Old Newspaper stories. . .

Fog lay heavily over the mesas east of Albuquerque that midnight -- a weird weather pattern for that parched desertland. I had just gotten out of a movie at the K iMo and was driving out East Central Avenue, following a siren which had echoed up the r oad.

Mist formed droplets that skidded off my windshield. I was creeping along, knowing that New Mexico drivers don't always know how to drive on rain-slick streets, and particularly in a fog blanket.

The night traffic with headlights burning into the mist was sporadic. It was coming in from the Sandia Mountains 10 miles up the road.

I spotted a dim flashlight as I approached the wreckage of a car splattered off the incoming lane from the mountains. A shadowy figure loomed, waving the flashlight. I pulled my car off the pavement on the outgoing lane, made sure no cars were bearing down out of the fog, and then hailed the flashlight man.a

He was a sheriff's deputy as I remember. I dodged quickly as headlights loomed again, and an onrushing auto careened around the mess.

"Whew," I called out, "do you think you ought to be standing out there?"

He didn't turn to look at me. He kept his mind on the job. Another car swished by recklessly.

"Hey, man," I shouted, "those are drunks coming in from that bar just inside Tijeras Canyon."

"I know," he said, still staring into the fog at the onrushing headlights.

Using the wreckage as a ablock before me, I began to plead wit h the deputy.

"You can't save those guys. You better get out of there or you're likely to. . ."

My voice drifted off because I was taking the sudden darkness to dash back over to the safety of my car. I got in and sat behind the steering wheel/ My blood with pumping fright.

"Mister, damn it, you're gonna get. . ."

CRASH! The next crazy driver caught the deputy in his headlights and smashed into him head on.

I looked on in horror. The body kept sliding in a massive skid past my car. On up the street. The driver just drove on. I ran up to where the body finally came to its rest, a trail of blood gushing out.

I waited until another sheriff's car came on the scene. Then I drove home.

-0-

A newspaperman was supposed to be on the alert at all times for a storyAt 16 or 17, I took my new job at The Albuquerque Journal very seriously. And there was another ambulance siren, maybe a few weeks later.

This time it screamed out of town southbound in the direction of the Indian publo about 14 miles out. My old Ford roadster got me there this time when the ambulance crew was still picking up the injured.

"You're from the newspaper, young man?" I was approaching the rear of one of the smashed cars. "I'm a doctor," he said. "I need some help."

I drew close. A man lay unconscious, one arm pinned under the wreckage. There was danger of fire.

"Have you got a knife. . .a sharp knife?" the doctor said.

I had a pocket knife. I gave it to him. He amputated the arm. He tried to stop the flow of blood. The badly injured man and his amputated arm were gathered up by the ambulance people, and they took off.

I was 16 or 17. I'd never seen anything like that. I thought maybe I was going to get sick. I wiped off the blade of my pocket knife on my pants and put the knife away.I drove slowly back to town.

Later I learned from the hospital that the man was dead.

-0-

I may pass up the Old Farts' next meeting

One of my great enjoyments in retirement is attending the frequent meetings of the Old Farts Society at Genio's Restaurant in Burbank. It is where all of us graduates from the Los Angeles metro newspaper scene can re-tell old stories of what capers we committed, what magnificent reporters we were, how we exposed wrong-doing, how we disclosed society's secrets that society didn't want told.

But I am hesitant about accepting an invitation to the meeting next month to observe the 40th anniversary of the first Watts riot in 1965. The Times, which spawned most of the OFS membership, takes pride in winning a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the riots and its subsequent review and analysis of what happened and why.

If we could take credit for having helped remove the scars of racial intolerance in Los Angeles, I'd be whooping it up with the rest of the boys and girls. But, whoa, The Times won another Pulitzer for covering the SECOND Watts riot in 1993! So much for the sort of investigative reporting that might have helped avert both rebellions against society, in which the blacks' own community suffered the most casualties and property destruction.
How many members does the Old Farts Society have today with African-American ancestry? How many do we have to tell THEIR stories of the coverage of the riots? Hasn't there been a sufficient lapse of time for some of them to have reached OFS membership and the doors opened to them?

The old-timers can speak readily to that. Only one black man did any coverage of the first riot for The Times. He had to be recruited out of the advertising or circulation department, I've forgotten which, and he didn't turn out to be such an outstanding newsman. Some extra-curricular tangles with the law mixed up his legacy.

About the Pulitzer Prize: The staff won it, with reporter Jack Jones doing an outstanding job of shepherding the aftermath story. He could have won it single-handed, and the staff has to be admired for reporting the killing, the looting, the horror without more than one black face on the scene for them.

The Pulitzer Prize awards committee probably had no more black faces on it than the L.A. Times' staff.

I left the Times to go to work with Sargent Shriver in the War on Poverty because of my disillusionment from being removed from the civil rights beat months before the first Watts riot.

When I was first approached about it, Frank McCulloch was serving at The Times' daytime managing editor, knew how to reach me: "Paul, we've been doing a good job covering Mississippi and Alabama -- but what are we doing about looking into our own backyard?"

I jumped at it. The assignment to get blacks' names and their problems into the new Los Angeles Times headed by then young publisher Otis Chandler, was a challenge, but who could ask for a better one in the turmoil of the '60s? Then I began getting signals of what lay ahead.

The paper's county beat reporter tapped me on the shoulder after I'd written a three-part series on the black community's problems with housing, employment and education, and said, with a big grin, "Paul, the way you're writing this stuff, one would think you might be part 'nigger'." Yes, he used thee "N" word, and I spell it out for its impact.

Although I had ancestors on both sides of the Civil War (or "War Between the States" -- take your choice), I couldn't resist taking credit for something I couldn't assume at all, and told him that "I don't go around bragging about it."

Other stories I have about my efforts to cover the civil rights picture for The Times have more bearing on what I regard is what journalism itself is supposed to be about. They followed McCulloch's departure from The Times. I hope my work didn't contribute to his disputes with the management. I won't belabor them here.

McCulloch's replacement didn't share his enthusiasm for the civil rights coverage. "Paul, you've been working too hard," were his words that took me out of the picture. Hadn't he been reading the stories I had been writing? I wasn't looking through a crystal ball when a young man in Watts had told me that I was "the only white man who could get into Watts after rioting breaks out. " I said The Times could expect trouble ahead and they "wouldn't know what hit them." When the 1965 riot broke out, I was in Mazatlan, Mexico, listening to a newscast from L.A. After midnight I drove a mile to a downtown hotel telephone and called the city desk. Did they want me to hurry home?

'Aw, Weeks, go back and enjoy your vacation. this'll be over in a couple of hours.'

Four days later, a delivery boy caught up with me with the telegram to hurry home. The riot was over but 'Charcoal Alley' was still smoldering when we flew in over it a few hours later.

So, what stories can I tell the Old Farts?

****
Later: Against all my intentions, I went anyway. It was too "smiley" for me. They had their token black man -- a fine former editor of The Sentinel -- at the speaker' table -- who reminded us not so subtly that "being black is (still) a bitch." But mainly it was like war correspondents relating their close calls and their humorous experiences covering a riot.

Yes, I got mad and blew my top, as our unofficial club note-taker accurately noted in passing. But I had my say as the room grew silent. The situation in South Central apparently has not changed significantly. After winning two Pulitzers for covering two Watts riots, maybe the boys and girls will have another opportunity one of these days to vaingloriously win another Pulitzer when the racial heat rises to a boil again.

Sequel: Why do I write for The Stockton Record? Or: The column that strayed from the fold

Today, I am probing into a mystery. Maybe you can help:

Several years ago when I started to write for The Stockton Record, my first effort was to tell why I was there -- just like the piece in this blogspot that I wrote several weeks ago. I carefully detailed how the lady who delivered my North County Times started it all by never managing to hit my garage door with the morning paper.

I rambled on about how I sought help from Above (that doesn't always mean Godallmighty, but sometimes, the managing editor), and my appeal finally reached Rob Wagner at The Record. He was working there, having left the NC Times earlier. Rob hired me to write the column. You know the story by now.

Rob was kind, suggested I not get so personal in my first column, so I reversed field. I wrote about walking to school with Johnny Lewis when I was in Lincoln Junior High in Albuquerque in 1932. Now, THAT was far enough away from Stockton that Rob shouldn't mind. Right? Good enough. John Lewis went on to musical fame, celebrity as a composer, leader of the now legendary Modern Jazz Quartet. I quit beating my junior high drum and took up the typewriter.

Now for the mystery: My blog on, "Why I Write for The Stockton Record" -- virtually a rewrite at the one that failed to pass muster -- showed up, lo! Like magic. In The Stockton Record. Vintage for July 2005.

The blog had been my usual venting of words -- no editor to slice my rambling back to common sense. The blog didn't know that it couldn't get into real newspaper print without an editor to make it shipshape. It was properly shorn of excess verbiage.

Ordinarily, I don't see my column on the first day it reaches print, but get it a day or two later on the Internet. On July 5, however, I got a sweet fan letter from a lady in Martinez named Patti, saying she had read my column and wondered how I had corrected the problem of getting the carrier of the North County Times to hoist the paper to my garage door. She posed a similar problem with her delivery of The Record, to which she had subscribed for 58 years.

(I don't question her sweetness, but I recognize an old trick of mine to tell someone what I nice piece they've written -- and now would they deal with my problem?)

You don't know how fast I wrote to everyone on The Record about the lady's problem -- everyone, that is, who has found him or herself into my address book: The webmaster, the lady who edits my piece, the lady to whom I send my invoices for my monthly paycheck, a couple of fellow columnists whose addresses loom, as mine does, at the bottom of their work.

I was amazed at the number of them who answered and assured me that they had passed Patti's problem on to the circulation department. You see what I mean when I say it is a nice place to work?

But who leaked MY blog to The Record? Who am I to ask? Didn't the new York Times' Judy Miller choose going to jail rather than reveal the source of the leak to her of the name of theCIA spy? Didn''t newspapers generally come to the rescue of the New York Times when that rascal Nixon got the Supreme Court to find them in contempt of court for not disclosing the source of the Pentagon Papers -- and got a restraining order to keep them from continuing the story?

Freedom of the press is the holiest of holies of democracy. Mainstream newspapers picked up the story, flouting the court. I shall not seek court action against the leaker of my blog. (Actually, dammit, I ought to be thankful, shouldn't I?)

Anyway, Patti, is The Record's carrier now tossing your paper where you want it?

Why Do I Write for The Stockton Record?

That is often asked by old newspaper colleagues, friends and relatives. It's an easy one to answer: I was ASKED, thank you, and I have enjoyed the association for the better part of four years.

Stockton Record? I live in Oceanside, 500 miles to the south, never stepped into The Record's city room, never met the features editor who gently steers my monthly piece of six- or seven-hundred words into print -- never been in Stockton that I can recall, but I probably drove through it a couple of times on my way to Sacramento or other cities along the route.

So it was sort of a round-about way that my copy landed in Stockton, even if I didn't. I'm slowly getting into the who, what, why, where, when and how, but this is the way it started:

Because of my addiction to newspapers, I subscribe to three:Los Angeles Times, San Diego Union-Tribune, and the North (San Diego) County Times. Because of my age and my attachment to newspapers, I've asked each circulation department to have their carriers toss my daily issue against the garage door in front.

The young woman who delivered the North County paper began not to observe the request. Now I like to have all my morning papers with my coffee each day, so I slip through the garage to pick them up without creating a scene from the street.

I don't ordinarily dress, either, until I have my newspapers; so it became something of an embarrassment to go beyond the door down the driveway in my bedroom attire -- the description of which I shall not go into. Suffice it to say, some of the women passing by with their bull terriers or mastiffs on a leasch would wince and then smile patronizingly while their pooches would just lear.

Damn! The lady carrier, when confronted, said if I would just contribute a better tip, she would consider improving her throwing arm.

DON'T ALL YOU GUYS (and dolls) who ever got printer's smudges on your fingers, recognize the solicitation of a bribe, which is against newspaper people's ethics?

Oh, my, I suppose I over-reacted. I wrote to everyone I knew who worked for the paper, then adding those I didn't know -- editors, circulation managers, and so on.
I regret that the young lady lost her job, not necessarily because of this one slip.
But The North County Times has never faltered since -- which is something I can't say for the other two.

No, I'm not straying off the subject: One editor I wrote to was Rob Wagner, who had been a regional editor for the paper. Rob happens to be the grandson of an old colleague of mine on two Los Angeles papers. My protest was forwarded to him in the position he now held: features editor of The Stockton Record.

A few years earlier, Rob had written a book called, "Red Ink and White Lies," a serious but well-anecdoted history of early newspapering days in L.A.He had interviewed me for it and faithfully relayed my contribution to print (except he said I had once been in the Coast Guard, which, I guess is not libelous).

"My granddad used to bring the Daily News home, and he showed me some of the stuff you had written," Rob said with grace. "Would you like the idea of writing a monthly column for The Record, say, mostly memoirs of your days on newspapers?"

I rushed to sign any papers necessary before he could change his mind and -- yes -- before he told me what my paycheck would be.

(I got $5 a week when The Albuquerque Journal gave me my first job in the depression days of 1937. I sometimes carried the checks around in my wallet two or three weeks before cashing them. I have gotten over that habit.)

Rob was my entreè. He was a great editor. But a year or so ago, he got a job on the Saudi Gazette in Rijahd and left me to fend for myself. Fortunately, the features editor who took his place, is a fine editor, too. I'm looking forward to meeting her sometime.

Again: Why would anyone in Stockton's environs want to read anything I ever write about my life and times everywhere else but in Stockton? May I tell one more story?

Some 30 years ago, I planned to attend the umpty-umph anniversary of the founding of Mott, North Dakota -- a nice little town tucked in the southwest corner of the (sometimes frozen) state, where I came into this world on a blizzardy December morn in 1920.

I loved, and still love, Mott, where I spent 12 years opening my eyes to this planet and its wonders. How could I write something that would be accepted for publication in a metro sheet like the Los Angele Times? "Try me," I told myself.

Before attending the reunion in 1982, my story heralding the coming event was not only published in the L.A. Times, but was syndicated throughout the nation -- even Fargp, North Dakota. Maybe in Australia for all I know, because the Times' news service carried news of such important events around the world.

I guess I could be excused for sending a copy of the story to the Mott Pioneer Press, a weekly where my name first appeared in print.

Bobby Trousdale, the banker's son, was the first to smile and wink wickedly about how I got Mott nation-wide attention. "I know," he said, "that you used to work for the Times and that gave you an 'in'."

Man, I was tempted to give him a swift kick in the pants. His snide remarked smelled of the same effort of the newspaper girl carrier to get a bribe.

"No, Bobby," I said with all the aplomb that I could muster."Most of the older newspaper readers everywhere probably came from some little town like Mott, and they will know what I was writing about."

And now I guess that old newspaper hacks like me enjoy telling their stories over and over, and sometimes people like to read them from Tucumcari to Timbuktu.

If you've gotten this far, you must be one of them.

Celebrating Whistle-blowers

Thursday, June 2, 2 005

It was a big day for we who have toiled in the vinyards of newspapers. "Deep Throat" has come out of hiding in his 91st year -- beset with Alzheimer's that takes away a person's grip on reality.Undoubtedly not long for this world, at least as the man he was.

Has his surfacing been soon enough for him to bathe in the status of hero by most in our business?. The smile on his face seemed to reflect the relief from coming out as the mystery man who helped Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein unravel the Watergate affair.

I hope his memory is still active enough to enjoy the recognition he is receiving for his courage an honesty -- once dangerously imperiling his position as No. 2 man in the FBI.

He had served not as a leaker of secrets, but as sort of a fact checker to keep the Washington Post duo confident they were on the trail of the Richard Nixon administration, who had convinced themselves that people in their high places were immune from the limits the Constition but on everyone in this democracy.

I liked Woodward and Bernstein's definition of journalism on Larry King tonight as seeking the truth as much as is obtainable .

I am writing about Daniel Ellsberg, leaker 34 years ago of the Pentagon Papers on the Vietnam War. He was in a somewhat similar position to Mark Felt as Dan put his conscience ahead of his disclosing government secrets and therefor his loyalty to the RAND Corporation, where I worked for 19 years. In my view, while his act enraged the Nixon Administration and the military, and thus blew a hole in RAND'S pockets for a long time, it undoubtedly helped change opinion throughout the country about the war. It probably saved many American soldiers' lives and far more of the innocent victims in Vietnam by shortening the war.

Migod, have I named my blog well! As I have through most of my career in journalism, I make so many typos that only the computer and its spell-check can save me where city editors mostly encountered them before

Arthritis in my finger increases my frailty.And my computer keyboard, full of keys I seldom use, rises my frustration to froth proportions. As my screen saver used to say, "Frankly, I did better on an old Underwood."

City Editor Chuck Chappel of the old L.A. Daily praised and put me down in one breath one day, by characterizing me as one of his best reporters -- and the worst typist.

I have taken this escape route from writing anymore tonight.Hail to Mark Felt, Woodward and Bernstein, Dan Ellsberg and the late Chuck Chappel as my heroes.

Amen.