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.
