Newspaper Days: Afterword & Foreword

As Waco Tribune-Herald Editor Steve Boggs noted on my final Saturday night of duty a week ago in a dark, downright haunted Trib newsroom, some folks will find irony that my retirement kicked in the day unofficial election returns indicated that voters (ultimately, more than 5 million of them) gave President Trump his eviction notice. In short, it’s time for each of us to move on to the next chapter in life. No parting gifts for me because the economy is devastated and my profession is struggling; no farewell lunch with cherished newsroom colleagues such as Steve, J.B. Smith, Tommy Witherspoon, Carl Hoover, Rod Aydelotte and Mike Copeland because of rising COVID-19 fears and case counts; just terrific memories as a reporter, editor and columnist long in Texas journalism: more than 25 years in Abilene in rugged West Texas, more than 18 years in Waco on the winding Brazos River and Interstate 35, “Jerusalem on the Brazos,” rubbing shoulders with colleagues and superiors whose help, encouragement, insights and talents regularly inspired me to better myself, even as their attributes reminded me of my shortcomings, even when I was in so many instances the boss. (Photo by Rod Aydelotte shows the Trib editorial board in 2019 with Trib editor Steve Boggs left, publisher Jim Wilson, two days younger than me, right; Jim retired this summer.)

Memories range widely: from scaling rattlesnake-populated, cacti-dotted West Texas peaks with outdoorsman and pal Tommy Wideman (who maintained the rattlers and cacti rendered these peaks more mountains than hills when it came to the climb), to surveying the stunning, often underestimated wrath of the elements while tagging along in Air Force relief efforts aiding the hurricane-battered Caribbean and blizzard-gripped Northeast. From relaxing around Hill Country campfires with singers and musicians at the Kerrville Folk Festival and newspaper compadre (and considerable musician) Jim Conley, to downing vodka shots toasting long-dead relatives with members of the Moscow Symphony Orchestra and my wife, Ann, after dead-of-winter sessions re-recording the massive score for Universal's "House of Frankenstein." From interviewing engaging, intellectually playful Democratic Congressman Beto O'Rourke in the highly competitive 2018 Texas Senate race (and kicking myself for not asking his take on the biography of Julius Caesar he carried with him), to conducting an extraordinarily lively roundtable of local Trump supporters (one of whom I later encouraged to run for public office, given that I was far more convinced of his good judgment than that of his presidential idol; another I added to the newspaper's Board of Contributors to play defense for the president if he so chose).

From reassuring rattled film composer and lounge-music king Les Baxter about a production goof by our mutual friend, Hollywood journalist Tony Thomas, that saw Baxter's score for the 1960 film "Black Sunday" marketed incorrectly as an LP album under the title of a 1963 film "Black Sabbath" (which Baxter also scored), to tracking down British composer Philip Sainton's lost music for John Huston's 1956 film "Moby Dick" in England. (During a visit to see friends and film composers John Morgan and Bill Stromberg in Los Angeles that wound up at the home of Bob Burns, so-called "patron saint of special effects for B movies,” Ann sat briefly in the title object from George Pal's "The Time Machine" but, unfortunately for her, she wasn't whisked away to better times and better companions.) From laughing away an evening with Mexican comedian and frying-pan instrumentalist Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez while discussing Groucho Marx, John Wayne and all those chicken thieves Pedro seemed doomed to forever portray in U.S. films, to enjoying long Petroleum Club lunches with charismatic politician-turned-adventurer-turned-filmmaker Jack Cox, a diehard anti-communist who used to say John F. Kennedy wouldn't have been shot in Dallas in 1963 had Jack beat John Connally for Texas governor in 1962 because Jack never would have invited JFK to Texas. From working as a troubleshooting "closer" with talented journalist J.B. Smith, gifted designer Kim Gorum and resourceful illustrator Scott Fagner on a revelatory investigative series about the immigration crisis from the perspective of desperate Mexicans who perished in Arizona's Sonoran Desert and their grief-stricken families back in Mexico (notified through a unique program at Baylor University's Department of Anthropology overseen by Dr. Lori Baker), to working as project editor on a nine-week introspective series marking the 10th anniversary of the deadly 1993 Branch Davidian siege and at one point visiting Mount Carmel and interviewing Davidian survivors, some of whom still awaited the resurrection of apocalyptic cult leader David Koresh, to researching and writing my own exhaustive essays as a busy opinion page editor and columnist (a post for which veteran newspaperman Carlos Sanchez tapped me, continuing evidence of his confidence in me, for which I am ever grateful). In my final months on the job, I tackled such subjects as the toxic mix of politics and evangelicalism in the Age of Trump; the political fallout of COVID-19 from a distinctly local perspective; police reforms during a summer of unrest over racial injustice; and the pluses and minuses of voting centers, the latter undertaking actually an elaborate defense mounted from copious notes I assembled for a hastily scheduled appearance on National Public Radio. I was later dropped because there wasn't enough "gender balance" in the national lineup of guests slated — hey, that happens — so I simply recycled my notes into another Sunday column.

From hanging with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rush Limbaugh, Paula Poundstone and a young George W. Bush at the Republican National Convention of 1992 (when the Republican Party began its ugly metamorphosis into what it is now), to joining award-winning Trib photographer Rod Aydelotte at President Bush's Western White House outside Crawford in 2008 where I learned about the bored international photographer who took bets on how long he could keep his finger in an ant-bed hole while waiting for a Bush press conference to finally begin. (Incidentally, I believe I'm still the only one from Trib ranks who actually got to ask the president a question, given that local press were encouraged to attend press conferences but questions by tradition came only from the traveling White House press corps.) From making chili with "Zen Chili" author and countercultural beatnik Sam Pendergrast, editor of newspapers small and smaller across the dusty Southwest (and whom I used to pay out of my own pocket to add to the Abilene Reporter-News' thin reporting ranks on weekends), to covering colorful characters and oddball happenings across a sprawling stretch of sun-baked Texas as a daily Page One columnist during a 12-year stint, arguably the most enjoyable journalistic pursuit I've undertaken, even if subjects included such footnote characters as a broken-down dancer from Dean Martin's Golddiggers and the amiable dachshund she trained to be a fashion runway model. From a lively 2000 interview with political iconoclast and wrestler Jesse Ventura about political reform (yes, really), to spending an afternoon in 1982 on a Vero Beach, Fla., beach with blonde bombshell Donna Rice, who later sank Sen. Gary Hart's reckless presidential campaign, to reveling in nationally known, Waco-based naturalist Fred Gehlbach's vast if wildly ricocheting knowledge about wildlife in 2005 as we toured the Cameron Park Zoo's newly opened Brazos River Exhibit (including a story the 70-year-old, owl-obsessed lover of nature offered about the last ocelot in Central Texas and how it wound up at a local filling station).

From gaining pearls of wisdom about life, leisure and politics from friends such as former Ambassador Lyndon Olson and medical humanities pathfinder (and fly-fisherman extraordinaire) Michael Attas by a roaring bonfire beneath a full moon in a secluded pasture near Lake Waco once a month, to marveling alongside my good friend and longtime newspaper colleague Richard Horn as a state legislator representing West Texas actually acknowledged to us that he sure didn't want to chair any powerful Texas House committees because he sure didn't want to make any controversial decisions that might earn him criticism from constituents. (Richard and I also convinced legendary West Texas theater operator Frank Sheffield what great business he would do if he programmed Tim Burton's "Ed Wood" at his moviehouse — a film that did so poorly that week at the local box office that Richard and I felt morally obligated to sit in the empty auditorium night after night and watch the movie over and over.) From scaling the Pyramid of the Magician at Uxmal in the jungle-lush Yucatan Peninsula with big, barrel-chested Texas journalist Bill "William Tells" Salter (later publisher of the Odessa American), to interviewing for two rollicking hours gregarious, life-loving Waco philanthropist, insurance magnate and eternal optimist Bernard Rapoport in his book-crammed tower office as he talked about education, hunger, his friends the Clintons and the pride Americans should feel in promptly paying their taxes. (Interestingly, Rapoport often asked guests what they thought. You really don’t find that often among the very wealthy. And he really focused on one’s intellect. I remember his saying of one prominent Wacoan, “He’s a nice boy, but he isn’t a thinker.”) From lunching with John Ford troupe veterans Harry Carey Jr. and Ben Johnson in Abilene, to swapping progressively outrageous pearly gate jokes with actor William Campbell and an informal Friday lunch bunch of misfits and ne'er-do-wells called The Bovines including my lanky, high-humored friend "Bubba" Ephriam, a former standout athlete who notably broke the color barrier in Texas varsity sports in 1955 at Pecos High School and himself briefly did bit parts in the "Tarzan" TV series in Hollywood. (Incidentally, Campbell, a joyful presence noted for everything from "The High and the Mighty" to "Star Trek," won kudos that afternoon for the most outrageous joke, which I tried with limited success to reprint — boss and column creator Glenn Dromgoole, editor of the Abilene Reporter-News, let me print it but without the punchline! Part of the forbidden punchline: “You’re gonna hate Wednesdays!”)

One of the most rewarding aspects of my career involved several years working closely with community journalists on the Tribune-Herald Board of Contributors, which my colleague and friend Sandra Sanchez one day casually suggested we rebuild, given that it had fallen into decline well before she and I arrived on the opinion-page scene. (Some of its "current" members were dead and buried.) Our resurrected board demonstrated the newspaper's strong faith in and vivid commitment to our versatile community. Many of our writers offered poignant, insightful and unexpected takes on national melodramas unfolding, which in turn freed me to focus more on local and state issues, including a deadly melee involving rival motorcycle gangs; an ammonium nitrate explosion that killed 15 people in the nearby Central Texas community of West; a hothead district attorney mired in conflicts of interest and prosecutorial incompetence; and continuing battles over voter rights in Texas. That said, many of their pieces eclipsed my own in the online readership we were able to measure.

Obviously pandemic times preclude immediate retirement plans I had, including traveling to see longtime friends in San Angelo, McAllen, Abilene, Fort Worth, Austin, El Paso, Tucson and Los Angeles, as well as taking in-person life-learning classes via Baylor University. I have a mountain of books and music beckoning. I have writing and editing projects looming. I have a pooch who demands long walks both mornings and evenings. I have a loving, patient, good-humored, supportive and reassuring wife who, yes, demands some time in between all this after years of competing with the demanding mistress that is the newspaper business. And I've started this blog where all entries but this one will be concise, fleeting, to the point. But the broader question remains: Any advice from graying sages who have preceded me in smoothly transitioning from a hectic, sometimes obsessive work schedule to the tranquil, deeply introspective retirement that Cicero spoke of? “How wonderful it is for the soul when — after so many struggles with lust, ambition, strife, quarreling and other passions — these battles are at last ended and it can return to live within itself.” Anyone?