October
has been so busy that I nearly got to the end of it without pausing to remember
that this year marks the 40th anniversary of the beginning of my
19-year stint with the newspaper. Given how formative the experience was, the
milestone can’t be allowed to pass without comment.
For
half the time I was at the paper, my starting date, 10/16/72, appeared on the
paycheck, so I’m never going to forget it. Not only the date, but the day
itself will be in my memory until my last breath.
A
major storm had blown in, and it was pouring rain as I drove to the office for
that first day. I arrived shortly before 8, and Ward Bushee, the managing
editor who had hired me, showed me my desk, with a beat-up Underwood manual
typewriter, handed me a box of business cards and a list of phone numbers for
the local fire stations and the Monterey County Highway Patrol. Making those
calls was my first task.
Being Cheap With Cheap Paper
When
it was time to write up a story, a reporter would put a piece of cheap paper,
the type with chunks of wood in it, into the typewriter. If the story was three
paragraphs or less, you were supposed to use a half-sheet to save money. When
you’d typed out the story, double-spaced, you were supposed to make any
necessary changes or corrections with a #2 pencil, then jam the corner of the
paper on to a spike on Ward’s desk, from which he would collect it for editing.
Many
young reporters, I’ve been told, impaled their thumbs on the sharp end of the
spike in the early going. The fact that I never did no doubt singled me out as
potential executive material.
I
was at the end of a row of desks, with Andre Neu, the school reporter, to my
right, and Howard Sheerin, the city hall reporter, behind me. Howard retired
two years later, and Andre left about the same time, eventually ending up as a
journalism instructor at the local community college.
The
telephones were beige and covered with a layer of permanent grime from having
been repeatedly touched by ink-stained hands. The headpieces had attachments
screwed on that allowed a reporter to rest the phone on a shoulder while typing
or taking notes longhand.
A Scoop on the First Day
Late
that morning, Marj Von B, our legendary crime reporter, called in with an
exclusive story: Nick Drobac, one of the county’s three superior court judges,
was resigning to go into private practice. There were no remote computers or
even fax machines in those days, so she dictated the story to me over the phone
while I typed it on the Underwood. Two hours later, one of the circulation
staffers came into the newsroom with copies of that day’s paper and laid one on
my desk. The Drobac story was right there on the front page.
My
beat was to be North Monterey County, so that afternoon, Bill Akers, who had
been covering that area, took me out and introduced me to the harbormaster, the
school superintendent and business officer, and the justice of the peace.
Midway through that tour, the rain finally stopped. By the time we got back, it
was almost quitting time.
Andre
Neu and Judge Drobac are still alive, but the others are all gone, though I’ll
never forget them. In fact, I recently had occasion to contact Drobac in
connection with a publication job I’m doing for a client. That first day was
the beginning of something that still continues.
