Waiting for the Axe

I have this irritating tendency to let other make the decisions I should have made myself. Best example:

On the way to Europe for a vacation, I stopped to visit the New York headquarters of The Associated Press. As a 28-year-old editor in the San Francisco bureau, I was given the rare opportunity to meet with the top man, General Manager Wes Gallagher.

“What would you like to do?” the great man asked me. “Uh, be a writer or an editor,” I said indecisively. “Well, which?” he asked impatiently. “Uh, editor,” I responded, as if flipping a coin.

“We need editors in our Washington and New York bureaus. Would you be interested?” he asked.

“Yes,” I responded, unconvincingly.

San Francisco was a great place to live. My family was  there, and I loved all of the famous sites. But this was an opportunity. I had learned to grab them when they came.

So within a few months I was off to Washington and an editing job. Within two years, I was “night editor,” actually running the afternoon news desk, which edited and cleared most of the Washington news  for morning newspapers. In 1973-1976, that included an awful lot, especially Watergate and the Vietnam War.  Why would they pick someone so young? Because the news desk was filled with old, jaded news veterans, just hanging on until retirement. It  was a heady position, but after four years I was burning out. I wasn’t writing anything myself.

The head of the congressional staff had offered me a job on Capitol Hill and I stupidly turned it down. I told him I had promised to be an editor.

Then in late 1976, I was unhappy that I wasn’t getting overtime when others were getting extra pay working late. I turned down an offer by the union leader to accompany me into the bureau chief’s office to complain. I just went myself.

I made my case to Marvin Arrowsmith, well respected but ailing man running the bureau. For years he had been the White House correspondent and looked particularly distinguished, more like a president than a newsman. As he aged, his hands shook and he seemed like he was too old for the job.

With his hands folded, he said, “I need to tell you this. We are making a change in the night editor by year’s end.” I was being fired from that lofty position! What a shock! What was I going to do?

I can’t remember being more upset about anything, ever. I had no family there. Not many friends. This was my whole life. Arrowsmith swore me to secrecy, and I unwisely agreed, keeping it bottled up. I complained to my doctor about  chest pains.

Finally, over Thanksgiving dinner with strangers, I passionately unburdened myself, probably ruining this great meal for all of them. I started going to church (where, fortunately, I met my future wife.)

Because I couldn’t get overtime, I had built up a lot of compensatory time off, and I took it on a trip to visit family in California. Nursing my wounds, I was awaiting a call from my friend Jack Smyth, who looked over the January schedule for me.

“They’ve assigned you to the Hill,” he told me. Meaning Congress. Really? The whole bureau had a shakeup, and Arrowsmith himself retired.

The first week I got back, I sat in the front row across from Jimmy Carter’s inauguration as president.  I covered confirmation hearings, rushed around visiting famous people. The place was alive with interesting young people. And I got bylines. Then I was assigned  to Treasury, which launched my business writing career.

Why didn’t I agreed to leave that position earlier? Why did I wait for other people to make decisions for me?

 No more.

 

 

 

America 250. Me? Defy the King?

 

 Was that me? Signing the Declaration of Independence? Really?

It must have been a dream. No, no, it wasn’t!

It was in a play. A musical. “1776.”

Until I started this article, I had forgotten that “1776” was my dad’s favorite musical. A professional opera chorus singer, he hated pop music and most musicals. But for some reason, he loved this one.

We went to see it live together in San Francisco in about 1970 and watched the movie together another time.

Then, over 45 years later, after he was gone, I was in it. My only other theater experiences until then had been in the Prizery Summer Theater, coached by Chris Jones. I heard about this show being put on in 2016 by the McLean Community Players when we lived in Northern Virginia, and I wanted in.

The musical has been called “the unemployed old actors’ dream show.” Well, at age 74, I was just right for the part of Caesar Rodney, the cancer-stricken delegate from Delaware who rode all night on horseback to sign the precious document.

I know something about this great man. He was a big hero in Dover, De., where I had lived in 1963-65.

I didn’t have many lines, but I sang in a few choruses. The highlight, of all things, was the makeup. Each night a lady kept making me look more sick and ghostly than in the show before.  The last night, I thought I heard people in the audience gasp as I went on stage. (The photo shows me before makeup was applied.)

It was during our first rehearsal of the signing that the whole idea of the show sunk in. For weeks we had been debating the merits of the revolution. Could we win a war? Could we run the new country ourselves?  Were we going to accept slavery to placate the South?

Then, in our first physical run-through of the actual signing, we each carefully signed our names. The chairman called each name, and he announced, “Delaware. Mr. Caesar Rodney.”

 In acting, you are supposed to immerse yourself in your character. Here I was, defying the King of England! Revolutions never worked before. Usually the rebels were executed. I might die. But this principle was more important!

So as I got ready to affix my signature, I was deeply moved—I think to tears. Now I knew how they must have felt. I picked up the quilt pen and proudly but solemnly signed it. For myself. And for my dad!

What brave men these founders were! They did this for us!

Could I have done that?  Man, I just don’t know!

 

 

 

No More School Reunions for Me

School reunions can be nail-biting experiences. Apparently the 50th high school reunion is a time for making amends. At mine, as soon as dinner was over, a woman walked up to me.

“Hi. I’m Claudia. Do you remember the time you sat down after the Pledge of Allegiance in the first grade and you crashed to the floor instead of finding your chair?”

“Yes,” I said. “It still hurts,” I lied.

“Well, I pulled the chair out from under you.”

“Really? Why?”
 “I don’t know,” she said and left.

I guess that was an apology, though she didn’t say so.

We didn’t stay long afterward because my wife didn’t know anybody. A few days later, I got a phone message from probably the most popular guy in high school. I was puzzled because I barely knew him at all and didn’t mix in his circle.

I called him back. “I want to apologize for beating up on you in the 12th grade,” he said. Huh? I barely remembered. Well, yes, he and another guy in physics class bet each other on whether they could make this shy, reserved student mad.

While the teacher wasn’t looking, they slapped me on the back of the head. The guy who bet on making me mad won. Of course, the teacher raised hell. But I soon forgot about it, writing it off as a prank by stupid kids, which it was.

For apologizing, I guess Mr. Popular felt better about himself, but I didn’t really like it. I didn’t recall being a victim of bullying in school but now felt like one.

Then came my 50th college reunion at the University of California at Berkeley, an enormous university, which was a great place to learn about journalism in the 1960s but not that good for making friends. I knew no one at the quite small reunion. Not a soul!

Then I compared high schools with one stranger. When I told him I went to El Cerrito High, he said, “Oh, so did my wife. I’ll have you talk to her.” She walked up and I didn’t recognize her, but she told me her name. Amazed, I said, “Wow. I took you to the senior prom!”

“No, you didn’t,” she said. “I went with the man who is now my husband.”

“Yes, you did,” I insisted. “How could I forget that!”

Then she said, “Oh, that must have been in my junior year. I went with my husband in my senior year.”

Her husband had been listening. Suddenly, the two left and had a heated conversation away from the crowd. Were they already a couple when I dated her?

He was furious because she never told him about me. I was steaming because she didn’t even remember me.

I skipped the next reunion.

 

You say this. You mean that!

 Do you avoid conflicts by saying just the right thing? They call it “condemning with faint praise.”  Here is what you are supposed to say, followed by what you really think:

-0-

May I suggest a salad for you at this restaurant?

Man, you are fat as a house!

-0-

What cute kids!

The way you raised them, they’ll probably become drug addicts or prostitutes.

-0-

Maybe we have had enough beer.

Stop! You’re drunk as a skunk!

-0-

Interesting! That is quite a song.

You sound like a screeching owl!

-0-

I’ve never had a chicken casserole like that before.

This food is awful. While you’re not looking, I will dump it in the garbage.

-0-

Thank you for participating today.

I am not going to comment on your song, which totally stunk!

-0-

I’ll bet you get compliments on your new house.

What an eyesore!  You should take a match to it!

-0-

I can understand why you don’t know the answer.

You haven’t the brains of a housefly.

-0-

That’s some photo of you, I’m surprised it’s not hanging on a wall some place.

You look like one of the 10 most wanted. Even AI couldn’t fix that picture.

-0-

That is an interesting perfume.

That smells like your last perfume that gave my cat asthma.

-0-

Oh, you cut your hair short. Interesting.

The lice on your head must be starving now.

-0-

Ooh, we are getting there faster than I expected.

I hope the cops come and take your driver’s  license away!

-0-

What a dress! You are such a snappy dresser.

I can’t believe it! The health department should burn that thing!

 

 

 

 

Now you can bet on anything

I am fascinated with the online betting markets, where you can put your money on anything from politics to Taylor Swift’s love life.

Who will win a U.S. Senate race? How many times will the sports announcer say “triple double?” What will be the country’s No. 1 song next week? Will the U.S. confirm that aliens exist before 1967? These are some of the topics for gamblers on Kalshi and Polymarket.

More bets: Who will win “Survivor” in Season 50? Will Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce be married this year? (65% say yes.) What will announcers say in the Reds-Astros baseball game? (Grand slam and walk off are the favorites).

Even better are the scandals. An Army sergeant was arrested for betting on whether his squad would capture the president of Venezuela (he won $400,000). A low-level politician bet on whether he would run for office.  Both bets were considered insider trading, which is illegal. And Kalshi refused to pay someone who predicted that the supreme leader of Iran would be removed from power by a certain date. He was killed by U.S. air attacks, but Kalshi’s policy is not to pay for deaths, figuring such betting can led to murder. Critics were outraged.

I have read that knowledgeable, experienced bettors are “eating the lunch” of amateurs who just wager on their private hunches.

Well, I would like to open a betting market of my own. ---First one: How many times will the train come through South Boston tomorrow? And how many minutes and seconds will it take?

--How many people will attend Lakefest this summer?

--Will the Dan River flood up to U.S. 58?

--What local restaurants will open and close this year?

--What will be the high temperature in July?

--I could add some bets on local politics, but then I would get into trouble.

--How many times will Mike Doan use the word “old” in his Mike’s Mic column?

So who’d like to place a wager?

 

Today's Advice:Don't Stop!

The feeble old man needed lots of help getting up on the podium to begin conducting the Oregon Symphony in 1967.

As a reporter in the Portland bureau of AP, I wondered what I would write if he died on the spot.

What could you say about Igor Stravinsky, arguably the greatest composer of the 20th century? And why was he stooping to direct music in such a backwater town.

What a legacy he had built up in his 79 years! His “Rite of Spring” turned the classical music world upside down in 1913, drawing far more boos than applause in its premiere. His “Firebird” and “Petrushka” were big additions to the classical repertoire.

After his aide, Robert Kraft, guided him up the stairs, this legend took out his baton and vigorously led  an inspired group of symphony musicians for over an hour. 

Why was he doing this? Why wasn’t he basking in the sun somewhere in retirement before he died in 1971? My guess is: he couldn’t. When you are among the greatest of all time, you just don’t give up.

Another who won’t quit is singer Bob Dylan, 85, who was still touring last month in towns like Spartanburg, S.C., Asheville, NC., and Macon, Ga.

Would he instead sit in a rocking chair, entertaining grandchildren or sorting old photos of his concerts? If you asked him, he would probably sing, “It ain’t me babe.”

Then there’s Rickey Henderson, the fast-running baseball player who refused to end his career until the ripe old  age of 46 with the San Diego Dawgs of the Golden Baseball League.

I am no or Dylan, Henderson or Stravinskay, but I am not about to hang it up either. In a tour bus in Europe, I talked about writing to one of the tourists, and she told me, “Whatever you do, don’t stop!” So here I am.

Well, what about you? Is it gardening, quilting, singing, cooking, hang gliding, running or card-playing that keeps your engine running? Or maybe you would like to start something new.

Don’t stop! 

-0-

Was this the Mormon tabernacle? No. It was Grace Baptist Church in Virgilina, with a chorus of 80 singers and an audience of 200-300 for “Concert of Hymns.”

Singers from dozens of local churches practiced two weeks for songs most of them knew already—staples like “Bringing In the Sheaves” and “I’ll Fly Away.”

I have rarely had so much fun at a concert, which was conducted on April 26 by Tim Duncan.  We weren’t staring at music sheets for the right notes. We were looking at the words on the screen, with our eyes also on the audience.

The highlight for me was a gospel-tinged version of “Blessed Assurance” and “I Trust the Lord” sung by Rita Hargrave with husband Andy on piano. With some arms waving and shouts of “Sing it!” it felt like a revival meeting or gospel concert.

When children ran free

 

On the 40th anniversary of the movie “Stand by Me,” people are amazed that the kids never seemed to be at home. Four boys spent two days looking for a dead body and even camped out overnight.

What? Their parents didn’t drive them everywhere? No 3 p.m. soccer games, no 6:00 piano lessons?

Are the streets more dangerous now or do we just hear more about abductions and other crimes today?

The movie brings back memories of the 1950s, which it supposedly portrays. Here are some of my memories. If you were a kid then, do any of them match yours? I lived in the California suburbs. Maybe your experiences in a rural area were different.

--Riding a bicycle all over town. Freedom from your parents. Typically, the 10-year-old on the bike knows everything that’s going on.

--Baseball games in the street. At first you sit on the curb and watch the big kids play. Then you start street games of your own.

--Earning money on a paper route. Afternoons after school and Sunday mornings. Spending profits on ice cream sundaes when the route was over. (They only hired boys.)

--Walking to school with friends. The best social time of the day.

--Lemonade stands in summer. I guess that still happens. The kid down the street charges 5 cents less and you claim foul!

--Hide and seek from one back yard to another, both boys and girls. Neighbors thought it was cute and didn’t complain. Your parents were fine with it as long as you were home for dinner. But they never knew where you were.

--Tree houses and club houses, where you and your friends could meet in private. Since my dad built one in our backyard, the other kids came to us.

--Summer vacation lasting seemingly forever. When school finally resumed in September, you felt like a different person.

--One precious moment sticks with me: About six of us went to a mobile home dealer’s lot to inspect trailers. The manager let us in and we pretended we lived there. We tracked dirt onto a throw rug. When the manager saw it, he picked the rug  up and said, “Don’t worry about it, guys. I was a boy once too.”

Ambivalent About sports

 I have aways loved sports but did not value writing about it. How meaningful is it to watch two guys play catch while another tries to hit the ball with a fat stick?

But how can you avoid some sports when starting at The Associated Press? When I was working the night desk in Portland, Ore., the coaches on two Northwest League professional baseball teams couldn’t agree on who was in first place. But I had to write the standings for the newspapers in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. So it was Yakima over Lewiston. Sorry, Lewiston!

I did write a story on how all of the region’s football teams were playing terribly one fall. All but one of the newspapers refused to print it!

One thing that pushed me out of that job in Portland was a new requirement to satisfy the editor of the Coos Bay newspaper. Each day we had to write a recap of how each native Oregon player did in the NBA or —get this—the American Basketball Association.

So if was off to Last Vegas, where, of course, sports is a big thing! I covered multiple boxing matches, including one of George Foreman’s first and Sonny Liston’s last, both on the same night. I was thrilled to see the famous Howard Cosell with a ringside seat opposite mine. I was convinced Liston was dead when he had trouble getting up after a knockout, but he eventually shook it off.

Later, in the San Francisco bureau, I loved covering the world arm-wrestling championship in Petaluma, which I described as “the egg capital of the world.”

Occasionally I helped the sports reporter cover Oakland Raiders’ games from the press box. I was sent to the visiting teams’ locker room afterward to get comment. Since they usually lost, it was scary. How do you ask a 300-pound tackle why his team got trounced? “Because they got more points than we did” was a typical answer, accepted without argument.

We didn’t have much sports in U.S. News & World Report, but I really enjoyed going to auto racing and football training sites for an article “Dream Schools.” In Salisbury, Md., I followed around one young guy hoping to make it big in the new U.S. Football League, picking one of the most unlikely candidates. The rest of the class resented him for getting more press coverage than they did.  What happened to him? I don’t know, but the league folded the next year.

Wish I had been able to fly to L.A. to include women’s modeling schools, but I had to do interviews by phone because of budget constraints. Too bad!