... and Climbing Up One Rung
Downtown
Port Arthur , Texas
How do
kids today pick the life they hope they’ll have?
When I
was a kid, I I loved broadcasting and the newspaper
business, and thought my future was there.
I started in at the very bottom, as
a 10-year-old newspaper boy, delivering The
Port Arthur News to the section of town where I lived. Collecting the
subscription fees was something I had to do each month, and this was painful,
because people were not eager to part with $1.10 for their daily and Sunday
paper. Sometimes they’d give a tip, which would have been about ten cents. This was 1944, during World War II.
There were a couple of large
mansions on my route, and I’d visit them only once a year, and they’d shell out
the grand amount of about $12.00 plus a five dollar tip.
The day the distributor brought
newspapers reporting that the war had ended was a day I’ll always
remember. Without television and cell
phones and all the instant communication today, when I gave people their paper,
it may have been the first word they got that our war with Japan America
When I was about 14 I found out about these
marvelous things called Mimeograph stencils. They were legal size documents
that consisted of a fiber sheet that you could type on and if you remembered to
type without a typewriter ribbon, it would make indentations in this fiber
sheet.
Then you’d fasten this onto the drum
of a Mimeograph machine, make sure it had plenty of ink, and then start to
crank it around and print on sheets of paper.
Mimeograph
Machine
You could even make drawings on this Mimeo
stencil. This was a long way from Xerox!
We produced quite a few newspapers
for distribution to the other kids at Woodrow
Wilson Junior
High School in Port
Arthur , TX
Later I found my way to the staff of the Jr.
High newspaper, and then to the Thomas
Jefferson High
School
Next, as a high school senior, I got
a job at The Port Arthur News as an
engraver operator, which meant I operated the Fairchild machine that scanned
photographs and burned dots onto plastic on a rotating drum. These
became the “cuts” used in the printing process. I
also operated the machine that received daily transmissions of United Press
Telephoto. This would be an 8” x 10” sheet filled with UP
photos of newsworthy events for the day, sent down from UP in Dallas
I
also took photos for the paper, using one of those wonderful old Speed Graphic
cameras with film in plastic or metal holders. I
was simply an adjunct to the regular photographer, Jimmy Everett. Between
developing the telephotos and my pictures, I spent over an hour a day in the
darkroom, which was a small closet that smelled of the hypo used to stop and
fix the photos. Since the telephotos arrived sharply at noon, I would
eat my lunch while I waited for the photos to dry on the photo drier. At that time
my mother had gotten into a rut with making my lunch, and usually
made tuna fish sandwiches, so my darkroom smelled of a combination of hypo and
tuna fish.
That may be why I still avoid tuna
fish sandwiches.
I
also had writing duties. Sometimes I’d get assigned a fire
or a storm to cover, or perhaps an interesting local death. What a thrill
it was to see my story, with byline, right on page one! It only happened a few times, but it was
always exciting.
Morty
Goldman was a reporter at the News who typified the reporter of those
days. He was a smart, inquisitive
reporter who had a way of getting statements from people that no one else could
get. He was the main attack man for the
local chapter of the Newspaper Guild, the union for the editorial people. We had strong unions for all the
stereotypers, teletype operators and pressmen, and they were very serious about
their union membership. Morty tried hard
to get me to join the Guild, but I never did.
The Newspaper Guild. I think one thing that made me leery of the Guild was that some
of the members, especially Morty, were really nasty about management,
especially about our Editor, John Ayres.
They were always spreading stories about him, and whispering behind his
back. Even as a kid in high school, I saw that Guild as the very same slice of
life as those kids in school who always resented someone whose parents were in
the local country club, or whose parents had graduated from college, or just
“put on airs.”
It
seems as though some people are destined to spend their whole life resenting
others, whom they perceive to have more of this or that, or have “breaks” or
advantages that they never had.
Perhaps that is why I
have little sympathy with the Occupy
Wall Street
Certainly
there was a genuine need for labor unions which were formed to prevent the
exploitation of workers, and to enable them to achieve better wages and working
conditions, and some of those features of unions are still vital today.
But
the constant undercurrent of gossip, and resentment and envy that I was exposed
to turned me off, because I identified with the Editor and the management
staff, trying to put out a good newspaper every day.
The
newsroom of this mid 20th century newspaper was a large
room with a central table for the city editor, the managing editor, the
wire editor, and a couple of reporters. At the near end of the room were
the Society section ladies: Society editor Grace Foote; and
two other women. At the far end of the room was the Sports
section. I usually sat at an empty typewriter in the Sports
section.
Next
to the sports section was a glassed-in room that housed the teletype machines
and my telephoto machine. It was pretty noisy, with those
INS, AP and UP machines all clacking away, then at noon my telephoto machine
would go “beep-beep” as the black dots would come over the telephone
line. An
addition arrived during my time there, when Associated Press would send their
stories on a punched tape, so our wire editor could take them right to the
linotype people and they would feed the tape to a linotype machine and it would
make the little slugs of type without a human at the keyboard. In
our union shop, that was not greatly appreciated.
The
linotype machines and the stereotype department were all at the back on the
same floor as the newsroom. It was hot in there, with the hot
lead being used to make the type, and then the slugs would be mounted in large
page-size forms by the stereotypers and then a sheet of paper-like material
would be placed over it and pressed to make a page. Then
this would be put into a mold and hot metal would be injected to make a
cylinder that would be sent down to the press room below.
I
loved every bit of this, and often spent so many hours at work that, in spite
of attending school daily, I put in over a 40-hour week.
I
really enjoyed my life in the newspaper world.
[I kept in touch with John
Ayres, editor of the PA News, for years, and sent back weekly dispatches when I
was at Texas U.
from 1952-53, and less frequent dispatches on up to our time in Iran University
of Texas
Let the Personal Navigator introduce you to
some papers and books:
Wrestling on USS Kearsarge, 1908
Postcard: Life in our
Navy--Wrestling on the Kearsarge (BB-5) (Color Postcard from Great White Fleet) 1908 Kentfield , CA : M.
Ettlinger Co., New York Cal.
Lindbergh Kidnapper tells his story
Boston Evening American
EXTRA Tuesday, October 16, 1934 Headline: "Hauptmann's Own Story" 1934 Boston,
MA: N.E. Newspaper Publishing Co. Headlne story: Bruno Richard Hauptmann denied
on the witness stand this afternoon that he had killed litle Charles A. Lindbergh,
Jr. on the night of March 1, 1932. Also: "F.H.
Tarr, Jr. Shot By Woman Client" in Gloucester , MA Northampton last night about Germany
Nothing like a Kidnapping to sell papers
Navy vs. William & Mary, 1955
Navy vs. William &
Mary Football Game Program, September 24, 1955 1955 Annapolis ,
MD : United States Annapolis
Rev. Otis Thompson’s Sermon,
Nov. 29, 1821
Sermon, A, Preached November 29, 1821; The Day Which
Completed One Hundred Years Since the Organization of the Congregational Church
in Rehoboth , Mass. Taunton , MA
Page of Wally's Cartoons about American Soldiers in World War I
Wally: His Cartoons of the
A.E.F., Reprinted from "Stars & Stripes", the Official Newspaper
of the A.E.F. by Wallgren, Pvt. Abian A., USMC 1919 Brest, France Stars & Stripes 52 pp. 44.5 x 18 cm. Private
Abian A. Wallgren, familiarly known as "Wally" Wallgren, worked as a
cartoonist for the Philadelphia Public Ledger and Washington Post before the
war. He served in France
Contact me at scoulbourn1@verizon.net
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