Journalism Career Redux

When I was in fourth grade, my mother decided to teach me to use the typewriter. She said it was because my penmanship was so terrible.

This led to a college study and later a career in journalism, where I spent most of 25 years raising utter hell with the populations of towns and cities in several states.

Mom’s old black Royal was so heavy I couldn’t lift it. The platen raised and lowered, yielding upper and lower case alphabet letters. It required brute strength to create legible writing.

One day in 1963, partly because I could type, I landed a job as a cub reporter at the Laramie Daily Boomerang. Yes that’s really its name. I have no idea of the implications. It might be because of what happens when paperboys try to throw copies of it on porches.

At the Boomerang, I was required to wait in line to use a typewriter. Ahead of me in status were any of the sports reporters and Ken Costello, a handicapped man who compiled (with only one finger available for the keyboard) the weekly bowling report.

Finally, one day in May, 1965, twins were born to me and Annette, and the Boomerang staff gave me a double paycheck. (Two times $48.48 is $96.96.) I was also given a promotion to regular reporter.

As a regular reporter, I was privileged to be assigned my own typewriter. I discovered that this machine could be fastened to a hinged shelf in my desk – and that the typing machine could be lowered into the desk out of sight. And locked. No one but I could use that particular machine. The low wage seemed bearable, somehow, if I had “my own” typewriter.

In an effort to make myself more valuable to the newspaper, I began learning other skills. I learned from Editor Horace “Hod” Campbell how to make plastic engravings of photographs on a machine called a “Scan-A-Graver.”

This involved looking through a microscope and adjusting the size and shape of the tiny “dots” that make up the engraving that ultimately goes on a printing press. I got quite good at it.

I also learned how to use a Crown Graphic and a Speed Graphic, two forms of a news camera with negatives that measured 4 X 5 inches. Depending on the lens used, these cameras could produce very high resolution photographs.

Hod began sending me on photo assignments, and an early one was a rodeo. This little crippled boy got in the ring with a large angry bull being ridden by a tobacco-chewing drunken fool.

When the boy flashed the “Strobonar” brand strobe light to illuminate the bull ride, the beast transferred his anger from the cowboy who had been abusing him to the college boy who had made him temporarily blind.

I got a good picture. I even got the light-tight slide back into the negative packet, preserving the precious image. But when I ran (as if I really ever run) from the arena, the bull was right behind me, and the gate slammed shut on the Crown Graphic and the Strobonar flash.

Upon return to the office, I held most of the utterly destroyed, costly pieces of the equipment in my hands and presented it to, um, Mr. Campbell. He was not pleased. But the newspaper used the photo I had taken and even gave me a credit line for it.

One evening when Ace Reporter Vern Shelton had a day off, I was sent out on his “beat” to gather the police news. I returned with the requisite information – births, deaths, auto crashes, fires, arrests.

Among those arrested was one Keith Burman, charged with Driving While Intoxicated.

It so happened that Mr. Burman was the owner of the Laramie Chevrolet dealer at the time. The dealer was a big advertiser in the Boomerang. The dealer was also a friend of Russ Allbaugh, publisher of the Boomerang at the time.

When the paper came out, the DWI list somehow read “Keith Furman” instead of “Keith Burman.” I retrieved the hard copy from the previous night’s file and found where Mr. Allbaugh had made the little bitty change. He had initialed the change. RRB. I have it somewhere.

I of course was the laughing stock of the police department the next day. And one cop, Officer Chuck Brezeal, told me it wouldn’t be the last time I got screwed in the newspaper business.

He was frighteningly correct.

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At the end of my college career, I tried to persuade the Boomerang management to hire me on “full time” and at a living wage. They said no, the job I’d held was going to go to another cubby whenever I would leave.

So I drove up to Riverton and interviewed with the Peck brothers, Roy and Bob, at the Ranger. Sure, they said, we need a feature writer who can take photographs. 

Before accepting the job in Riverton, I made it clear to my new employers that in the summer I would be attending the marriage ceremony of my brother Dick and Mary Clark, out in Wray, Colorado.

I agreed to go to work there. With the help of my parents, Annette and I moved our family to Riverton and I went to work. Surprise surprise.

My duty as the darkroom technician wasn’t mentioned to me until my first day on the job. My responsibility as the sole sports reporter was explained to me about the same time.

Oh, and when my paycheck came, it wasn’t anywhere near the $90.00 weekly that I had been promised. Somehow, the warm handshake had cooled.

I had no interest in sports. I had only a little interest in processing film – if my own pictures were involved.

While I was trying to figure an escape from Riverton, I did my high school sports reports. I did my darkroom time. I wrote feature stories. I did straight news stories. I worked sometimes 90 hours in a week.

When I got back from that trip, I found my paycheck had been docked for the days I had missed. The 90-hour weeks counted for nothing.

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For years, I kept on working for newspapers, and it was always the same. Every job ended in a disaster – but sometimes that was because I found out things like when the Chevvy dealer gets a DWI. I’m told I shouldn’t take such glee in this, but I can’t help it.

It was grand, a great time. I loved it. I couldn’t work for the Greeley Tribune, though. That would be like driving a truck that says “Isuzu” on it. Yuck.

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Word of the week: Lamentations. A book of the Old Testament attributed to Jeremiah. To lament is to feel deep sorrow, to mourn or grieve. Something lamentable is grievous, deplorable, distressing. But I do not lament my years in the newspaper business. It’s part of what makes me who I am.