Journalism Archives

September 20, 2013

A Smell You Don’t Forget

It was time for my biannual body inventory at the dermatologist this morning. I had a hunk of skin cancer hacked off my face a few years ago, so I’m supposed to go back for inspection once or twice a year.

(When I showed up at the office with a huge bandage on my face back then, I answered the inevitable question by saying, “I was just sitting there minding my own business when this gang wearing masks and gloves surrounded me demanding money for drugs. Even though I paid off, they cut me anyway.” Well, it WAS true, kind of.)

After a bunch of uh-huhs and some picture taking of various and sundry body parts, he froze some places, scraped some places and sliced away at some others.

When he hit a couple of spots with a cauterizing iron, I commented, “That’s a smell I’ve never forgotten. The first fatal fire I worked was a guy who fell asleep with a cigarette smouldering in a feather bed.”

I could tell by the expression on his assistant’s face that’s not a comment she hears every day.

Just by the luck of the draw, I was scanning a queen crowning tonight when I found that fire on the same roll of film. I’m not going to provide a link to the story or any details except to say that the guy in the white jacket on the right is coroner Don Kremer. The remains of the featherbed are scattered all over the yard.

I hadn’t turned 20 yet

That wasn’t the last smoking-in-bed fatal I encountered, but it’s the one I flash back to.

I just looked at the file date on the film. I hadn’t turned 20 years old yet. That’s a long time to hold onto a memory.

May 31, 2013June 6, 2013

Cubs’ Pitchers Had Problem

The day after I graduated Central High School in 1965, I showed up bright and early to start my Missourian summer internship. To my dismay, my first assignment was to fill in for the sports editor, who was going on vacation.

I confessed to Chuck Murdoch that I knew virtually nothing about sports and was in deep trouble. He took a couple of sucks on his ever-present pipe and a look of relief passed over his face as he realized his job was safe: this was ONE high school kid who wouldn’t show him up. He gave me the crash course in sports journalism (something that I always thought was somewhat of a contradiction in terms).

He explained that the first thing I had to do when I showed up three hours before the rest of the staff was to go to a dropbox on the Broadway door to retrieve an armload of youth league score books the coaches had dropped overnight. I was to take those score books and interpret scratches and scrawls that showed every batter and every play and write a play-by-play of the high spots of the games. I prayed for a tight paper so I could get by with just a game summary.

I got the job done, but I felt like a monk translating ancient scrolls from one language into another. So far as I know, nobody ever complained about my accounts.

Last night I found this comment written by a coach who either had a great sense of humor or a flair for understatement: “Cub’s pitchers couldn’t find the strike zone and walked 22 batters.”

First AP story

I thought it amusing enough I phoned it in to the Associated Press, which put in on the wire. I’m pretty sure that was the first time anything of mine moved on a news wire. It was a real thrill when I heard the clatter of the teletype and discovered that it was my brief that was going out to the world (well, maybe the nation or the region or the state. I don’t remember the codes well enough to know how far it was broadcast. It didn’t win the Pulitzer, I know that.).

I didn’t do too badly covering government and cops, but the society and agriculture beats were a bit of a stretch. I loved it.

April 30, 2013

Putting on the Dog (and Cat)

I was working on a post when I encountered a technical glitch. Instead of giving up, I explored everything I could think of, then I went over it one more time with feline. Still broken.

Kind of reminded me of the old story about the man who thought Fifi the poodle was off her feed.

The Doc said he didn’t think there was anything seriously wrong with the poodle, but the man INSISTED that he conduct every possible test. Rather than subjecting the animal to pokes, prods and other indignities, the doc went into the back room and came back with a cat on a leash. He led the cat around the ailing pet for a couple of circles without saying anything.

He then went into the back room and came back with a DOG on a leash. The dog gave one sniff, then turned and walked away.

What was THAT all about?

“What was THAT all about? the concerned pet owner asked.

“Take Fifi home. The cat scan and the lab report came back negative.”

The wall of desperation

This is what journalists do when faced with a deadline and nothing to fill the space. I’ve been there before. Remember the Pomeroy Frog Jumping contestant and Nellie Vess?

March 29, 2013February 17, 2016

4 Shots of One-Shot Frony

I’m sure G.D. Fronabarger – better known to everyone in Southeast Missouri as One-Shot Frony – must have thought, “That kid’s crazy wasting four shots on a Kiwanis Club presentation.” (I took four, but only three were different enough to show here.)

Frony, who was the Missourian’s photographer from 1929 to 1986, was best known for lining up a group of people, then growling around his ever-present cigar, “Don’t blink. I’m taking one picture.” True to his word, he’d press the shutter release, then walk away.

The negative sleeve is slugged Kiwanis Club – Frony 07-20-1967. That’s in one of those months that is a black hole in the Google Archives, so I don’t know what’s happening in the photo.

Gary Rust was there

Gary Rust, who would become a newspaper magnate a few years down the road, was one of the three men being recognized with Frony. He’s on the left in the photo at the top of the page and on the right in this photo. I don’t know who the man in the middle was. Note Frony’s cigar. I don’t know if he ever smoked it or if he just chewed it to death. I tried to blow up the name tag on the man at the lectern, but “Wayne” was all I could make out.

Fred Lynch keeps him alive

Fred Lynch, who has been a photographer at The Missourian since 1975, keeps Frony’s photos alive in his blog, f/8 and Be There. Some of his early work goes well beyond straight newspaper photography and approaches art as much as anything can that is destined to have a life of 24 hours.

By the time I got to know Frony, he was burned out from shooting 59 years worth of those Kiwanis Club meetings and the same annual events that had come around 59 times. I wrote about Frony in 2009 and published my favorite picture of him.

In it, I talked about how surprised I was to hear Frony defend a controversial spot news photo I had taken and how our relationship changed after that. We were never close, but I had the feeling that Frony finally conceded that “this kid might just make it as a news photographer.”