February 2011

February 23, 2011

Goin’ to the Dogs: Animal Photography

Every day there were tons of rolls of blank newsprint waiting for ink to be squirted on them. Some days you had assignments to shoot photos that would illustrate stories. Other days, the editor would ask, “Got any wild art?”

Wild art – sometimes called CLO, for Cut Lines Only – was a photo or photos that would stand alone without a story.

Photographer wasn’t human

All newspaper photographers have to be generalists who can do a competent job shooting whatever arises, but most of them have things they do better than others. I had one guy who had an uncanny ability to shoot sports. He could read the plays better than the athletes; be where the action was going to happen; nail the ball, the number and the action, perfectly exposed and tack-sharp. There was some speculation that he wasn’t human.

Others were great at lighting. They could make interiors and food come alive. A few were good at coming up with illustrations for stories that didn’t lend themselves to straight journalistic photography.

I was most comfortable shooting portraits, documentary picture stories and spot news.

Animal photos were the exception

I was lousy at feature photos and wild art. I always wanted to turn feature situations into stories. Very seldom did I ever stoop so low as to shoot animal photos like these.

Tuned to a different frequency

An unsolicited portfolio arrived at the office when I was trying desperately to fill the fifth of five positions that had just come open when the staff was raided and a husband-and-wife team left for a bigger paper. The applicant was someone we had never heard of, working at a small paper we had never heard of, but his feature photos were phenomenal. So phenomenal, in fact, that the chief photographer and I grilled him hard. “We don’t set up photos here, and your pictures look, to be blunt, ‘too good to be true.’ How did you happen to shoot photos X, Y and Z”

“I just get these feelings,” he said. “I think, if I stand in this place, it’s like I can see in my mind what’s going to happen.”

It turned out to be true. It was like he was tuned to a different frequency than the rest of us. If he had been as good at picking lottery numbers as he was in being able to predict what was going to walk into his camera frame, he’d have been rich.

February 22, 2011

Leo Heuer’s Buffalo

Leo A. Heuer and his two buffalo made it into The Missourian Aug. 28, 1967. The bull stood six feet high and weighed 1,900 pounds, the story said. The female was lighter, 1,200 pounds. They were about eight years shy of full maturity, when the bull could stand seven feet tall and weight as much as 3,000 pounds.

Bought them from Grant’s Farm

Heuer bought the two beasts from Grant’s Farm, owned by St. Louis brewer August A. Busch, in 1963 for $600. At the time, they were small enough that you could almost pick them up. He said raising them wasn’t a great problem, that they were sturdy, durable animals that fared better in extreme heat and cold than cattle.

The farm was located on Three Mile Creek Road, about two miles east of Highway 61.

February 21, 2011

Make Hay While Sun Shines

These photos were taken for The Missourian’s Farm Page June 8, 1967.

Haymaking Time

The caption below the photo says that “it’s haymaking time in Cape county and on the John Below farm near Allenville, activity has been brisk. Throwing a heavy bale aboard a pickup truck are Terry Givens (foreground) and Johnny Below.”

Rain hasn’t been problem

The caption continues, “Cutting of 162 acres of hay on the farm started Sunday. Rain has not been a great problem, Mr. Below reported.”

Learned to “hunker”

I filled in as Farm Editor from time to time. It was there I learned how to “hunker,” something that served me well over the years. You “hunker” by planting your feet flat on the ground, then “sitting” so that your bottom almost touches the ground. With a little practice, it can be comfortable when you’re chewing the fat with a farmer. It helps if you have a weed to chew on while you’re hunkered.

Hunkering was a lot easier when I was younger and more flexible. De-hunkering has become much more difficult over the years.

I also learned that “Below” is pronounced more like Blue or Beelou in the area.

February 20, 2011May 11, 2016

Senor Dan Moore

Barbara Nunnelly Adler posed a question in her comments on my story about high school clubs and activities: BTW does any know what ever happened to Mr. Dan Moore who taught Spanish and also sponsored Spanish Club. I would love to be in touch with him to let him know what a big influence Spanish has been in my life. . . now with a son working and living in Spain!

I can’t help you with where he is today. I Googled his name and saw some links that MIGHT have been him, but I couldn’t be sure.

Which language should I take in high school?

I thought about Latin, but figured the odds were slim that I’d ever run into any Romans. France didn’t seem to be in my future, either. “I might actually go to Mexico,” I thought, “I’ll sign up for Spanish.”

It never dawned on me that I wouldn’t need to GO to Mexico. It and Cuba and much of Central and South America came to me. We moved to South Florida where Wife Lila and I are frequently one of only two English-speaking families in our immediate neighborhood. I wish I had studied a little harder at Central.

I remember the language lab pictured above. You’d sit in a tiny cubicle with a headphone and mouthpiece listening to questions or dialog that you were supposed to respond to. The instructor would sit in front of the classroom listening to each student in turn. I learned early on that there was always a “click” in the headphones when Senor Moore switched to me, so that’s when I’d start talking into the mike.

Are you an American citizen?

Senor Moore spent one of his summer breaks living with a family in Mexico so he could become fluent in Spanish. When it came time to come back home, he was in the back seat asleep when they came to the border crossing. He awoke to hear a Border Patrol officer ask, “Are you an American citizen?” His response, “Si”

Starring in Scarface

I had my own version of total immersion Spanish class. I spent a day short of a month in Key West covering the Cuban Boatlift in 1980. I was surprised to see myself in the opening credits of the movie Scarface (I’m the one with a camera and a Cat hat). I knew enough Spanish to be able to say that I was from a newspaper, to ask their name and ages and to ask if any kids present were their children. As long as I stuck to nouns and verbs (and darned few of them), I was OK.

A few years later, the paper offered in-house Spanish lessons. Once we got beyond nouns and verbs and into stuff I never understood when I was in English class, I bailed. I DID ask one last question, “How do I say, ‘Don’t shoot, please.’?”

I never needed to use it, which is probably a good thing. The instructor probably gave me a phrase that said something like, “Your mother is as ugly as a pig, but I’d kiss her anyway.”

Language teachers at Central High School

Here’s a photo from the 1964 Girardot.

It identifies the teachers, left to right, as Charlotte Malahy (Latin and English); Mary E. Sivia (French), Dan Moore (Spanish) and Bessie Sheppard (French and English).

I ran photos of Miss Krueger’s retirement party in 1963 here. She taught Latin before it became a dead language. She was one of six teachers who were in my Dad’s 1931 yearbook and still at Central when we were there.