After the Fact: All the news that fits

“Writing a column is easy.  You just sit at your typewriter until little drops of blood appear on your forehead.” — Walter “Red” Smith

My friend from high school, Joyce Joslin Wolff, sent this quote to me. It’s from a book, she says, titled, “Metaphors Be With You.” I love clever people who can come up with “take-offs” like “Metaphors…” They should be writing columns for newspapers.

You can tell that the Red Smith quote is an old one: nobody uses a typewriter anymore.

I gave mine away a century or so ago (it just seems that long) but I remember how utterly thrilled I was when Smith Corona came out with a portable electric typewriter, and I saved money from every paycheck until I had enough to buy one.  That took almost long enough for it to become obsolete when IBM developed “the ball.” The only plus I ever figured for “the ball” was that you could have interchangeable fonts in a minute. Except there weren’t that many fonts from which to choose anyway.

Another myth dispelled, and I hope this doesn’t disappoint anyone, but I hardly shed blood over writing this column. I just have fun doing it. I can see where someone like Argus Hamilton might shed blood, but I still think he has fun writing his column. It’s just that he does a whole lot more research than I do. Judging from the number of topics he touches every time, he must watch every channel and read every major newspaper, gleaning from both the Democrats and the Republicans, from the “stars” and the not so starry.

It’s a rare day that I don’t read the Courier from front to back (excepting Sunday and Monday). Talk about “shedding drops of blood”! Being a reporter demands objectivity and impartiality and ours do a bang-up job. I can rant and rave or nod and approve but none of that will change the printed word. If I wanted national news, I’d watch a lot more TV and maybe get a subscription to the Denver Post (I mourned when the Rocky Mountain Journal went out of business). I like my national and world news in smaller doses. What interests me are the things that happen in my “neighborhood.”

My career in journalism was short-lived: it started at the then-weekly (or was it bi-weekly?) newspaper at Adams State, progressed to a couple of quarters (ASU, being ASC then, was on a quarter rather than a semester schedule) at the Courier. I did fine when assigned to write an “interest” piece but less swell at reporting. My editor at the time had to send my stories back for re-writing more often than he or I would have liked. I’m pretty sure he was relieved when I finished the journalism class and could “drop out” at the newspaper. He did offer to take me to Nazarro’s for pizza and beer (now the Purple Pig) to celebrate.

Later, during summer “vacation” or in-between semesters, I could always get a “casual” job at the hometown newspaper. Either they were desperate for the cheap help or my reporting improved: I like to think it was the latter. Not to mention, my granddad would have made me shed those drops of blood if “his” editor had to return my stuff as often as did the editor at the Courier. The moral to that part of the story is: never go to work at the family store if you don’t want to work twice as hard as everyone else there.