Life is a matter of one road leading to another, to connections emerging, even when we aren't aware of them.

In the fifth grade class of Miss Irish Taylor Johnson's class in Central Elementary School of Jasper, Alabama, Howard Denson III killed time during lulls in the classes by putting out a newspaper.  Actually, it was only a page that he drew on notepaper.  The masthead would proclaim The Southern Gazette, The Jasper Times, or The Alabama Aegis.  These were great improvements over the previous issues put out in second-grade classes in Vidalia, Georgia, or the third-grade class in Marianna, Florida:  The Vidalia News or The Marianna Telegraph.  Unknowingly, in the spirit of the newspapers of the 1800's, if he lacked any news, he simply made it up.  Superman appeared often, stopping cars (easy to draw) or planes (ditto).  The Nazis persisted in sweeping in and shooting at American pilots.

Later, he was far too shy to join the junior high newspaper, Put It Blountly, at Blount Junior High in Pensacola, but he wound up on it anyway as a cartoonist and then found that they needed this or that article, so he began working as a reporter.  After several moves for the rest of high school, he wound up at Pensacola Junior College, where Dr. Margaret Berrisford, dean of women, but handling registration, discovered one interest was journalism.  She dragged him to the PJC student newspaper advisor, Dr. George Goodwin, where he joined the staff as a cartoonist, then wound up writing articles, and then became the editor of The Corsair.  As Dr. Goodwin conferred with local print shops about projects for the college, he knew that the shy editor wanted to pick up some extra money, so Denson wound up as a flunky (a sometime printer's devil, stereographer, janitor, proofreader, and reporter) for The Escambia News, a weekly newspaper owned by William Barr).  When Paul Driver's The Warrington Sun bought the weekly, he continued working with hot, molten lead as a stereographer and learned that he disliked having hot lead splatter onto his arms and face or pour over his shoes.  (Cranky fellow.)  Dr. Goodwin guided him away from his hell into a part-time position writing sports for The Pensacola News and Pensacola Journal.  Here he learned to respect the writing of Leo Coughlin, Ray Padgett, and others, and, as he continued working as a stringer while attending Florida State University, he admired the work of The Tallahassee Democrat's Bill McGrotha.  You couldn't tell from his copy that McGrotha was legally blind (and eventually went totally blind).  At FSU, Denson joined the staff of the student newspaper, The Florida Flambeau, as a reporter and quickly became sports editor, while still being a stringer (correspondent) for The Pensacola News-Journal and a part-time police beat reporter for The Tallahassee Democrat.  FSU Football Coach Bill Peterson could never remember people's names, so, if he saw Denson leaving the practice field to file a story, he would call, "Hey, sport writer."

After graduation, Hey Sport Writer was hired by The Birmingham News for its Bessemer News weekly section, edited by Roger Thames.  Florida newspapers had an interest in high school basketball, but Alabama newspapers primarily had only three interests:  Alabama football, Auburn football, and high schools that can provide athletes for the Crimson Tide or Tigers.  Each September he would produce a football section focusing on the junior high and high school teams in the Bessemer Cutoff (south Jefferson County).  He gave the same attention to the biggest to the smallest team, and, since schools were still segregated, he gave as much coverage to the African-American teams as the white ones.  He discourages you from assuming that he was noble of soul.  In fact, ironically, he didn't care all that much about sports--it had been a way to pay his way through college and to justify a job.  Even so, a sports writer should strive to be fair, should tell in the first paragraph who won a game, and, as the writer reports the game, he or she should strive to tell (in football) who passed the ball to whom, for how many yards, who made the eventual tackle, and who provided key blocks for a runner or receiver.  Many fine writers have emerged from sports departments or have had a keen interest in sports:  Bob Considine (besides an author, later a radio-TV personality), Paul Gallico (The Poseidon Adventure), Sherwood Anderson (Winesburgh, Ohio), Ernest Hemingway (bullfighting, hunting), William Faulkner (hunting), etc.

In addition to sports writing, Denson did much straight reporting and photography, which might range from a horse club in the morning to a bridal reception in the afternoon.  The police beat showed that crooks in Alabama were as bad as crooks in Florida.  Moreover, you understood what police have to deal with on a daily basis.

When Denson moved downtown to the main newspaper, he started doing routine reporting (conventions of such groups as the Alabama Poultry Association, the Alabama Farm Association, the Alabama Builders Association, or whatever names they used).  These meetings converged into one, since they were basically saying the same few things:

*  We are important to the economic health of our state and nation.
*  People do not appreciate what we do.  We deserve more respect.
*  People say our prices are high, but they really should be higher.

Denson had not yet read the works of New Journalists, such as Tom Wolfe (The Kandy-Kolored, Tangerine Flake, Streamline Baby), so Tom Wolfe might have influenced him to take a different road.  As it was, he decided the news stories he wrote didn't matter a day or a week or a month later.  Journalism, after all, is what happens THAT DAY (jour = day).  If he found a story from a previous year, it might be of some interest if it had been a humorous piece or a feature.  That which was silly, oddly enough, might endure.

It became even worse when he became a copy desk editor or make-up editor.  On the plus side, the copy desk featured such fine colleagues as Fred Adams, Richard Pitner, Robert Flynn, Arnold Snow, and others.  They loved good writing, and, in between the tedium of doing the same thing every day, they loved arguing points of grammar.  Denson lost a dime to Adams, for example, over whether grammar books or dictionaries permitted NONE to take a singular or plural verb.  Denson argued singular; Adams pointed out in a reputable dictionary that experts say it could be either one.  Again, on the plus side, in these "Hot Metal Days," a make-up editor worked with the printers who set the type and laid out the pages as close as they could to what the Phi Beta Kappas downstairs put on the layout sheets (called "diagrams" at the News, but called "dummies" in Pensacola and Tallahassee).

The negative side of journalism quickly came to the surface.  At The Bessemer News,  the wife of a local merchant was in the office and complained, "All this paper prints is obituaries, Little League stories, and weddings."  That, of course, is frequently the plight of journalists and small papers.  Ironically, within a year, the woman's husband died, her son did well on a Dixie League team, and her daughter got married.  On The Birmingham News, a copy editor lives a life of tedium, sitting at one spot "reading" copy (correcting grammar and spelling, repairing the style, scratching out redundancies, and checking for factual errors).  A copy editor learns to process copy, and this discipline is useful in other areas of life.  A make-up editor sees each edition laid out, with each page on a truck (again in Hot Metal Days--nowadays, they edit at the PC and use scissors, paper, and paste for some hands on stuff).  An early edition might only go out of state, so a page might feature interesting stories on Georgia, Florida, and Mississippi.  The next edition would go to the hinterlands of the state, and the printers removed the type for the stories on Georgia, Florida, and Mississippi and pitch it all into the hellbox.  When the hellbox was full, a low man on the totem poll would come by, empty the box, and take it off to be melted down.

That hellbox became a symbol.  Your work mattered only for an hour or maybe only twenty minutes.  Then it was thrown into the hellbox.

Probably all of us skate across with window pane of life with pads of butter on our feet.  We leave a streak of grease for a while.  Then time passes, and even that is gone.  In cosmic terms, everyone leaves only a brief grease smear.  However, some writers are in separate categories.  Their skates are tipped with diamonds, and they cut into the glass pane.  We read Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Herodotus, Sappho (oh, how close you came to being lost), the poets of the Bible, Shakespeare, and others, and, although they may not last until the last star has winked out, they are eternal in the sense that we mortals understand.