The room’s vague perimeter swirled in mists of gray and green enclosing countless classroom desks that apparently survived WWII, but just barely. Not seeing any other interesting distinctions, I traced a finger over names carved along with other messages into the deeply scarred desktop before me. Some inscriptions were clear, brazen, and creatively vulgar, others only faint etchings, small cries for attention. “I donated my brain to science” and “There is no gravity-school sucks” competed with many more, racing up, down, over each other, sometimes shrinking as they reached the edges, or just stopping abruptly for reasons I didn’t know.
After a while, I grew increasingly pensive reading epitaphs and instead earnestly scanned the room again. Above to my right, covered in dust and hovering without visible support, a clock floated over a small speaker. The round white and black clock clicked softly but failed to advance, except for the moving secondhand that didn’t advance the minute and hour hands. I took it to be a taunting decoy circling around for some unknown advantage.
I stood up then but almost fell when challenged.
“And just where do you think you’re going?” cracked a discordant voice, shrill and sharp, a fingernail run deliberately hard down a blackboard I couldn’t see but instinctively knew was somewhere near.
“Out,” I responded. “I want the time. Your clock’s broken.”
“Oh, so now time’s important is it?”
I scratched my head, said nothing, and started to walk again.
“Do you think you can just get up and sashay away when you feel like it?”
Momentarily stunned, I fumbled around for an eloquent answer, and settled for a nod instead.
“I can’t hear that rattle way up here. Speak up young man.”
“Just where the hell am I?” I shot back, instantly regretting using the word hell, although I’d used it like table salt so many times in life. And nobody had called me “young man” since the early 80s.
“Did I hear an obscenity, another rude, crude and uncouth display for your idle amusement? That’s three more you insolent churl.”
“Three more what?” I nearly screamed, and then quickly adopted a different approach.
“Miss, please, I don’t mean to be rude. Where am I? Why can’t I leave?”
Her rusty screech spread dust all around the room to finally reveal a large desk shrouded in chalky haze. I was at least 10 rows back, but the voice seemed an inch in front of me, close enough to capture a strong hint of stale mint.
“Detention, you simpleton,” she replied. “You’ll write until your hand falls off or I say you can leave.”
And again, the taunting laugh. I’d been wrong about the time too. It crawled backwards.
Drowning Waterproof Negroes
I fled the newspaper business for a classroom in January, 1980 having contributed sufficiently by then to the world’s body of knowledge. I’m sure I left my own indelible mark, most likely some sort of misprint. As for primary motivation, I sought better working conditions and less stress. Initially, I found more of what I wanted to flee and most certainly wasn’t out to save the world. At this point in my young life I just wanted to survive and had no idea I’d finally found my calling or how much life was about to change.
Previously, I endured 14 months in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana working for the Houma Daily Courier, a swamp rag Mark Twain would have lampooned and did with similar examples he liked to call “Arkansas journalism.”
Arkansas and Louisiana share much in common, shining examples of sophistication. Don’t get me wrong, I met many born in Louisiana who were extremely well educated and far superior to me in every way. I also married a Cajun, my life’s greatest blessing, and we adopted another great blessing also born on the bayou. On the whole, swamp water proved beneficial, baptizing me into the real world and greatly enriching my personal life. I also learned skills I’ve used for decades.
“Waterproof Negro Drowns in Bayou,” was my favorite headline of the period, and a fairly representative example of what often slipped by in a newspaper staffed by overworked and many entry level people. Sadly, I can’t claim credit for the headline written about the drowning of a black man from Waterproof, a nearby small town.
My job was in advertising and there, at least, I associated with other brilliant people like me. Such exceptional creativity permitted us license to print, for three consecutive days, a quarter page ad seeking “Shitfitters,” the intended “p” mysteriously switched for a “t.” My wife always suspected this was deliberate humor, considering the keyboard arrangement made it unlikely an innocent typing mistake, of which we averaged at least three per published page. Regardless, we killed the ad only after a studious oilfield drunk telephoned from a Houma bar to inquire over a loud jukebox about specific job qualifications. Had we known the particulars, we might have filled the position with the person responsible for typesetting the original ad.
I fell into the newspaper job after a short stint managing a Taco Bell in Metairie, a New Orleans suburb. I found Houma after an hour’s drive southwest over litter strewn Highway 90, past smoking sugarcane fields, boat launches and armadillos decaying all over the road. As for clearer local directions, take the first right at the broken refrigerator, hook a left over Bayou Terrebonne, and you’re there.
Until I moved to South Louisiana in the summer of 1978 I’d never seen so much trash piled up in so many different public places. My senses were first assaulted right at the state border between Mississippi and Louisiana on Interstate 59. A “Welcome to Louisiana” sign was surrounded by a huge trash dump that could completely cover a football field. The only other time I’ve seen this sort of dramatic demarcation was crossing over the Texas border into Matamoros, Mexico. In both cases it was most apparent I’d entered a different world.
I think my resume did the trick for the newspaper gig; the three errors in it certainly qualified me for the editorial position I sought and definitely fit nicely into the Courier’s current publishing format.
But my earlier experiences may have attracted attention. Before taco stuffing, I’d written for the Standard Press, alternately referred by our readers as The Standard Mess or Sub Standard Press, and the descriptors accurately described the usual content. On that job I spent hours writing critically important news features: “Mr. and Mrs. John Jones visited with Mrs. Beatrice Smith Sunday where they enjoyed a dinner of roast venison.” Mrs. Jones, who weekly called in her exciting exploits for publication in our neighborhood news section, also stuttered so badly her hot news items generally took a half hour to acquire
For some reason speech problems followed my meteoric rise in journalism. The receptionist/secretary/answering service gal at the Courier, one of the hardest working, most efficient clerics I’ve ever known, fought a cleft palate that played hell with certain vowel and consonant combinations. I still admire her courage and work skills and never did figure out how she multi-tasked six different activities without ever missing a message. Outside of my wife, I’ve yet to meet a person I’d want more to work for me. She was truly exceptional and far superior to computerized answering machines I’ve grown to loath.
“Houma Courier ho pwese, Houma Courier ho pwese. Randal, line two, dere’s a truck to be unwoaded, Mike line tree,” she’d go nonstop daily, holding the phone in the crook of her neck as she used both hands to rip out tear sheets and write phone messages, giving them to the ad reps as they rushed by while she continued simultaneously to answer and relay calls, take messages, greet walk-in customers, or run off one of the many bums populating downtown Houma. She deserved to be paid for ten different jobs, but considering the Courier wage and benefit scale, most likely didn’t make more than my future wife did, which wasn’t much. I’ve heard the term “wage slave” and this fits pretty well.
Louisiana, and much of the South, never really got past the Civil War, at least not the plantation-minded white folks who still rule a supposedly benevolent political system that sent highway workers to patch private driveways and tore up traffic tickets for the right people. While I never made it, I could have been with the right people. I had my credentials in order. This I learned with my first escort through the molasses thick climate of New Orleans where I was accompanied by my cousin and current tour guide, who had directed me to a bar clearly marked “Club Members Only.”
“Hey Eddie, “I said while reading the sign. “We can’t go in here.”
“Oh, that’s OK,” he explained. “We’re club members.”
“Yeah, what club?” I answered.
“The white race,” he said simply.
We were served without question while I pondered my club membership. I had a lot to learn, and continued my lessons in earnest while working at the Courier.
After my first day on the job, I stood by the doorway talking with two other northern transplants as a native strolled by to remark with an accent I eventually learned was indicative of central Louisiana and not the Cajun south.
“Ah feel like ahm behind enemy lines,” he said, strolling out the door and making me wonder if my club membership had limitations. This only touched my conscience briefly because I had larger issues to contend with, complying with my new boss’ directives being one of the big ones.
Smitty, the ad manager and my new supervisor, also had a slight speech impediment complementing a thick Cajun accent. Both became a lot worse when he drank, which was most afternoons, so after three or so I always tried to avoid him because no one, especially Yankee me, understood much he said after a few shots of Crown Royal.
“Nice, nice? Tink it’s nice my god damned dog got run over?” he yelled once when another ad rep, as all of us did, responded to Smitty not having a clue to what he’d just said. I soon asked for a desk in another room set up as a non-smoking section even though I still smoked some at the time, to avoid a similar blunder.
My new desk was right by what we called the mug file, an organized collection of pictures. Long before digital photography, photos were often saved like this for reuse. A paper ID tag was attached to the photo and the tagged photos filed in drawers alphabetically.
One blisteringly hot July morning Smitty walked in and began looking for a picture of Jimmy Carter to exploit on a 4th of July ad page, another typical promotion we had to sell regularly to every account, this time playing on a patriotic theme. We were constantly pushed to wring a few more bucks out of local merchants. Suddenly, Smitty started laughing loudly and tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around to see someone’s idea of political humor. Carter’s photo had been replaced with Jingo, the cymbal-playing monkey, who had recently headlined a small circus.
“God damned lucky I pulled this myself and not the back shop. Kind of looks like Carter though, don’t it?” Smitty said, indicating the likelihood that the picture would have run otherwise, a good guess considering the normal way things worked around the Courier.
“Where the hell’s Wayne?” Smitty asked seconds later, instantly suspecting him for the swap. Wayne was generally blamed for most things in the Courier ad shop, guilty or not. I first watched Smitty explode on Wayne after he called Smitty from a Dulac net shop saying he was lost.
“Goddammit,” Smitty yelled into the phone receiver. “There’s only one road and two ways to go. One of them gets you back here and other way you end up in the god damned Gulf!”
Overhearing that conversation had me completely puzzled, but that was a usual state of Courier affairs.
“I should fire him,” Smitty continued as he looked at Jingo/Carter. I wasn’t really concerned because he said this at least twice a day about Wayne, but for all the threats and curse words, was much too kind-hearted to fire anyone. Smitty would curse a mother for being responsible for birthing such a complete @#$%$%$#@ idiot, and then turn around and give the same idiot a lucrative account days later after learning ol’ !@#$%#$#@#$@! just had a new baby or some other financial need. We all loved the man because of his big heart, and this is a critical element in capturing any story about human interactions when so many different things all go on at once.
The same must be said of the Courier owners who I knew well and just called slave drivers, because in some ways they were, except none of us were in chains, and as far as my involvement went, working at the Courier was some of the best newspaper education I ever received. While worked to exhaustion many times, I found the Courier provided not only a free education, it also at least paid the rent and put sufficient food on my table. Here I’m compelled to provide another part of the Courier scene.
My soon to be wife Mary began working at the Courier right after a nasty divorce. The Dill family didn’t just give her a job, they invited a sad and lonely woman to their family Thanksgiving dinner and took an active interest in her life for many years. While office romances are commonly frowned on, the Dills were delighted when we started dating, knowing Mary needed someone to share her life, and I guess they found me marginally acceptable in that regard. They probably knew this could lead to the loss of a highly valued worker, which it did, but they didn’t care. (I refer here to Mary and not me!) Anyway, Mary was obviously happy and the Dills were pleased as a direct result. I believe the Dills saw their employees as an extended dysfunctional family, and Wayne is included here, but Courier family life never led to much money, or at least, not any I ever saw. OK, so much for backstory story, let’s get back to the advertising shop.
“I wish he’d quit….” Smitty went on by the mug file, still staring at Jingo and mumbling something else I couldn’t make out before he finally shook his head and said, “No…no, he’s too god damned stupid to quit. I gotta fire him.”
Wayne, by the way, was the behind enemy lines guy, who I’d already learned didn’t hold a shred of animosity toward anyone, and just liked to pop out one liners. He was also a very talented artist and photographer. The Courier always featured an eclectic gathering of people. From brilliant to mentally retarded, we all had functions in the process of newspaper work. I still miss the parties. Cajuns party as well as any and better than most, Mardi Gras a perfect example. Newspaper Cajuns bump that up another notch.
Comedy came in all forms at the Courier, and at least some of it was deliberate. Lots of times, however, we just howled at the insanity of publishing a daily newspaper that turned everyone’s hands black after five minutes of contact. I suspected we printed with something like used motor oil on the presses in place of ink. One of our advertising accounts was a lube and tune garage just up the street, and Cajuns are always open to clever trades.
We were so low budget, the publisher himself became angered when he found a cigarette butt in the urinal. He vigorously condemned the unnecessary cost of having our janitor remove it. And to show he wasn’t above scut work himself, he retrieved the butt, placed it in a paper towel, and went from room to room asking every male smoker, “Is this yours?”
We concocted a counterattack and planned to use a cigarette butt covered in lipstick to leave in the urinal, just to see what happened next. I killed the idea because the ashtray planned for the butt supply belonged to a tough coworker we all liked but equally feared. We knew she packed a .32 in her purse and seemed to have more than enough guts to use it. She was also a dear friend to my future wife, one of the strangest pairings I’ve ever seen, but not at all out of character in the Courier world.
CB, as we all called her, said she was married 13 times, the latest marriage formally joined by signing the marriage certificate on a barroom jukebox. “Church people should be married in churches,” CB explained, “and bar people should be married in bars.”
As I continued to chuckle along with my boss about Carter’s face lift and memories of CB’s marital advice, Kay, a new ad rep, entered the room and asked, “Smitty, what’s this called?” She showed Smitty a tabloid advertising circular pulled from one of the pallets containing thousands downstairs in the pressroom. It was our job to pull a sample and schedule it for insertion at a given date.
Before Smitty could answer Kay added, “I know when we print it ourselves we call it an in-house tab. When it comes already printed, do we call it an outhouse tab?”
Kay was completely sincere, and Smitty marshaled all of his emotional reserves not to horselaugh, but broke up anyway. He walked into the back shop, shaking his head and muttering ‘outhouse tab…hee…hee…hee. outhouse tab…” He still held Jingo the Monkey, and I made a mental note to check the ad the following day. I had high hopes for another collectable, Democrats be damned.
Wayne came in a few minutes later. He denied making the switch and switched the subject, explaining he had just been hired for a new job, something that would have made Smitty’s day had he known about it.
“They’ll need two to replace me,” Wayne joked, “a monkey and a midget.”
I offered to buy him lunch as a going away present.
We headed off downstairs just as a midget female wrestler made her way up. She often dropped off ad copy for the weekly wrestling show and was perplexed by our inane behavior as she made her way past us.
“If you’re lucky, she’s still single,” Wayne said as we passed the lady wrestler. We both kept our eyes open for the monkey.
“If I’m lucky, I’ll get another job too,” I answered.
Actually, the high profile status of my association with the Houma Courier had little to do with my job dissatisfaction and much more with a defection to advertising from the editorial end of the business. I am naturally more comfortable drowning Waterproof Negroes than attracting aspiring shitfitters, I suppose.
My career change came after I’d heard the local school system hired teachers who did not have teaching credentials. By now I so despised sales and six-day work-weeks, I was open to just about any job paying at or above what I presently made, averaging about $1200 a month gross in 1979. A few months off in the summer sounded wonderful too.
I went job hunting the day after the circulation department incorrectly inserted an outhouse tab for one of my accounts, the second mistake in one month, prompting waves of shoppers but no discounted merchandise, and more important to me, another profanity laced telephone chewing out by an irate store manager. I sought refuge and passage out of the sea of cursed contradictions I worked in, and all it took was a quick visit to the offices of the Terrebonne Parish School Board. Fortunately, they didn’t recognize an outhouse tab either and Jingo the Monkey had a new job, right after the following episode.
A one-story brick building surrounded by landscaped lawns, the school district office looked like most education buildings I’d seen in my days as a high school and college student. I entered through one of several large plate glass doors and walked to the receptionist’s desk. She was encased in a glass and brick too, a cubicle off to the right side of the entrance that reminded me of a nurse’s station at the hospital.
“Fill this out and somebody will be with you in a minute,” she said and slid a few papers across the counter. I started to say I only wanted to know about specific job qualifications, but was cut off by a ringing telephone and a mother with a nasty looking teenage boy I assumed was in some sort of trouble. We eyed each other warily, and I broke contact to read the application while the boy tried to see how many times he could swear in a single sentence.
The form contained all sorts of questions referring to professional course work, years of experience, and types of teaching certificates held. To this day I haven’t filled out a job application where I had to answer so many no’s and none’s, and was duly humiliated when I finished responding. After that dismal exercise, I had no intention of turning the application in, and instead contemplated a quick, quiet exit.
But before I could leave, an attractive middle-aged woman came out from one of the many offices lining a corridor to my left. I saw the receptionist point in my direction and stood up. The personnel director introduced herself and took my application. “I see here you’ve received a BA in political science and an associate degree in journalism,” she said.
“That’s correct,” I replied, mentioning something about what sort of extra course work I needed to teach.
“Oh, we’re permitted to hire anyone to teach who holds a valid four-year degree from an accredited institution,” she said, adding in almost the same breath, “How would you feel about teaching reading? We have a position open right now, as well as a social studies/reading combination at another school.”
I was genuinely shocked. Apparently, all I needed to teach was a beating heart, basic writing skills, and alleged degree. I say alleged because no one bothered to ask for a transcript until the following school term, and I learned later of one instance where someone did get in on guile alone and not a formal degree. I did, however, possess what I claimed.
I agreed to an interview, and part way through it became clear an employment interview wasn’t the main purpose. I was in the middle of a full blown sales pitch and subsequently offered a job. I accepted.
Thinking myself the next great American teacher, I went back to the newspaper and told Mary I accepted a new position and told here where.
“Oh my God” she said, “The cops are down there every week.” She spent the evening teaching me how to curse in Cajun French. I’m proud to report multilingual skills now. I can say “fuck you” in five different languages. Originally, I didn’t think Mary’s lessons would become so valuable, until my first day on the job.
A sulphurous smoke rose and almost choked me, finally thinning enough to again reveal a huge oak desk on a dais constructed of torn composition books and term paper covers, offerings to this unknown jailer. I made my way slowly forward, my first contribution in hand. I noticed all previous submissions in a huge pile were marked with large red Fs and comments like “pure trash” and “They don’t pay me enough to read this garbage!”
“Are you implying, Mr. Brown, that any fool can teach? Is that your message?” came down from on high.
“No ma’am, it isn’t. But it’s the truth that almost anyone is allowed to try.”
“Oh, so you have a license to tell the truth, do you?”
“Well, ma’am, you don’t need a license. If we did, it’s likely all journalists would be out of work, for good and bad reasons.”
“Your point?”
“Just goes to show you how anyone can tell anything. There aren’t any qualifications.”
“There are still standards, young man, standards some of us strive to uphold. Go back to your desk and don’t come up here again until you have something worthwhile.”
“And you’ll be the judge of what’s worthwhile?”
“But of course,” she said with a cold cackle. “I have the red pen and grade book.”
The paper dissolved in my hands, but not before I realized it had, somehow, been read before I even submitted it.
I went back to my assigned seat, now a tall stool in a fog shrouded corner. I put on the pointed cap. It fit perfectly, especially when I thought about the first time I tried to teach.