I first met the man whose full name I never got to know who taught me a lesson that I would never forget...
IN THE SUMMER OF 1960, WHEN I WAS WORKING PART-TIME...
AT THE FREMONT TRIBUNE, AN AFTERNOON TABLOID in Fremont, Nebraska; while attending Central Lutheran Theological Seminary. I started my shift at four p.m. and finished most evenings at eight. Then, if I had a few dollars in my pocket, I would walk over to Al's Cafe on South Bell Street and eat either a chicken-fried steak or have a ham sandwich with an ice-cold beer at the bar. I was in the company of the real reporters. They scrutinized stories, including my own, examined the next day's headlines with a bilious eye, and issued fierce criticisms and hilarious indictments about the publisher of the newspaper, who they obviously were not fond of. They told me what I should never do again when I wrote a story, how not to repeat the obvious barbarism of past mistakes, and I would listen to all of them, trying to fill in the blanks of my education as a writer, a task I was never certain I would ever be able to complete.
One evening, I was alone at the bar, when I took note of the man who had always seemed to be listening to our ongoing conversations. He was, of course, usually drunk. He was tall, gaunt, sardonic, intense, and rumor had it that he had once been a reporter from the City of New York who had fallen on hard times, due to his fondness for alcohol. On that particular evening, he asked if he could buy me a drink, introduced himself only as Crosley, said that he had once worked for The New York Herald, was born a Catholic in Scotland in the cellar of an orphanage in Glasgow, arrived at Ellis Island when he was twelve with two-dollars in his pocket and a dry-goods box, then began selling copies of a newspaper called The New York Sun for four cents a copy. By the time he turned fifteen, he said that he had discovered that he could write, by the time he turned twenty, he had developed a crucial part of the newspaper formula: the endless New York appetite for murder, and thus became a reporter for The New York Herald in that peculiar and somewhat less than exquisite field of expertise.
He had developed an interest in that kind of a story when he had come across a tale in the archives the the old New York Sun, which had been written by James Gordon Bennett back in 1836. It was about a twenty-three-year-old prostitute who called herself Helen Jewett. On the Saturday night of April 9th in 1836, her body had been found smoldering on the bed of a bordello at 41 Thomas Street. Crosley then informed me that his mother had been a Glasgow prostitute and that she too had been murdered in a bordello bed. Helen Jewett had been hit on the head with a small ax and then set on fire, his mother had been strangled to death Saturday night of September 3rd in 1910, then tossed into an alley behind the bordello. Neither crime was ever solved.
It was one of those accidents of timing that changed everything for him. He soon became fascinated about the concept of a man or woman turning to dust at the hand of another man or woman who would eventually turn into dust themselves. He slowly began to discover the lineaments of a corpse as one would the beauties of a statue of marble. It was the most remarkable sight he had ever beheld. He informed me that the first corpse he ever saw was that of a young woman. One arm lay over her stomach, the other was inverted and hanging over her head, and bloody gashes ran along her right temple. He knew that he had found something that would shake the genteel world of the business-oriented newspapers of the day, and thus his career was born.
He went on and on with other stories about his being a crime reporter. The sights he saw began to destroy him. He said he was both appalled and fascinated by the crude sensationalism, that the coarsening of life in New York brought back memories of his own mother, she became an immense ghost in every aspect of his life, and it eventually drove him to drink. He began having chaotic and agonizing nightmares, which caused him to drink even more.
He then looked me in-the-eye, and said: "Allow me to give you a bit of advice. Never allow the ghosts of your past to disrupt your future dreams..."
...I never saw Crosley again...
...But his advice has forever remained with me...
IN THE SUMMER OF 1960, WHEN I WAS WORKING PART-TIME...
AT THE FREMONT TRIBUNE, AN AFTERNOON TABLOID in Fremont, Nebraska; while attending Central Lutheran Theological Seminary. I started my shift at four p.m. and finished most evenings at eight. Then, if I had a few dollars in my pocket, I would walk over to Al's Cafe on South Bell Street and eat either a chicken-fried steak or have a ham sandwich with an ice-cold beer at the bar. I was in the company of the real reporters. They scrutinized stories, including my own, examined the next day's headlines with a bilious eye, and issued fierce criticisms and hilarious indictments about the publisher of the newspaper, who they obviously were not fond of. They told me what I should never do again when I wrote a story, how not to repeat the obvious barbarism of past mistakes, and I would listen to all of them, trying to fill in the blanks of my education as a writer, a task I was never certain I would ever be able to complete.
One evening, I was alone at the bar, when I took note of the man who had always seemed to be listening to our ongoing conversations. He was, of course, usually drunk. He was tall, gaunt, sardonic, intense, and rumor had it that he had once been a reporter from the City of New York who had fallen on hard times, due to his fondness for alcohol. On that particular evening, he asked if he could buy me a drink, introduced himself only as Crosley, said that he had once worked for The New York Herald, was born a Catholic in Scotland in the cellar of an orphanage in Glasgow, arrived at Ellis Island when he was twelve with two-dollars in his pocket and a dry-goods box, then began selling copies of a newspaper called The New York Sun for four cents a copy. By the time he turned fifteen, he said that he had discovered that he could write, by the time he turned twenty, he had developed a crucial part of the newspaper formula: the endless New York appetite for murder, and thus became a reporter for The New York Herald in that peculiar and somewhat less than exquisite field of expertise.
He had developed an interest in that kind of a story when he had come across a tale in the archives the the old New York Sun, which had been written by James Gordon Bennett back in 1836. It was about a twenty-three-year-old prostitute who called herself Helen Jewett. On the Saturday night of April 9th in 1836, her body had been found smoldering on the bed of a bordello at 41 Thomas Street. Crosley then informed me that his mother had been a Glasgow prostitute and that she too had been murdered in a bordello bed. Helen Jewett had been hit on the head with a small ax and then set on fire, his mother had been strangled to death Saturday night of September 3rd in 1910, then tossed into an alley behind the bordello. Neither crime was ever solved.
It was one of those accidents of timing that changed everything for him. He soon became fascinated about the concept of a man or woman turning to dust at the hand of another man or woman who would eventually turn into dust themselves. He slowly began to discover the lineaments of a corpse as one would the beauties of a statue of marble. It was the most remarkable sight he had ever beheld. He informed me that the first corpse he ever saw was that of a young woman. One arm lay over her stomach, the other was inverted and hanging over her head, and bloody gashes ran along her right temple. He knew that he had found something that would shake the genteel world of the business-oriented newspapers of the day, and thus his career was born.
He went on and on with other stories about his being a crime reporter. The sights he saw began to destroy him. He said he was both appalled and fascinated by the crude sensationalism, that the coarsening of life in New York brought back memories of his own mother, she became an immense ghost in every aspect of his life, and it eventually drove him to drink. He began having chaotic and agonizing nightmares, which caused him to drink even more.
He then looked me in-the-eye, and said: "Allow me to give you a bit of advice. Never allow the ghosts of your past to disrupt your future dreams..."
...I never saw Crosley again...
...But his advice has forever remained with me...
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