Did You Hear?

            One of the first indicators that told me the newspaper business was going irretrievably downhill came when I attended a ten-day seminar for editors and managing editors at the American Press Institute, located back then, in 1987, in Reston, VA. The aha! moment came during the session on lifestyle sections.

            The seminar leader, whose name I have mercifully forgotten, had sent us questionnaires to fill out beforehand. One of the questions was, “Does your newspaper run a gossip column?” I said we didn’t.

            Imagine, then, my surprise, when the session got under way and the chap produced samples from the papers present of what he called gossip columns. They were, without exception, the columns in which we printed the boring stuff people wanted us to print (“John Smith was named to the advisory board of the Heart Assn.”). It was what we printed to get people off our backs so we could cover the real news.

            Planet earth to instructor: If people WANT you to print something, it is, by definition, NOT gossip.

You Could Look It Up

            Webster’s, by the way, backs me up on this, its first definition referring to “personal or sensational facts.” Call me jaded, but Smith’s affiliation with the heart association does not seem personal or sensational in any way.

            Gossip is Walter Winchell asking who was the tycoon making woo-woo with a chorus girl at the Stork Club Thursday night. Gossip is Herb Caen reporting that the prominent political figure who just died unexpectedly was a case of mistress’s nightmare: a fatal heart attack during the height of passion. That’s what I’m talking about!

            Participating in gossip, either as a teller or a listener, is supposed to be a vice, even a sin, which it certainly wouldn’t be if the gossip consisted of Smith’s appointment to the heart association board. I have my doubts about the sin part. To me, gossip is simply human, and I would hope a just and merciful God would see it that way.

            Really, it’s just a sign of interest in people and a grasp of what they really are. Samuel Johnson once said that a man who is tired of London is tired of life. You could substitute “gossip” for “London” in that sentence and it would be just as true.

A Small-Town Pastime

            Gossip is frequently connected with small towns, and in those places no sentient human being can be under any illusions about the probity of his or her fellow citizens. That may be why Americans simultaneously romanticize small towns as being virtuous, while fleeing them in droves for the past 120 years.

            In my second Quill Gordon mystery novel, the characters are cooped up in a remote fishing lodge and housebound by rain. Gordon and his sidekick spend a fair amount of time gossiping about the other guests, and the other guests were no doubt doing the same about them. Gordon’s sidekick actually serves as sort of a Greek chorus, making comment on the action.

            The third book, now in the outline stage, will be taking a close look at the community structure of the town where the story takes place. Will there be gossip about the inhabitants? You bet your sweet bippy there will. It is, after all, a murder mystery, and most people get murdered for a reason. You would have to spend a lot of time reading newspapers to find a case where the reason for the crime was that the victim won the coveted spot on the Heart Assn. advisory board, and the killer was mad with jealousy.

           

           

           

A Man of Regular Habits

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            Beginning back in the newspaper days I got into the habit of making Saturday breakfast something of a treat. At first I would sleep in a bit then go out to one of several cafes that I hit on a rotating business. Typically there was one special dish I’d have at each place.

            One of the destinations at the time was Good Golly Miss Lolly’s, which occupied the restaurant at the old Arabian Motel (named for the horse, not the ethnicity) in Aptos. At some point in the early 1990s it went out of business and I moved another restaurant into its place in the rotation.

            Several years after the demise of that establishment I was having lunch on the wharf in Santa Cruz. On the way out I stopped at the parking booth at the entrance to the wharf and when the woman in it and I saw each other, we locked. Each of us knew we knew each other but it took a few seconds for the penny to drop. She got it first.

            “Miss Lolly’s,” she said. “Bacon and cheese omelet.”

Creatures of Habit

            She had of course been one of the pleasant and efficient waitresses there, and like a New York City bartender she could tell you what a regular customer ordered, if nothing else. With my radio face and regular habits, I must have been easy to remember.

            From time to time someone will ask if Quill Gordon, the protagonist in my mystery The McHenry Inheritance is anything like me. I generally demur on that one, but in one respect the answer is a clear yes. Gordon is a man who sticks with the tried and true, and at one point in the book, the waitress at the local greasy spoon good-naturedly details his predictable tendencies.

            Most people, when you come down to it, are creatures of habit to a certain degree. One of the things I learned in the newspaper years was that our readers were and that changes, accordingly, had to be made incrementally. People got really upset if something changed dramatically, because they weren’t used to reading the paper in the way they now had to.

            Being a man of habits, I’m interested in those of others. I recall being really annoyed when I finished Neal Gabler’s otherwise excellent biography of Walter Winchell. How on earth, I asked myself, could someone write a 700-page book about a man who spent his life in nightclubs and not once mention what he drank?

The Benefits of Regularity

            Having set habits that are known to those you deal with can pay off. I regularly stop off at a produce stand to buy a lemon to go with my bedtime cup of herbal tea, and the cashiers sometimes have me rung up and my change in hand by the time I reach the register.

            These days my Saturday treat is a stop at the donut shop in Capitola. Not to say that I’m predictable, but I get there between 7:45 and 8 a.m. and get one with blueberry frosting and one with white frosting and sprinkles (the type favored by Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive).

            A couple of weeks ago I overslept and didn’t get there until 8:15. There were several people ahead of me, but the lady behind the counter saw me come in, waved me forward, and handed over a bag that had been on the shelf behind the display. My two usual donuts were inside.

            I guess you could say she knew my habits.