Anachronism
I love my work, and I love the times we live in, and I have great hopes for the future of our country and the future of my child. There are obstacles to overcome, but there are also many things about which we can be very proud.
When I sit in my car for hours at a time, on the road, on my way to work or wherever, I daydream, sometimes, about what i would do if I could change the time of my birth.
I have always loved the newspaper business, dying though it is, these days. I ama HUGE fan of Mencken, H Allen Smith, Mike Royko, the old school generation of newspapermen.
When I was younger, I chased around an inlaw, a photographer for the Chicago Trib. I saw his easy familiarity with the folks in the business, and envied it. I saw the old timers in the business, saw the lines of abandoned lino machines in the basement, the old letterpresses.
If things could be different, if I could live a different life, I would be a newspaperman. I would walk through the press room and see all the guys in their funny hats. I myself would wear a grey fedora, with a wide black band, a press credential tucked into the band. I would wear grey suits with white shirts, narrow ties. Black patent leather wing tip shoes. I would drive a 1937 Lincoln Zephyr.
I would live in a small walkup apartment in a brownstone in bridgeport. it would have a large front window, a bathroom with a clawfoot tub and white painted beadboard walls. A single bulb withg a pullchain would hang over a wood framed mirror, and a glass shelf over the toilet but under the wall mounted toilet tank would hold my razor, a mug, and a bar of Yardley’s soap to shave up into the mug for lather. My razor stop would hang from a hook on the back of the door. There would be a Monitor Top refrigerator in the kitchen, and a beseler 23c enlarger.
I would have a desk in the city room with a Reminton typewriter, and I would use, as a paperweight, the 20 point slug of type that was the headline for my veyr first front-page story. My desk would have an ashtray the size of a hubcap, and I would buy Pall Malls by the carton, a couple times a week.
I would have a Speed Graphic in the trunk of my car. The whole kit. I would also carry a Tessina in my right breast pocket. I would have a Police Snub Nose 38 in a shoulder holster on the left side. I would smell like Van Sons Rubber Base plus almost all the time. That, and Old Spice.
I wouldn’t change a thing about my life, but I sometimes like daydreaming about how it would be different.
17 comments Og | Uncategorized
I’m with ya, but this fat boy would miss A/C – real bad.
I think I have a glimmering of where THAT train of thought came from.
M
I would be at the desk adjacent to yours. Our daily conversations would always include comments about what is wrong with “The Damn Cubs/Bears”, depending on the season. I remember reading Royko on an almost daily basis, read Eirne Pyle’s works via the library. Twain’s considerable output as a newspaperman, also read (and still on hand).
My other option dream-wise, was to be a bass-baritone version of Sinatra (waits for the internet wide laughter to die down). The old standards (Porter in particular, though not exclusively)as done by a big band or in a smoke filled lounge brought to life via nicotine stained piano keys (Hoagie Carmichael where are you?).
I think I was born 40 years too late.
If you could afford that 1937 Lincoln Zephyr on your reporter’s pay, you could probably find a parking space wherever you went. I don’t think that many people living in the city owned cars in those days. They rode streetcars.
Don’t forget the police scanner, so you can show up at the scene and get the pics before the rest of the crowd messes up the shot. Then they can marvel at how you have a sixth sense and seem to always know where to be (must be using a ouija board), and give you the name Weegie.
Great, Nancy, piss in my daydream.
Actually, a Zephyr wasn’t that expensive a car. My uncle had one, on machinist’s pay.
Learned the Speed Graflex myself (evidence camera) once…carried a .38 Smith Mdl 36 1 7/8″ in the shoulder holster (or a Mauser HSC, depended on how I felt at the time).
BUT I WAS A COP!
Reporters never have carried much heat, so maybe you were a plant on the paper from the Daley Machine?
/ducks as the lead weight zings across the room at my head, and rounds the street corner just as the first two 158-gr round-nose lead slugs from the .38 zing into the brick wall a foot from my head…/
PS The Lincoln Zephyr WAS a gangster mobile, so that confirms it….
My Dad was in the business. My first job was running proofs of copy set on linotype machines. I ended up doing the conversion at the paper from hot-type machines to cold-type nachines, starting with vaccum-tube machines using punch tape and finishing with computer-fed IC-controlled printers.
I would like to live at the turn of the 20th Century.
“PS The Lincoln Zephyr WAS a gangster mobile, so that confirms it…. ”
It’s Chicago. Your problem with that would be…..?
Or perhaps I should say:
It’s Chicaga. You gotta problem wit dat?
I believe that I would prefer a Packard.
Personally, I’ll let my driver handle all travel arrangements.
swmbo
I would have preferred France. The spring of ’17, or summer of ’44.
HB: “I would like to live at the turn of the 20th Century.”
Throw in antibiotics and I’m there with you. Otherwise, I’m just as happy post-WWII.
I’m pretty sure you just described Larry Fine’s existence.
you got trouble with that,Vman? fine got more ass than a subway crapper.