, which fortuitously was about halfway to Meridian School.

The man at the store fortunately didn't know my mother did not smoke and could write better than a third grader. Had I been a good son, I guess the incident would have resulted in a strong case of shame. Instead, there was the elation of having my own pack of cigarettes -- 20 of those wonderful little soldiers in their nifty white package with its dashing red circle trademark.

About this time, I made friends with the little redheaded girl who lived a couple doors north of us. She, too, had an interest in tobacco which helped me greatly in avoiding the coal shed and the informer of a sister. The preferred smoking area for the redheaded girl and me was her family's rhubarb patch, at the back of their property.

In addition to the pleasurable hours spent puffing smoke, I was enthralled and a little puzzled by the many tall tales the redheaded girl would spin. One particularly impressive story involved an uncle who lived with them who was dying of some horrendous disease. At one point, to prove the veracity of her story, she brought along a swatch of pink silk cloth with some reddish stain.

This, she informed me, was a piece of her uncle's underwear, worn by him hours before he died.

After using notes at the neighborhood store for a time, I became wary. Mostly it involved the store's owner telling me he and my dad and uncle, who ran stores, were great friends of his. In my tobacco-sharpened state, I knew the day might come when the grocer would mention my mother's tobacco habit to my father.

So I ventured out afield along the old rusty train tracks beside the shut down glass factory, up Main Street to Markland and the black market cigarette and candy store. The owner of the store, who also ran a tiny movie house next door, wasn't interested in any note from Mrs. Weaver. He just wanted the two or three nickels for the cigarettes.

Lucky Strike greens had gone to war, but the movie and cigarette guy had not. World War II might be a patriotic effort for many on the home front, but for the black marketeer it was a time for profit to be made.

Those days cigarettes were in short supply. Filling the gap at stores like his were second line smokes. My two favorites were Wings and Spuds.

They weren't as tasty as my beloved Lucky Strikes, but they were available.

About the time I got used to the second rate smokes, we moved to the outskirts of town. About that time I kicked my smoking habit for the first of three times.

My second installment of tobacco addiction started shortly after we moved to California. I became friends with a classmate who was also on the eighth grade basketball team. He and I became close friends. Mostly it was his sartorial splendor that I admired, dressed as he was in the uniform of the day -- Levi's jeans, a T-shirt and engineer boots. If it was cold, a Levi's jacket topped it off.

Cigarettes were carried in a rolled up shirt sleeve or down in the engineer boots . The boot was preferable in keeping your smoking from your folks, but a detriment for smoking since the sweaty location gave you soggy, hard to light cigarettes.

This new buddy of mine was a bit of a rebel. Smoking was "beating a weed" while his other favorite pastime was "cyping" cigarettes or candy from a neighborhood market. His technique involved a two-man team -- one keeping the grocer occupied while the other stuffed the loot into a Levi's jacket.

When high school came along, I joined the smoking crowd on the bridge over the train tracks. Each morning a dozen or so would stop for that last cigarette before trudging onto the school grounds.

My smoking continued through high school and college. It wasn't until my second job and was in my 20s that I decided to kick the habit.

That probably would have been it, had it not been for the great Fairbanks flood of 1967. I was between jobs and waiting to leave for points south when the flood hit. We were caught on the other side of the river from our home, imposing on friends for a week or so.

The boredom and availability of the cigarettes from a neighbor led me back down the path. This time I took up filter tip cigarettes -- Phillip Morris with the sweet after-taste, That third and final installment lasted a couple years. Since then, except for a rare cigarette bummed from someone during consumption of adult beverages or an even rarer cigar, I have been clean.

Still, every now and then I have an urge to get out a pad and forge a note saying:

"Please send a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes home with my son Bobby. (signed) Mrs. Weaver."

My First Job

2008-08-04T19:46:00.000-07:00

Cartoons by the author's father,

Robert Weaver

What sold me on the job was the nifty T-shirt with its red, white and blue shield and the lettering proclaiming my new status as an American Boy Ice Cream salesman. I had seen the advertisement for ice cream boy jobs in the Kokomo Tribune. Such phrases as "no experience necessary," "earn lots of money" and "be your own boss" appealed to me. After all, at 11 my opportunities were dwindling. My dreams of a job in the store my dad and uncle ran across from the projects had been crushed when they hired Freddy King to sweep out and deliver groceries. Never did like Freddy anyway.

And then there was my foray into journalism which had fallen flat. The neighbors weren't impressed by the two-page mimemographed publication I delivered and my dad was not too happy with the mess I had made of his mimeograph machine in the garage.

The American Boy office was a couple doors down from the Dr. Pepper plant, where everyone knew they had bottled a mouse once, and across the street from the ice plant. It seemed an eternity in line with all the other boys before I got to the man who was hiring.

He explained how the American Boy organization worked: Boys would come in each morning, wearing their white T-shirts, bought the ice cream bars and other frozen novelty items which would be loaded into the icebox on wheels. The frozen goodies were kept frozen by dry ice. Each boy was to wear a change machine on his belt, a device that would let you lever coins one at a time from the metal tubes for half dollars, quarters, dimes and nickels. (The bills, if you got any, were to be folded carefully and carried in your right front pocket so as not to be stolen by any passing pickpocket.)

In the evening, the boys would return to the office and check in, returning unsold bars and goodies and split their money with the American Boy cashier -- less a charge (discounted, of course) for whatever ice cream bars and novelty items the boys had eaten.

Each boy would be assigned a specific route, a couple miles long and half mile or so across. He was expected to cover the route at least two times.

I had not heard everything the man had said, as my attention was drawn to the stack of snowy white T-shirts emblazoned with the American shield. One of the parts I didn't pick up on was that the ice cream salesmen had to be 16 and have a Social Security card.

It wasn't until I had shaken hands with the man and been issued my T-shirt and shiny change maker that that the part about being 16 and needing the Social Security card sank in.

It gave me pause for a few seconds, but I figured I was big enough to pass for 16 and ought to be able to get a Social Security card, whatever that was.

"OK, all you need to do now is go to the courthouse and get your Social Security card and show up here tomorrow morning," the man said, turning to the next applicant.

I do not remember my experience at the Social Security office or telling what I considered to be a little white lie about my age, but the people there must have swallowed it for I showed up the next morning, bought my ice cream, loaded the cart and set off.

In my sparkling white American Boy ice cream T-shirt and dungarees (no Levi's in Indiana in the late 1940s) I was quite proud of my professional appearance. There was a trick to pushing the cart: You had to lift up on the handle so the thing was riding on two wheels, while occasionally shaking the whole thing from left to right so the bells would ring. At the same time, you were expected to shout out, "Ice cream, get your American Boy ice cream."

Within a few minutes I had the intricacies of cart operation mastered. And after a few sales, I had making change and using the coin changer worked out, too. After a couple hours, the summer heat was catching up with me. Time to sample the goods. A nice ice cream bar filled the bill.

Several times during the day, the siren call of the ice cream and other frozen delights could be heard, although a bit muffled by the insulated ice box on wheels. By early evening of that first day, I was finding myself hungry for something other than frozen delights.

To my surprise, my mother pulled up in the family car, a black 1940 Pontiac sedan -- the one with the silver spot on the front seat I had added when I opened the can of silver paint to see what was inside. She had brought along a tray of warm food for her favorite (and only) son.

That ritual would continue each evening of my career as an ice cream peddler.

American Boy ice cream salesmen would hawk their wares until near dark, providing the residents of Kokomo with a chance to sample the goodies after supper.

Then we would return to "the barn," as the older boys described it, unload our frozen goodies, hand over our money and most nights be amazed at how much of it we had sampled.

After a few weeks, the job was second nature; I was pretty good at it. Bits of knowledge gleaned on the route such as where the repeat customers lived and what areas had almost no business were tucked away under those white cardboard hats we wore.

Although Kokomo is as flat as most Indiana towns, my route, which was south of the main part of town and included a little of the more affluent section to the west, was graced with a couple of north-south streets with hills. The gentle slopes provided an ice cream vendor with chance to get off his aching feet and enjoy a short but exciting surfboard-like ride for a few blocks.

I like to look back on these rides as pioneering exploits that predated the later deeds of California's surfers. These rides required a great degree of balance as the ice cream cart surfer put his body forward across the box, putting weight on the front of the rig while hanging onto the handle. Ringing the bells was optional.

These downhill plunges may have set world land records for ice cream carts. And since there were no brakes on the cart, it was fortunate for me that these streeets would start uphill after a short dip.

Almost my whole ice cream selling experience was spent on the south central route. I got used to it, knew most of the people on it by name (and what they liked to order). Then, one day, the boss said I would have to work the northeastern route.

I had never been to that side of town. Coming from a household where my father and mother referred to black people as Negroes and would not abide even the use of "colored people" to describe them, I was without prejudice.

I knew there were black people somewhere in town, but was not sure just where. That day I learned. The northeastern part of town was apparently somewhat an undefined ghetto.

Since the only blacks I had ever seen included some waiting for buses downtown and the blind guy who played an accordian on the square.

So I found it interesting to discover all these people lived in my town. Things went along at about the same clip as on my usual route until I got to the lodge. One of the men came to the door and asked me to come take their orders. It was impressive.

I was counting up my increased profits in my head, when one of the men, asked if they could have the ice cream for free. Others joined in, saying they all deserved a treat. I was worried and tried to explain that I had to pay for the ice cream, so they had to pay.

Then, in an instant, one of the men cracked a smile and then the rest. They had been teasing me and added my first tip to what they paid for the ice cream.

I learned a lot of important lessons my 11th summer:

How to sell something, how to make change, how to surf

the hills of Kokomo on my ice cream cart and how everyone

is pretty much the same, regardless of their color.

Oh, yeah, and maybe the most important one: There is no free lunch

or ice cream -- even if you are the one selling it.

Hoosier outlaw commando

2008-07-16T22:26:00.000-07:00

It all started one muggy summer day in Indiana when I was feeling sorry for myself. My father had announced one of his edicts; this one forbidding the possession of any type of cap pistol.

It seemed unfair. After all, everyone else had them. Some fired the regular-size caps that came in a roll and sounded like a stick hitting pavement when they went off. The ones that were prized and proved the manhood of my 8- and 9-year-old buddies fired much bigger, single caps that produced a louder, more commanding bang.

But, alas, once father had spoken, that was it. Or was it?

I had spent more than a few hours in the darkened theaters in Kokomo absorbing the derring do of the heroes of those black and white World War II films. Many were outlaws; some commandos raiding enemy bases while others were smart-talking, cigarette-smoking, pinup girl-attracting bad guys with good hearts.

But one thread linked most of these characters. If the situation demanded it, they would turn to thievery. They were all a little like Ali Baba. Jimmy Cagney and Edward G. Robinson were even more larcenous.

As I lay in the grass in the shade of the Catalpa tree, one of its green cigars clenched in my teeth, I dreamed of trading places with Cagney or Robinson, blasting my way out of a tough spot with my pistol. But, alas, I was not allowed to have a pistol, let alone the sulfur smoke ammunition it used.

At that point, I crossed over to the Dark Side.

That decision totally ignored all the good lessons learned at Trinity Methodist and its sister churches where I had been dragged by my mother in hopes one of the varied approaches to soul saving might stick.

Not likely, although it was pretty interesting to discover how the methods of conducting various rites such as baptism were so very different; Methodists sprinkled you while the First Christians down at the corner in the church under the giant oak tree would plunge you into a square tub of water adorned with a painting of John the Baptist pushing Jesus under.

But in those days the good work of the church came in second.

I had seen enough movies about criminal gangs and commandoes to know the success of a big heist or raid into enemy territory needed a good plan. Mine was simple: Strike fast at several targets and use the cover available to make my escape. The perfect place for my crime spree was the courthouse square in Kokomo.

Several businesses that sold caps and cap pistols were located in ground floor businesses on the square. I entered the businesses from the front or back, doing my best the emulate the professional gangster-commando with steely nerves.

At the first store, I managed to slip a cap gun into a pocket, leaving by the side door. Then, still in the style of a raider, I slipped into a nearby doorway, climbed the stairs and walked quickly to the other end of the building, a block away, descending down the front stairs on my way to the second target. Once down, it was easy to enter the next shop, make my escape and repeat the process until I had circled the square.

My booty included several cap guns, boxes of caps and a couple of girl’s toys I thought my sister Bonnie would like.

My raids were infrequent and my use of the stolen weapons and ammunition had to done in a furtive manner. During that period, I also developed an urge to grab other little things I thought I needed, little toys, knives, candy and gum.

My first brush with authority came during a family trip to a vacation at one of the lakes. We had stopped at a store for some food and other items my folks needed for the outing. While in the store, I helped myself to a sack of candy. Everything would have been all right if I hadn’t opened the package and shared some with my sister.

"Where did you get that candy, Bobby?" my father asked.

I lied, claiming I had it at home and had brought it along.

Unlike the Public Enemy No. 1 or the commando, I couldn’t hold up to questioning by the authorities, broke down and admitted my crime to my father. He marched me back into the store and had me apologize to the owner and pay for the candy.

That put an end to my life of crime – for a time.

A few years later we moved to California and I fell in with a couple of classmates who were successful shoplifters. They used a technique in which one kid would detract the shopkeeper while the other would load up on candy, gum and whatever else could be stuffed into a Levi jacket.

We felt no remorse for our thefts; they were exciting and proved how bold we were.
One of our more bold forays, which never quite came to fruition, involved scaling a wall to the roof of a lumber yard, dropping onto the ground behind the place and making off with a cash register or its contents from the office. Fortunately that never happened or I might be writing this on a roll of prison toilet paper with my blood.
I had a couple more brushes with authority, managing to talk my way out of them by claiming each was my first transgression. Finally, one summer in Pacific Beach, a toy shop owner took me into his office and threatened to call the police and my parents.
I managed to talk my way out of it, apologizing and promising never to do it again. And I didn’t.
Funny thing was that even as a kid I knew it was wrong to steal; I was breaking the law and the Ten Commandments. But the excitement of the act and feeling of outsmarting someone proved more strong.

Since then, I have gone out of my way to avoid taking things that belong to others. I have returned money and personal items I have found to their owners several times.

My conversion to the right side of the law seems to have rubbed off on at least one of my offspring.

Once, my daughter, found a wallet containing several thousand dollars. At the time, she was separated from her husband and on hard times. She asked my advice and I told her she should return it to the owner.

The man thanked her and gave her a fairly small reward. I was a bit disappointed as she was. But then, in a few days, a letter arrived with an additional thank-you and a certificate from Toys R Us that helped her provide Christmas gifts for her daughters.

Proof that crime does not pay, but honesty does.

Still, on occasion, I admit I recall the excitement of my life as a thief. But I could not return to the Dark Side.

Not because of any high moral standard I might have, but rather the fear that I might run into that storekeeper from Pacific Beach and he might call the cops this time.

.........

Al JaCoby

2008-07-15T22:20:00.000-07:00

My memories of Al JaCoby stretch back to my second job -- first as wire editor and then demoted to reporter -- at the Escondido Times-Advocate in the 1950s. I arrived there shortly after JaCoby had landed a job on the San Diego Union.

He left behind a legacy among the staff there, which frequently called upon his name and sharp decision process. The county editor, Eloise Perkins, would start one of these JaCoby moments by recalling a quote starting "as my old Armenian grandmother would say..."

The city editor, Ron Kenney, based his well-run desk on things learned from JaCoby.
After leaving the Times-Advocate for greener (financially) fields I did not hear about JaCoby for seven years when I was hired at the Union.

I first met him when I was roving feature writer for the county desk, a kinda low-budget and less talented countyside equivalent of Joe Stone.

JaCoby, the Sunday editor, asked me if I could do a feature on a lost gold mine a couple of locals had found near Borrego. Turned out it wasn't Peg Leg's mine, but one from the Depression. Still It made a great yarn, despite the leg wounds inflicted by the chollas.

It also provided me with the experience of staying in one of those luxury cabins, complete with a kitchen and its own little liquor cabinet (no tiny bottles or charges on your bill). The place had no TV or radio since satellite and cable weren't available. To make up for it, after dinner, they would show first-run (or nearly first-run movies) in the dining room. How great.

When I got back, I suggested a feature on how cool it was in Borrego to be out of the reach of TV and radio distraction. My boss, Baker Conrad, liked the idea but thought it might not work, what with the publisher's financial ties down there...

A few months later, JaCoby asked me to do another Sunday piece. This one as to be my favorite story from my Union days. It involved one of the last survivors of Olivenhain, who had been a kid when she and her family moved to the bare land with other German-speaking people in 1885, lured there by full-page ads in eastern papers promising a sunny paradise.

As it turned out, the survivor, an elderly woman recalled nothing much about that first year, except for the rain.

I spent a lot of time talking to people who lived there and researching the colony. It made a wonderful story.

Both the stories I did for Al drew more response from readers than any of the other hundreds of features I did while there.

When I left the Union for the glitter of Alaska, I lost touch with Al for quite some time. Later in my career, I got to know him better when we met at various editors' conventions. He was a wonderful, witty person and I am proud to have known him.

Steamy incidents

2008-02-15T13:51:00.000-08:00

Hot stuff

The last time I remember seeing a source of water to cool a boiling radiator was on the way to Weaverville. Halfway up Buckhorn grade on Highway 299 there was a spring. probably Artesian water, that ran year-round.

It was encased in a granite base, the kind they made during the WPA or Conservation Corps years of the Depression.

I never needed to stop there to cool off the variety of vehicles I used in those years -- mostly older and ranging in size from a brace of Metropolitans to a Rambler American, to a stately 1955 Studebaker pickup truck with a hill holder to a borrowed Ford 100 pickup with a gasoline tank that sloshed liquid from side to side as the vehicle leaned into and out of curves.

About 20 years ago, someone in authority decided the water should be turned off. As I remember it, the action was not taken on a dry year or because the water no longer flowed beneath the ground.

To make sure motorists got the message, signs informing motorists of the spring in both directions were taken away The stone structure and the pipe that held the water were torn out, too.

Perhaps it was the advent of nearly universal use of cooling system liquid that spelled its doom.

Too bad.

With the demise of that spring, the last I have noticed in my travels around the state, some one of the truly reassuring fixtures of the highway died.

In those earlier days of driving when a trip into the mountains or across the desert was more of an adventure than the drudgery it is today, a source of water for the radiator was as important as that of the gas station.

Back then, one of the more enjoyable parts of the drive -- a good way of passing the time on a long trip -- was the conversation triggered when someone spotted an overheated car or truck at the side of the road.

The newer and more expensive the vehicle, the more comments. A new Cadillac or Lincoln drew quite a bit of derision while an older Ford or Chevrolet, expected to wind up there, were mentioned in more kindly tones that shared the misfortune of the drivers.

One of my favorite memories involving an overheated auto occurred at an important juncture in my career. I was riding up the Cajon Pass in a new Mercury Comet driven by the publisher of the Victor Press. About half-way up the pass, the Comet fell out of orbit, its radiator steaming as the publisher guided it onto the shoulder.

We were on our way to Victorville so I could look over the Victor Press and the town. I had been offered the job of editor at the twice-weekly newspaper. The publisher, also the general manager of the Ontario Daily Report, had offered me the job while I was a reporter at the Report.

Carlton Appleby proved just how cool he was when the radiator boiled. He didn't even get out of the car to open the hood, he just kept pitching the job to me. By the time engine had cooled off and we had topped the pass, I was pretty well sold on the job.

In addition to those welcome springs along the highways of the past, there were several other aids for those who ventured out on trips during hot weather.

People crossing the deserts could rent a device that sprayed water onto the radiator as you drove through the heat. They would hook it up for you on at Las Vegas or St. George, Utah, and take it off on the other side. My memory of the device is that you controled the water flow with a foot pump.

In addition, almost all desert travelers carried gallon canvas bags of water on the front bumpers of their cars. The water evaporating through the canvas kept cool for drinking or radiator.

Bag of cool water

Perhaps the neatest device of all was the window cooler, a scaled-down version of the swamp coolers I would learn to love in later, pre-airconditioning year in the desert.

You hooked the cooler onto the front passenger side window allowing an opening an inch or two deep for the air to blow in. You filled a small tank with water that would drip onto the excelsior. I can't remember if there was a fan or not, but the air blowing through the streamlined silver device made many of my earlier trips tolerable.

Most of the time back then, such cooling was available only when faced with treks across the burning sands. For those who lived in the Imperial Valley or say Bakersfield, there was only one type of relief during the hot weather: The 460 airconditioner.

That technique, not quite as efficient as the window swamp cooler, involved driving with all four windows cranked down and sailing along at 60 miles an hour, ergo the 460.

Although the advent of the airconditioner has made driving during the hot months much more comfortable, it is not nearly as interesting. The cooling spray from the window swamp cooler, the refreshing cool drink from the canvas bag and the entertainment offered by discussing stalled motorists or mechanics wrestling a water sprayer onto your car, those are all gone.

But they are not forgotten.

Milo Sorghum: The Final Years

2008-02-05T21:00:00.000-08:00

Milo Sorghum’s resurrection and final, fading years were spent with the pseudo farm editor, now a silver-crowned, crusty newsie in the service of the free-booting pirate publisher Billy Dean, Billy Dean in the far-away realm known only by the dreaded inituals ANG.

Milo, in the nether world since his contrived death at the hands of the pseudo farm editor’s henchman, would remain in printing purgatory for a few years as the editor toiled the hellish existence of a copy slave not too far removed from the life of the galley slaves of yore.

Instead of pulling at oars to the beat of the drums, urged on by the bite of the whips of the overseers, the copy slaves pulled at glowing boxes, hacking away at the offerings of cityside slaves, a floor below. The beat of the drum had been replaced by a series of deadlines, times certain and as inviolate as the speeds demanded in the galleys. The overseers were replaced by a copy sergeant and his band of bully-boy (and bully-girl) sidekicks whose main goal in life was to keep the poor copy slaves choping copy and slapping on headlines.

In the sanctuary of the copy slaves, there was a dark pall of cynicism and an air of smugness that was pervasive. It took our pseudo farm editor two years of toiling in this sad existence before he escaped and helped Milo live again.

One of the knights of the Kingdom of Billy Dean, Billy Dean, brokered the escape, offering the editor a chance to breathe in the cleaner air of another level of the ANG realm where writers toiled to create stories.

To encourage the writers to be more creative in their work, our hero decided to use a program of rewards that had worked for him at other newspapers. In those places, various colored stars, certificates of merit and ice cream cones were awarded those who went above and beyond the call of duty.

Ah, but it was not to be. A newly beknighted superior would not hear of spending any of the treasure of the dreaded King Billy Dean, Billy Dean on such frivolity. Our hero found himself lacking the resources to pay for medals, trophies, certificates, ice cream cones or even multi-colored stick-on stars.

It was at this point, that the spirit of Milo Sorghum rose from the ashes. Our hero devised a plan in which imaginary awards would be given those who deserved the ones denied them by the skinflint supervisor. A variety of Milo Sorghum awards were provided to the worthy -- handed down in e-mails and occasionally posted on the bulletin board.

The announcements went into great detail in descibing the type of imaginary jewels and metal in each prize, i.e. The Milo Sorghum Award for Valor, a beautifully worked gold-encrusted display of crossed heads of sorghum with two emeralds on each. The award can be worn as a medallion on a gold chain or as a broach.

Although our hero missed the days when reporters proudly displayed the varied colored stars -- red for good work, green for better work, silver for exceptional work and gold for the best -- on their computers in the style of football players using them as evidence of their tackles, passes, catches or sacks, he found the writers seemed pleased by the imaginary awards.

And so, in the final years of our hero's time in the newsroom in the Kingdom of Billy Dean, Billy Dean, the spirit of Milo Sorghum lived on. Finally, when our hero was knocked from his steed by the lance of one of the evil money counters of Billy Dean, Billy Dean, the second life of Milo Sorghum came to a close.

That has been several years. The farm editor imposter lives a quiet life, sometimes dreaming of the glory days when he and Milo battled through the newsrooms in a quest for excellence in agriculture and journalism.

Of late our hero has begun to wonder if Milo might make another appearance some day. After all, our hero has created a ficticious company that runs three ficticious ranches in California and Bana California.

Where could someone like Milo be more at home?

Saga of Milo Sorghum: Part II: Back to the Valley

2007-11-27T15:05:00.000-08:00

A few months after the farm editor incident, Milo Sorghum returned to the Valley.

It was shortly after the pseudo farm editor was provided with an offer to return to the Valley as the newspaper's first staff bureau chief.

Although our hero was honored, he was a bit hesitant when making the decision, preferring to hang onto his cushy feature writing-farm page editing post. But that was before the newsroom godfather made it clear to him the transfer was an offer he could not refuse.

During their conversations, something about no more feature writing and night police beat surfaced for a moment. That coupled with an offer of substantial remuneration tipped the scales.

At that time the Valley bureau involved providing news and photographic coverage of the cities and various governmental agencies of the Imperial Valley and the government of the Mexican state of Baja California del Norte which has its capital in Mexicali.

The staff of the bureau provided enough news stories, features and photographs to fill the Valley section, usually a page and a half to two pages of space.

When the decision was made to use a staff member as bureau chief, it was agreed there should be a second full-time news staffer assigned to the bureau. In addition, the bureau news personnel included a Valley oldtimer who was an El Centro City Councilman, the El Centro mayor's wife who along with her women's section work did some news writing, an intern and a couple of stringer photographers.

Despite all the news stories, features and photographs the bureau staff produced for each day's paper, there was a problem. It was unique among the paper's four county editions. In all other sections -- those covering the East County, North County and South County -- should there be a shortage of material to fill the day's news space, a story or photograph from the San Diego area or one of the other county editions could be used.

In the Valley, however, the space had to be filled with material from the Imperial Valley only.
And it was this peculiar problem that led to Milo Sorghum's return to the area of his birth.

Milo showed up one day after the bureau chief received a panicky call from the county editor, who said he had a three-inch hole and needed some kind of a filler story to plug it. Just as he had in San Diego when the pseudo farm editor was under the gun, Milo came to the newsman's rescue.

This time Milo came back to life as a farm equipment salesman, whose dealership (for a defunct tractor manufacturer at a non-existent address on Brawley's Eastside) had named him salesman of the year. Along with the financial reward, Milo was to be flown (on an airline which had ceased to exist) to a resort on a beach in Hawaii for a week. The item fit the space perfectly.

That started what would be several years of Milo's life in the pages of the Imperial County edition. Over those years, Milo would rise through the ranks of his farm equipment business until he was manager of the dealership. He would be active in community activities as a member and in various officer slots for a variety of fraternal and social organizations, each one that either did not exist in the Valley or anywhere else.

His kids would go off to little-known and non-existent colleges where they would be honored for their scholastic, athletic and other achievements. His wife would garner her share of plaudits from a variety of organizations, none of which existed in Brawley and usually nowhere else.

When it came time for the pseudo farm editor-bureau chief to leave the Valley for another job, he was faced with yet another dilemma: What would become of Milo?

Fortunately the bureau chief's successor offered to keep Milo alive, or as alive as Milo had ever been. After all, no one filled those hard-to-fill spaces like the aging equipment dealership manager, his family and his activities.

All went well for a year or so. Then Milo's keeper was provided with a job offer he could not refuse. Again the quandary: What about Milo?

Milo's second keeper came up with an amazing end to Milo's life story. It involved the family, while on vacation in the Midwest, having a ghastly accident. A tire on their car blew out, sending the the vehicle into a skid on the rural gravel road. There was no way to correct for the skid and the car and its occupants rocketed off the road, across a ditch and landed in a sewer treatment plant pond. It was several months before the sewer workers discovered the car and the Sorghum family.

The news of the family's demise, along with the information that there were no known survivors in the Valley, came in a story, which began: "Word has been received by friends of the Milo Sorghum family of Brawley of an accident that claimed the lives of Milo and Cornelia Sorghum and their son and daughter..."

The oddest part of the life and death of Milo Sorghum and his family was that not once during
his existence in the pages of the newspaper did one reader of the Imperial County edition or one editor of the pages ever question any of his antics or the non-existing organizations so vital to his life.

Next: Saga of Milo Sorghum: His spirit lives on

Milo Sorghum: A long way from Brawley

2007-09-27T21:41:00.000-07:00

The saga of milo sorghum: Part 1

Milo Sorghum was born in a sugar beet field south of Brawley in 1961. In the shadow of the white, steamy smoke of the Holly Sugar mill, he took shape when a fledgling farm reporter sought him out.

The newsman's boss, eager for a photograph to illustrate the coming harvest had called the reporter over and suggested he go out and take a picture of milo.

"Milo who?'' the reporter asked.

"Milo Sorghum,'' the editor replied, careful not to break a smile.

"Where can I find him?" the reporter countered.

"Probably in a field near the Holly Sugar plant,'' his boss answered.

Armed with that information and a 120-millimeter Japanese copy of a Rolleiflex camera, the reporter set out in search of Milo Sorghum.

He drove his little blue French sedan up and down the roads south of town until he spotted it -- a weathered trailer on blocks in the middle of a field of green cornlike plants. He trudged across the field, knocked on the trailer's door and was greeted by a grizzled old man holding a coffee cup.

"Is this where Milo lives?'' the newsman inquired.

"What?" the old man asked.

"Well, my boss told me to get a picture of Milo and that he lived in a field out here by Holly Sugar," the reporter explained.

A grin spread across the old man's face and he said:

"Well, in a manner of speaking, I guess Milo does live here."

"Then are you Milo?'' the perplexed reporter asked.

"Naw, but you found him,'' the old man replied with a chuckle. "Milo's all around you right now. That's what this here grain plant is called milo sorghum. It's a hybrid feed grain."

So the reporter talked the old man into standing beside the trailer door, backed up a ways and shot a photograph of the man and milo sorghum.

A second crop of Milo

Years passed and the razzing the reporter had taken in the newsroom was forgotten. During his time in the Valley, the reporter learned a bit about farming and its ins and outs. He spent time with braceros, the contract workers from Mexico; the migrating farmworkers who moved up the coast harvesting crop after crop; the foremen; farm owners and farm scientists from the universities and state and federal government.

So it was natural some years later when he had moved along to a big daily newspaper on the coast that he be tapped to put together the paper's weekly farm page.

At the time, his main job involved four days on the road, digging up features for the paper's county pages and filling in when reporters went on vacation. One day a week he worked on the paper's county desk and for part of that day, he assumed the de facto farm editor's mantle.

It was a snap of a job. The main farm writer was a man who had been hired by the paper after selling a small chain of weeklies. Most of the week he served as a publisher's representative at one of the county offices. But one day a week, he used the expertise he had gained through a career of writing about farming. There were pictures taken by the staff photographers and stories and photos from various news and feature services.

The editor's job was to put it all together in the two or three pages that were provided for farm news.

The only problem was that the advertising dummies -- miniature page layouts showing where advertisements were to be run, thereby indicating what space the editor had for his news and features -- were always coming in late.

Since the farm page duties were among the editor's last of the day, this put him in a crunch for time and cut into the time he could spend at the Press Room bar with his fellow newsies.

Knowing the dummie came from the advertising department, the editor decided he should call someone and ask if the layouts of the farm pages could be provided a bit earlier each week.

So without counsel of his superiors, the editor took it upon himself to call the advertising department and see if he could straighten things out.

Figuring his best chance of success was to employ the brusque, imperious tone of someone used to getting his way, our hero started out:

"I'm calling about the ad dummies for the farm pages. They're late again and this is just not acceptable. Can't someone do something about this? We're really tired of them being late every week."

His approach and the technique of leaving almost no time for response seemed to be working as he received a series of "uhs" and "ers."

Then the person asked the editor to wait a moment; that someone who could help would be with him in a moment.

The second person, a deep-voiced man of some apparent authority, was understanding and said he was sure something could be done. Then the man asked who was calling.

Caught in the headlights, the editor managed not to stammer before replying: "The farm editor."

The ad man explained that he was the advertising manager for the newspaper and that he would see that the dummies were there on time every week.

"That's great,'' the editor said. "I'll send a copy clerk over to get them.''

"Not necessary," the advertising manager said. "I'll send them up with an advertising salesman."

The editor, bubbling with victory, said that would be great.

That is when things went dark for him.

"Who should I tell him to ask for?" the ad man asked.

There was a pause as the editor tried to regain his composure; caught in his own trap he couldn't give his real name, lowly peon he was. Then in a moment of inspired idiocy, he blurted:

"Milo. Milo Sorghum."

When the big day came the following week, our hero had arranged to work in the office so he could see if the farm page dummies truly arrived on time. Sure enough, shortly after lunch, several hours before they were due, an advertising salesman in a natty suit arrived and handed them to someone on the copy desk.

Smug in victory, the editor relaxed and began working on a story he was writing.

That's when someone on the copy desk stood up, holding a hand over the telephone receiver and shouted:

"Anyone here named Milo? Milo Sorghum?"

Deciding he could not fit under the desk, our hero shouted out that although Milo was out, he would be glad to take the call.

It was the ad manager.

"Just wanted to touch base with you, Milo, and make sure everything worked out well," he said.
"If you have any trouble in the future, just give me a call.''

But Milo never had to call again.

(Next: Milo returns to the Valley.)

Bleu Pierre: A Mid-life Surge, The Final Days

2007-09-24T15:45:00.000-07:00

Life in Ontario for Bleu Pierre started with the realization that it was not nearly as hot for a car built in France as his previous domaine in the Imperial Valley. There was also an absence of sand storms, which made the heart of his little 36-horsepower engine purr with delight.

It was shortly after the family arrived in Ontario that Pierre made a new friend. Al the Dutchman was the husband of the bookkeeper at pere's new place of business, The DailyReport. In addition, Al ran a service station and specialized in keeping all the cars driven by his wife's co-workers running.

Pierre liked the way Al treated him, particularly since his new friend was the first person who seemed to know what made him tick and why he had so much trouble with his engines.

"Turns out the reason you've been wearing out so many engines so quickly can be blamed on that accident you had when you first got this little fellow,'' Al told pere, taking time out for a puff on his ever-present pipe."Knocked him out of whack, putting an angle in the drive line...Kinda like pulling it to one side all the time. No wonder he had so much trouble. He was running down the road like a dog.''

Pere was pleased; perhaps he could drive Pierre for more than 15,000 miles before changing another engine.

"One more thing,'' Al said after another puff from the pipe. "That's a 1959 model, last of the line. Renault kinda cheaped out on it. pointing to a cap atop Pierre's engine. "That has a few holes around the edges and is the only place the engine can vent from its crankcase...Earlier models had a second vent, a pipe, on the side kinda like a Chevy or Ford.

"That added to your problem. All that pressure the poor little guy had to suffer through.''

After a few hours of work, Pierre was almost a new car; he drove down the road straight as he had when he rolled off the French assembly line and his bad case of auto asthma had cleared up, too.

Everything went well for several months, but then his latest engine which had suffered damage earlier from his two now-cured maladies died.

Al suggested that instead of replacing the latest blown engine with a new one from the Renault factory, he look around and see what he could find. What he came up with was a step up from the original, a Dauphine engine rated at 53 horsepower.

It took a little tinkering to fit the bigger engine into the rear compartment, but when it was done, Pierre was transformed from a mild-mannered little family car that putt-putted around town to a snarling tiger capable of sailing along with the best of the sports cars.

About this time, Pere was asked to be editor of the company's newspaper in Victorville. After the family had moved to nearby Hesperia, Bleu Pierre became a regular sight on the back road between home and the office.

His favorite trip, however, involved the back road from Hesperia to the bottom of the Cajon Pass. Pere would push the little blue car and its beefed up engine to new speeds around the tight curves of the two-lane road. For a time Pierre was convinced his driver was training for a grand prix.

During this period, Pierre made frequent trips down the Cajon Pass and across the vineyards back to Ontario when his owner needed to return to the headquarters. His most important trip down the hill, and perhaps his fastest, was on a Tuesday morning in 1962 when he carried the family down the hill to a hospital in Upland in record time -- 70 miles in 70 minutes.

He was racing the stork and almost did not make it. The youngest member of the family, a jeune fille, arrived while pere was parking the car after dropping maman off at the emergency room.

After that, Pierre found himself a work-a-day commuter, carrying pere to the office and home. But most weekends and evenings, he was left in the garage while the family drove about in a much larger, and in Pierre's opinion much more common, American built stationwagon.

Sadly, the family had outgrown him.

It wasn't long before Pierre's travels with the family dwindled in number. Finally, when Pere decided to return to the Ontario paper and move the family back down the hill, Pierre found himself relegated to a rented trailer for the trip. The insult was added to as some friends of pere's managed to drop him as he was being loaded. It was his first ding.

A few months later, depressed and seldom driven, Pierre was somewhat encouraged when pere decided he should be sold to another, smaller family.

His Gallic reasoning kicked in: Perhaps he would run into someone like Jamie who would run along side him in the early morning mists in a city.

A much more civilized existence, n'est-ce pas?

Bleu Pierre: The Desert Years

2007-09-14T15:16:00.000-07:00

Bleu Pierre made his way to the desert wastelands in a hot summer day in 1960, carrying Pere Tisserant and the rest of the Weaver family from the chill of the coast into the oven of a Valley.

His first adventure involved driving from his spot at the curb in front of the four-cabin court the family called home to the Brawley News. Although a relatively uneventful trip, early in his time in the Valley Pierre encountered the crickets. Millions of them covered the streets, sidewalks and circled the streetlights at night.

It wasn't long until, his outings lengthened. Regular visits to El Centro, Westmoreland, Calipatria and Niland gave way to an occasional dash to the coast to escape the summer heat and up to Julian and Ramona to visit the family's relatives.

Toward the end of that first summer, Pierre and the family made their first visit to Mexico. It was no weekend pleasure trip but rather part of a complicated program that involved most of the newsies who worked and lived in Brawley. The drive was known as "The Booze Run.''

Each newsie involved in the run would volunteer every month or six weeks to drive to Mexicali and load up and drive to San Luis and up to the Arizona checkpoint, where the legal limit of liquor was one gallon for each U.S. citizen. (In California in those days, no liquor could be brought into California.) Since there was no differentiation betwen adults and children, the family was allowed to bring four gallons across the border.

Pierre got used to being packed with an assortment of Mexican booze -- tequila, Kahlua, various liquors and half-gallon jugs of Oso Negro vodka and gin (complete with the little black bear key chain on each bottle). As the runs continued and Pere became friends with the liquor store owner, extra items including miniature bottles of various liquors, fancy shot glasses and sacks of tiny limes were added to the cargo.

Everything went well for Pierre until the following summer when he was headed back to Brawley from El Centro. He felt hot and then everything just seized up. His aluminum engine had melted into a useless block of metal. In short order a new engine was installed and he felt much better.

Since Pierre was running so well, Pere decided to improve the appearance of his Renault. Pierre was driven to a small upholstery shop in Mexicali, near the state capitol building of Baja California. There with the mastery of Spanish he had developed in three years of classes at Grossmont High School, Pere launched into a conversation with the shop owner.

It was evident shortly that Pere's Spanish was about as sufficient as was the English of the upholsterer. Attempting to suggest the job be taken on the following week, Pere said: "Otra semana.'' This comment of "other week'' did little to help. Finally, after several minutes of talk that would have sent a United Nations translator out for a beer, Pere noticed a calendar on the wall. Taking down the calendar and gesturing to the time he wanted the work done, Pere was able to get through to the upholsterer.

Although Pierre's work was not done on the date promised by the shop, it turned out to be quite an improvement -- a two-tone blue naugahyde -- over the stock gray.

So proud of the new interior were Pere and the family they decided to take Pierre on a run to the coast to show it off at the relatives'.

About 10 miles west of Seeley on Highway 80, in a stinging sand storm Pierre coughed and sputtered and coasted to a stop. He felt awful. Pere raised the hood, took a beer from the ice chest, closed the hood and went around the car to the engine compartment.

"Obviously something to do with the fuel system,'' he intoned with knowing emphasis. "I remember something like this happening to my '34 Ford on Grossmont Hill,'' he added. ''Nothing to it, just a vapor lock. Fixed it by putting wooden clothes pins on the gas line.''

Maman reminded Pere the family had left its clothes pins on the line back in Brawley.

Pere took another sip of beer and shielding his eyes from the sand, decided it was time for some serious action. Using the official Renault tool kit that came with Pierre, Pere loosened the bolts holding the carburetor to the intake manifold and lifted it out.

Inside the car, he took the carburetor apart, trying to appear he knew what he was doing. Fortunately for him, the carburetor of the 4CV was relatively simple. He continued fumbling with it until a needle shaped piece fell into his had. Behind it, there was a mesh screen.

He pulled that out, too, and blew through the needle valve and the screen, hoping this might have something to do with the problem. After the carburetor was reassembled and back in place, Pierre seemed to want to start, but didn't. The battery was dead.

"Aha,'' Pere exclaimed, closing the engine cover and returning to the front compartment where he got another beer and the handy, dandy combination wheel wrench-crank.

He took another sip of beer, extended the wheel wrench-crank into crank position, fed it through the handy hold in the grille and into the engine. After one twist which ended with a solid jolt and back bounce that bruised Pere's arm and sent a series of expletives flying, Pere counted to dix and cranked it again, starting Pierre.

From that time on Pere was difficult to live with since he was always boasting about his skills as a sand storm mechanic without equal.

Finally, after a series of other adventures in the Valley, which included carrying Pere, Maman and the deux fils to the hospital and bringing back Pere, Maman and trois fils, the family decided it was time to move on.

Pere, who had landed a job at a newspaper in Ontario, Calif., drove off with all the family belongings in a truck borrowed from the local Ford dealer, a fact that put Pierre's nose out of joint for a time. The family rode with Pere while a Mexican friend of Pere's drove followed in Pierre. Pierre hated being put in such a subservient position, but amused himself by learning more about the driver.

Al Villalobos was the circulation manager of the Brawley News. He and Pere were close friends. So close, in fact, that Pere and Maman had places of honor at the Villalobos family table after Al's wedding. Al was most famous for two comments: "Me and my dog are friends together,'' and "I am seek and deezy. I thin I go home and take a Bofferin.''

When Al and Pierre arrived at the family's new home in Ontario, the dwelling was dark. The power company folks had not been out to turn on the lights. Al proved his worth by walked to the rear of the house, finding the power company box, popping it open and turning on the lights.

Next: A powerful surge in mid-life and the final days.

Lord Jim

2007-09-06T21:33:00.000-07:00

He was easy to spot, strolling along at that ambling gait, somewhere between the rolling walk of a sailor and the swagger of an Irish lord.

There he would be, his hands stuffed into the pockets of the disreputable, rumpled corduroy jacket, the end of one leg of his wrinkled gabardine slacks half-stuffed into the top of one of his scuffed Justin cowboy boots.

His hair, always about two weeks overdue for a trim would hang down over his collar, framing the face strangers would tell him reminded them of Marlon Brando.

I got my first look at him in the waning days of the 1950s in Brawley. I was moving on to greener and hopefully cooler fields after a year or so as the city editor-then managing editor of the Brawley News, a struggling 4,000-copy daily that was being sapped of its income and spirit by the owner of a string of desert dailies.

In those days the Brawley News was published in the plant of at a sister paper in El Centro.
I had a week or so to show Jim around and train him in the intricacies of editing the paper, a chore that had to be done by 10:30 each morning. If that deadline was ever missed, it would not only mean the Brawley News papers would not be ready for its circulation manager to load into the Army surplus Jeep trailer for transport to its readers, but the sister paper in El Centro would be put into a bind.

For several days I had Jim shadow me as I went through the process of ripping the wire stories from the teletype machines, hastily reading them, the sports stories and copy for the society page, laying out pages, writing headlines and sending it all out for the early pages. That was followed by somewhat the same process for the front and jump pages, last the go to the printer.

Most of the time, Jim was engaging me in pleasant conversation, but it seemed he had no clue as to what he was to be doing. I feared that my departure from the paper would trigger the first incident in Brawley News history when the readers not only received their papers late, but mght get no paper at all.

Two days before I was to leave, I decided to give Jim a test run. I went through a hurried review of his duties early that morning and sent him on down to El Centro, where he would do the editor’s job. I stuck around the newsroom in Brawley for a few hours, worrying about the problems that would be created by this guy who didn’t seem to be paying attention to me.

Finally, about 9:30 a.m. or so I couldn’t stand it and drove down to El Centro. When I walked in the newsroom at a little after 10, I was shocked to see the Brawley News editor’s desk was unmanned. I was stewing over ways I could salvage the day’s edition in less than half an hour, when the door to the newsroom opened and in walked Jim.

I was about ready to rake him over the coals when one of the El Centro editors walked over and complimented Jim for his work. He had finished everything almost half an hour early, apparently with no problems at all.

That was the way he was, a calm, cool, efficient newsman.
Although we had only worked together a week or so in Brawley, I stayed in touch with Jim, who married a Brawley widow who was the Brawley News’ office manager.

***

Up the hill in Victorville

A few years later, when I was editing a twice-weekly in Victorville and found myself in need of a No. 2 newsie to help with the job, I thought of Jim.

I tried to call him in Brawley, but his wife told me he had just taken a job at a grubby little weekly in Compton, one of the 15 or so papers within the McGiffin chain, which published most of the community papers on the south side of the Los Angeles area. It didn’t take much arm twisting on the phone to get him to agree to join me at Victorville, particularly when he found out the pay was much better.

It was in Victorville I discovered another side of Jim; his sparkling wit even when things would be going poorly. Putting out a twice weekly with two newsies, a part-time photographer and a handful of correspondents was hard work.

It was always a challenge to produce enough stories and photos for the growing paper. Toward the deadline period, it was my habit to tell Jim it was time to ``get out the copy crank’‘ and start cranking.

One morning I came back to my desk and found that Jim had fashioned a crank from cardboard and hooked it on the lever end of my Underwood typewriter, adding a similar one to his mill. Another time, when he was handling the darkroom chores, he tossed a pile of pictures on my desk for editing. I was about halfway through the stack when I was frozen by one: Jim Jeffress in triplicate in the ``hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil’‘ pose. Sometime during his work when I was not in, he had managed to put the camera on a tripod and shoot a triple exposure to produce it.

He was such a wag, that when he suffered a back seizure on deadline day and was bent over his desk in pain, saying he couldn’t move, I thought he was putting me on – something we took turns doing quite frequently.

Finally, when he convinced me of his plight, we had to get help several people from the shop and office to help pick up his chair, with him in it, and carrying him half a block to a chiropractor’s office.

A few months later, when my relations with the general manager soured and I left, Jim stayed as my replacement. We stayed in touch.

My path led back to Ontario and the sister paper from which I had been lured to Victorville. From there, I made my way to the San Diego Union, north to Alaska and the Fairbanks News-Miner and then to the Wrangell Sentinel and Petersburg Press.

Economic bad times forced another move, this one to a press secretary’s job for U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens in Washington, D.C. Carrying the distinction of being the only press secretary ever fired by a senator, I found myself jobless in Ramona.

After several months of fruitless job search, I found myself with several job offers – as a reporter for a startup paper in Beverly Hills, a future editor of a twice-weekly in Auburn, a city editor for a three-times-a-week in the Puget Sound area and a reporter-desk combo job in Bakersfield.. It was at that point that I heard from Jim Jeffress again.

He was a copy editor at the San Jose Mercury and told me they were looking for someone on the desk there.

I landed the job and Jim and I become best buddies for the next six years.

Next: Adventures in the city at the end of the Bay

The Saga of Richard Porter Nall

2007-09-05T09:58:00.000-07:00

First meeting with the mountain of a man

It was early one Saturday morning in a startlingly modern ranch house clinging to the hillside that divides this country from Mexico. Giant north-facing picture windows were filled with views of the Pacific Ocean to the left, Imperial Beach and Otay straight ahead and the rest of the South Bay area sprawling north to San Diego.

Mainly my thoughts were focused on the white wall-to-wall rugs that covered the floors in the huge front room-dining room area. More correctly my worries were what my two young sons might do to those white rugs, particularly since our hostess was plying them with a variety of food and drinks. I suppose it was the grape juice that concerned me most.
I had come to the exceptional home of my boss, Robert Eskew, and his wife, Beth, who was spoiling my kids with the skills she had learned as a United Airlines stewardess.

But I had not brought my wife and kids here to watch the youngsters be spoiled.

I had come at my boss’ request to meet a friend of his from Los Angeles newspaper days – Richard Porter Nall. It seems Nall, the editor of the Brawley News, an Imperial Valley daily, was looking for a city editor and Eskew thought I was the right person for that job.
I had worked with Eskew at the National City Star-News. It was one of those formula newspapers when it came to staffing. It had one editor, one reporter-photographer, one society editor and one sports editor. I was the reporter-photographer.

After a time there, I moved up in the organ ization to the mother ship, the Chula Vista Star-News. The formula there was more extensive: An editor, two reporter-phortographers, a sports editor, a society editor and a full-time photographer.

For a time, while waiting for Nall to arrive, I picked my way around the kitchen of the designer home, its table and counters littered with the remains of a party Eskew had hosted for Nall the night before. A mystery writer might describe the assorted bottles, hors d’oeuvre and cold cut platters, assorted bags of chips and dibs and dabs of everything from from cheese spread to caviar as the leavings of the rich and famous.

Finally, after I had returned to a perch on the nine-foot white couch to cringe at the potential for one of my boys slipping or stumbling into a mishap that would forever turn a large part of that white rug purple, Nall arrived.

Eskew was a pretty big guy, maybe 6-foot plus, and well-built. He was good-looking enough to show up on TV or in a movie, his well-kept moustache and dimples adding to the impact.
2. But when Richard Porter Nall walked into the room, Eskew was dwarfed, along with the rest of us.

Nall was not as tall as Eskew, perhaps a tad under 6 feet. But he was a mountain of a man. He was in a league with Alfred Hitchcock or Peter Ustinov.
He had piercing blue eyes and more hair on his arms and peeking out of his shirt than I had ever seen.

We shook hands as we were introduced and what impressed me most was the size of his hands. They were small in comparison to the rest of him.

I do not remember the conversation we had that morning, the talk that changed my life by sending me to the Imperial Valley and the Dick Nall School of Journalism in Brawley.

But in retrospect, I believe it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I learned more from Nall about newspapering and life than most any other person I have known.

Next: The Valley Days: Wild times and a wild man

La Vie de Bleu Pierre

2007-09-04T18:52:00.000-07:00

Blue Pierre wasn't born Blue. He was a sort of dove gray for the first few days after leaving the tiny Renault dealership in the cosmopolitan village of National City.

Blue Pierre had been adopted by a family of four, un papa, une maman et deux garcons. He loved dashing through the streets of the village and into the country to the family estates in a farming region known as Ramona.

All went well for a time, but then Pierre's life changed. He was carrying the family a few blocks from the Renault dealership when ``Crunch'' someone in one of those uncivilized American vehicles smashed into his back. Pierre suffered injuries to his back and until the doctors at the Renault hospital operated, all his strength was lost in his power train.

After hours on the table, he was almost as good as new. Still his shiny dove gray coat was ruined. Papa Weaver picked a very special color of blue, one not seen since the 1948 Desoto, to replace his damaged coat. Although it was to be a year or so before he was to be dubbed Blue Pierre, he knew the new shade had changed his life.

It was a friend of papa's, Jamie Bryson, who dubbed him Blue Pierre. In fact, it was with Bryson that Blue Pierre had some of his most exciting adventures. During that period Bryson had a paper route, delivering the Los Angeles newspapers in the early morning hours, to augment his less-than-adequate salary as a Star-News reporter.

As it turned out, Bryson's main vehicle, a trusty Ford stationwagon, took ill and Weaver offered Blue Pierre to help deliver the newspapers. Blue Pierre and Jamie hit it off well from the start. One of his attributes was a low-geared differential that allowed him to be driving at an idle. Taking advantage of this, Bryson would drive Blue Pierre along a street at the slow pace, step out and run a paper up the sidewalk and toss it onto the porch. Because of the slow, chugging pace of Blue Pierre, he was able to do this and return to Pierre.

But alas on one occasion, the plan went awry. Jamie bounded out of Pierre, leaping over the curb and running up the sidewalk, tossing the paper dead-center onto the porch. That went well. It was the return where things went wrong.

Jamie had forgotten the hill that was ahead when he darted out of Pierre. Before he could return to the cockpit, Pierre arrived at the top of the hill and started down, his speed increasing.

``Blue Pierre, Blue Pierre,'' Bryson shouted in the chilly, gray darkness of 3:30 a.m. San Diego, as he ran after the Renault 4CV as it picked up speed.

Fortunately for Bryson the clever French engineers had designed Pierre with excellent hearing.

When he heard his name being called, Blue Pierre was near the bottom of the hill. He used the uphill section of the road ahead to slow enough to allow Bryson to catch him.

From that day on, the two were the greatest of friends. Had they both been humans, there is little doubt that they would have sit together at a table under an umbrella, sharing a good Bordeaux, some fine cheese and a loaf of crusty bread.

Next: Blue Pierre faces the challege of the desert life.