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David Proctor
© 2015
Chapter 34
I Wrote the News Today, Oh Boy
T
he paying assignment took precedence, so I tackled the John Phillips and John Sebastian
albums. These two came just a little easier than the Sorrels review. I skipped the step of
copying an already written review and started right in on it. At first I had them as two
separate pieces, but I saw clearly they could go together.
Both guys had recently left very successful groups – Phillips the Mamas and the Papas, Sebastian
the Lovin’ Spoonful – and these were their first solo albums.
About the Phillips album, I wrote it was nice to actually hear the voice of the mastermind behind
the Mamas and Papas. In the group, Phillips almost always buried himself in his arrangements
dominated by Denny Doherty and Cass Elliot. The songs, especially, “Mississippi,” were lowkey but first rate, as were the musicians behind them.
About John B. Sebastian, I said the songs felt more personal and less good-timey than the
Spoonful. Side one with “Red-Eye Express,” “She’s a Lady” and “Rainbows All Over Your
Blues” was especially strong, the second side less so.
With a short hair up my ass, I predicted commercial success for both albums. The Sebastian
album ultimately did pretty well. The Phillips LP sank with hardly a trace.
When I finally felt like it was readable, I carted it up to the Union with the album covers and
turned them over the Hale. He gave me back the Sorrels cover and had me fill out a W-2 so they
could pay me.
This whole thing was still completely unreal to me, so when the Sorrels review hit print I was
flabbergasted to see it, with my name attached, in actual print in an actual newspaper. So, it
turned out, was everyone else.
No one knew about this little project of mine. I had been afraid to mention it for fear the whole
thing would vanish like it fell into a campus construction hole. When I walked into the House
that afternoon, the pledges had cut it out and pinned it to the bulletin board. Naturally, I got a raft
of shit from everyone about being the big-shot music critic. Fitzgerald gave me the third degree
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about how it all happened. Ginny called and left a message. When I got back to her, she was all
squeaky about how she was proud of me and she really liked the review.
For me it was like an out-of-body experience for a couple days. My ego expanded a bit, no doubt
about it.
Maybe that was why I started to stand up for myself a little more at work, and by extension for
the other poor souls who were stuck there. Norm Simmons needed to pay us fairly, and I told
him so. The minimum wage went up from $1.30 to $1.45. He already paid us a generous $1.35,
but he didn’t give any of us the 10-cent raise that was legally ours.
The change took effect February 1, and I asked him about it right after that. He said he knew
about it and would fix things in the next paycheck. He didn’t. So I asked him again. He pissed
and moaned and complained about his profit margin and how it wasn’t fair for the government to
tell him what to pay his workers. Could he be any more of a Utah stereotype?
But it is the law, I reminded him.
By the end of the month, I was the one who was pissed. I looked through the phone book and
made a couple calls until I found someone downtown in the Wage and Hour Division of the
Department of Labor. I told her what was going on, and she said someone would look into it.
And I’ll be damned if someone didn’t actually look into it. I walked into the joint one afternoon
in early March to find Norm in his tiny office steaming like the chicken pressure cooker.
Someone from the Labor Department had called and asked to look at his payroll records. A guy
stopped by, gave them a look and told Norm he owed his people back wages.
“It was you, Hunter. I just know it.” He was practically spitting. “If I find out you had anything
to do with this bullshit, you’re gonna find yourself on the street.”
He could have fired me on the spot for no reason at all. That’s the law in Utah. But for all those
months I’d hung onto that job like grim death and banked the money. Now I was the secondmost experienced person he had. So what he did was give me the crappy shifts that interfered
with my life at the House and my time with Ginny.
For a while, I just traded with people as best I could, but I knew it was a losing game. Still, the
little bonus I got in my check to make up for his “accounting error” was very nice.
*
*
*
McManus’ idea to write songs stuck to me like a burr. Another exciting but scary prospect.
Another chance to screw up. Too many ideas and doubts rattled around my head to make any
sense.
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To calm down I went through the notebook where I recorded ideas I thought might be useful
sometime. In that mess was a pretty good description of the Thanksgiving night Tori walked
away. It hurt to write it, but the first draft came fairly quickly.
I can see her blonde hair shining in the streetlight
I can hear her feet crunch through the leaves
Down the hill from the park there’s a siren wailing
She’s leaving me
She couldn’t have been more honest
She couldn’t have been more cruel
“I need to go,” is all I could get her to say
She’s leaving me
This wasn’t going to work. As much as I liked it, it was not what you’d call an upper and was not
exactly a rocking dance lyric. Back to the drawing board.
*
*
*
Hale ran the combined Sebastian-Phillips reviews. This time Buster noticed and came to the
House to badger me about it.
“You ought to talk them into letting you review movies,” I told him.
“You’re officially a student.”
He nodded but never pursued it. His focus was on his own films.
*
*
*
The work on a song for the Bogus Band was going nowhere until, oddly enough, the Tri Delt
winter formal.
The male population that night was about half Alpha. We dressed nicely and more or less
behaved ourselves. There was one barfing exception, but Bonham made it to the bathroom. No
harm, no foul.
This was my last Tri Delt formal, and I wanted to make it fun. At the Salt Lake Costume Co., I
rented a tux with tails, a top hat, a cape and a cane. I got a little flack about it from a couple
traditionalists, but for the most part it went over well. Ginny liked it, and that was really all I
cared about.
She looked amazing. She wore an elegant blue dress with an empire waist – Teri told me that
was what it was – and thin straps. The blue set off her eyes, and the thin straps gave me hope she
hadn’t worn a bra. I felt only a little guilty that what I really wanted to do was get her out of her
dress.
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Another thing I liked was she didn’t do anything elaborate with her hair. She had really nice,
straight blonde hair almost to her shoulders. Too often at these shindigs, girls go for the fancy
hairdos – curl it like crazy or pile it up on of their heads until it looks like a raptor’s nest.
Her final touch was just a little makeup. She kept is simple, and man did it work for her. She
even smelled great. I was dead meat.
“It’s my senior prom dress from high school,” she whispered when I told her how nice she
looked. “Nice top hat, by the way.”
It occurred to me she knew as a sophomore what it took me many bloody years of shaving too
close to learn – don’t try to do anything spectacular to yourself for a big date. It will always
backfire. Maybe chicks are just more evolved than we are.
They rented the ballroom at the Holiday Inn on Sixth South, just west of downtown. There was
nothing really special about the place, but everyone seemed to have a good time. The band was
good enough, and the food was tasty enough. The Holiday Inn had a license that allowed us to
brown-bag in bottles of booze and wine – the classic Utah BYOB. We mixed my pint of Jim
Beam – duly purchased at the Utah State Liquor Store – with Coke and 7-Up – duly purchased at
the Holiday Inn – munched on the steak and potatoes, danced together and with others, got
gently buzzed and generally enjoyed ourselves.
At the end of the evening, guys from the House chanted a good, loud version of “I’m an Alpha”
to make sure everyone in the building knew we were there.
I’m an Alpha, a hairy-chested Alpha
I leave a trail of blood where ‘ere I go
I take delight in stirring up a fight
And beating little pledges on the head
Ha ha ha, ho ho ho
I have gotten a rep for being rotten
And I eat (snort snort) raw meat!
Pretty classy way to end a formal, I’d say.
On the way home, Ginny asked me to tell her the words. As I did, I began to see their potential.
She was so dressed up we didn’t do much wrestling. She let me pull one of her straps off her
shoulder and pay some attention to her upper chest and the top of her right tit.
“I know people sleep together after their proms and formals,” Ginny whispered breathlessly as
she pulled her strap back up. “But it’s kind of a cliché, don’t you think?”
As if I cared about cliches. Hell, I'd written enough of them.
We kissed some more, and she disappeared into the dark catacombs of Ballif Hall.
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Back at the House, I had the presence of mind to jot down some lyric ideas before I hit the rack
and wished it was Ginny’s rack.
*
*
*
After the Phillips/Sebastian review ran and I had gotten another bunch of shit at the House, I
went back to the Chrony office to see if I could score any freebies. Hale introduced me to Robert
Lester, the entertainment editor. We shook hands and he complimented me on the reviews. I
thanked him and looked at the floor. Lester seemed like a nice guy. He looked like a larger
version of Hale, taller but also with shaggy hair, a longer beard and soft speaking voice.
“Got anything new for Hunter?” Hale asked Lester.
He reached under his desk and pulled out a small pile of albums.
“I already grabbed Morrison Hotel, and Sweet Baby James,” he said with a smile, “but you’re
welcome to see if anything in here yanks your chain.”
Black Sabbath, no thanks. Van Morrison, yes. Tony Bennett, pass. Mountain, maybe later. Leon
Russell, interesting cover, I think I’ve heard of him, worth a try. Randy Newman, same. And
Nilsson – I knew I’d heard of him.
Four new albums, free for nothing. One by a guy I liked and three by guys I’d read about but
never heard. I used to pay $1.98 to $2.39 each at the PX before I turned 21 and lost my
privileges. Here I get them free and get paid to write about them. I was so stoked. I thanked
Lester and promised to have something for him soon.
Hale grabbed me before I could make off with my booty.
“I’ve got an assignment for you if want to earn a little more money,” he said. “But it’s straight
news.”
He must have seen me flinch because he told me not to worry. It wouldn’t be that hard.
“The Faculty Senate meets tomorrow, and I need somebody to cover it,” he said. “Normally,
that’s not a big deal, but I think someone might bring up the war. A lot of faculties around the
country are going on record as opposed to our little tango in Southeast Asia. I doubt anything
will come of it, given how conservative most of the professors are. But I’d like to know if it
comes up and who brings it up if it does.”
He could see I was not convinced.
“Don’t worry about it. Look, it’s an open meeting. Just go and sit in the back and take notes.
Make sure you get anything about the war. I don’t care about the rest of their administrative crap,
but if someone talks about the war, get the name and what’s said.
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“If worse comes to worse and you can’t figure it out, bring your notes over here and I’ll work on
it with you.”
Fuck. Why did I let myself get talked into shit like this? I was no reporter. I was barely an album
reviewer.
On the way out the door I grabbed the day’s Chrony, took it home and read it like I'd read the
Rolling Stone reviews – instead of information, I looked for style tips. The writing was erratic,
but I began to get an idea of what I needed to include in a real news story.
At the Champ, I took care of “bidness” and worked harder to change my next-day’s shift than I
did at the grill. But I got it done, and at three o’clock the next afternoon I was in the back row of
the Orson Spencer Hall Auditorium with the “Official Reporter’s Notebook” Hale had given me.
That’s what it said on the cover: “Official Reporter’s Notebook,” so I figured I must be an
official reporter.
The first part of the meeting was as boring as Hale predicted. At the front of the room were a
couple dozen senators who represented the various colleges and departments at the U. I had to
work to stay awake. But a couple items into New Business, the chairman looked at the agenda
and called on a philosophy professor named Charles Hardin. I had taken Philosophy 1 from him
back before they changed the course-numbering system and made it 101. He was fairly young,
he was smart, he was funny, he was badly dressed and he was a great teacher. I’d rate his class
up there with Pearson’s poetry writing class as the best I had at the U.
“The reason I wanted to speak today was to bring up, for your consideration, the idea of a
resolution against the war in Vietnam.”
The buzz was huge, and it had a sharply negative tone.
“Wait, wait,” Hardin shouted. He taught classes in that auditorium, and his voice really carried.
He stood there until the volume receded. “Wait. I have no plans to introduce an anti-war
resolution at this time. All I want is for you to think about it. Would you ever consider voting for
such a resolution? If so, under what circumstances? That’s all I ask.”
There was a lot more loud chatter and one voice said, “Never!”
Another repeated the affirmation.
Hardin nodded. “Okay. Thank you for being honest. But I don’t have to remind you, this war is
not going so well, regardless of what our leaders in Washington keep telling us. No matter how
you felt about it a year ago or six months ago, you have to admit it has been a tough slog. Tens of
thousands of our young people, people the age of our students, have been killed. And let us not
forget the untold number of Vietnamese, both north and south.
“So in the name of the young people already there and the name of all your students who may
well end up there, I ask you to consider the possibility that at some time there may be a
resolution before this body that condemns the war.”
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The Senate was in a furor. A lot of faculty members were adamantly opposed to the idea. But
there were some, including Pearson I’m happy to say, who said they were willing to look at such
a resolution should it come before them.
This note-taking stuff was hard. I wrote furiously and wondered if I’d be able to read my own
writing. When the debate was over, I ankled it next door to the Union Building and prayed Hale
would be there.
“It came up,” I told him. “Hardin, the philosophy teacher, asked them if they would be willing to
vote for a resolution against the war. He didn’t actually have a resolution. It was the idea that if
he did, what would they do?”
“Love it,” he said. “I need you to write it up. Sit at any typewriter and let me see what you’ve got
as soon as it’s finished. Don’t worry about length. We’ll take care of that later. Just tell the story
the way you’d tell a friend what just happened. And put the good stuff at the top.”
He went off into the production room. I stood there like a doofus and looked around the room.
Lester was there, along with a few other students/reporters who typed away like they knew what
they were doing.
“Pick a typewriter,” Lester said. “They’re common property.”
When was the last time I’d typed on anything but my big Underwood? And out in the open
where everyone could see? I found a place as far away from Lester and the front door as I could,
opened my Official Reporter’s Notebook and looked at what I had. It really was pretty
interesting. I just desperately wanted not to screw it up.
When I started to write, the paper threw me for a second. It was yellow with three layers of paper
and carbon paper between them. There was a big roll of the stuff in a shoebox under the desk that
fed into the typewriter. I found out later the top one went from the editor in charge to the copy
desk, the original editor kept the second one and the reporter kept the third.
As usual, the first time through wasn’t very good – just facts and quotes in chronological order
along with a lot of x-outs. Accurate but boring. The second time I tried to imagine what a real
reporter would do. I closed my eyes to block out the strangeness of the newsroom and thought
about what I’d want to read in the paper the next day.
So what and who cares?
“The Faculty Senate was asked yesterday if it would ever entertain a resolution to condemn the
Vietnam War.”
When Hale got through with it, it read: “Philosophy professor Charles Hardin on Wednesday
asked the Faculty Senate if it would ever consider a resolution against the Vietnam War.”
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If it’s possible to feel like a rocket scientist and a retard at the same time, that was the feeling
when the article came out the next day – on the front page, with my name, my byline.
By Phil Hunter
Chronicle staff
To see that in print on top of a news story was an incredible rush. But to think about how much it
was rewritten and edited made me feel completely lame.
Goddamn, I had a lot to learn if I planned to keep doing this.