For the love of writing
Michael Winerip recalls a time when stars were just a stamp away
IWAS recently rooting around in the crawl space under the house and came across two old letters that moved me greatly.
The first was postmarked Aug 10, 1938, from Larchmont, New York. It was to my father, from one of baseball’s great players, Lou Gehrig. For many years, starting in the mid-1930s, my father supported himself as a freelance sportswriter.
This was the Depression. He never made a lot of money and until going off to fight in World War II, he lived at home with his parents. Because he couldn’t afford to travel around interviewing ballplayers, he would type up questionnaires and mail bundles of them, with 3-cent, selfaddressed envelopes, to major league stadiums all around the country.
It was, as they say, a different world. Even the stars answered. On the top of one of my father’s questionnaires, Lou Gehrig wrote: “Please pardon long delay. I just got to your letter. Sincerely, LG.”
My father’s questions were short and to the point, and so were Gehrig’s answers: Favourite pastime on long train trips? (bridge); Favourite sports except baseball?
(reading, fishing); Greatest old-time players? (Wagner, Cobb, Ruth); Favourite movie star? (Irene Dunn) (sic); Strangest article you ever autographed? (“You’d be surprised!”)
Greatest off-the-diamond thrill (if it occurred while you were hunting or fishing, please specify where and when)? (“Meeting and marrying Mrs Gehrig”)
In this manner, my father learnt that Jackie Robinson’s favourite comic strip was Dick Tracy; Babe Herman’s favourite meal was a New York cut sirloin steak for two, Bob Feller’s favourite movie star was Joe E. Brown, and Mace Brown’s favourite sweet was his wife’s lemon pie.
When my father came home from the war in 1946, he wanted to be a writer, with a capital “W”; By then, a few of his pieces had been published in major magazines at the time, including The Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s.
MAKINGITASWRITER
So he and my mother made what they called their five-year plan. Though they were both 33, they would wait five years to start a family, to see if my father could make it as a writer.
I was born in 1951, when my mother was 38. She was 40 when she had my brother. Time was up. My father took a job as a copy editor at The Quincy Patriot Ledger. He continued to freelance on the side for second-tier magazines, like 1,000 Jokes and For Laughing Out Loud, selling them short humour pieces and one-liners for pocket money. But it was settled: He was a newspaperman, not a writer.
WRITERS SUPPORT THEMSELVES WRITING
Like many men and women of that era, my father never earned enough money to live in a house with a second bathroom.
But my parents tried to save every penny; picnics at highway rest areas, no Howard Johnson’s for us — and were very proud to be able to send us to elite colleges. My brother went on to become a lawyer, and that was my plan, too. But for some reason I don’t recall, in my junior year of college, I went out for the school paper.
When I graduated in 1974, I, too, wanted to be a writer. But for as long as I could remember, my mother had cautioned against it.
“Look at all those years your father wasted,” she’d say, and it stuck.
I took a job as a newspaperman in Rochester, New York, then worked my way up, from one bigger paper to the next.
In the years that followed, I wrote a nonfiction book and three children’s novels that were all well reviewed, but they never earned me the quitting money I’d hoped for.
And so, 38 years later, I, like my father, am a newspaperman.
NOT A LEGACY TO BE PASSED ON
I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone coming out of college. The industry is bleeding to death, the work is never done. In the history of mankind, there has never been a day without news. As I write, it’s 2am. Sometimes, the muse doesn’t strike from 9 to 5. When I came into the business, editors would apologise if they had to bother me on the weekend. Now I apologise for not getting back sooner. My editor and I exchange emails at midnight, and again at 7am.
Don’t get me wrong. I still love a lot of it and given what’s going on with the economy, I count myself lucky.
Still, I was thankful that growing up, my four children never expressed an interest. They’d seen behind the curtain, the long hours, the calls in the middle of dinner, the tension it all created.
Recently, one of my sons, a junior in college, went to an organising meeting of the school paper. He’s excited about his first assignment.
When I was a new parent, I was sure I could influence what my children would become. The older I get, the less I believe so. Now I think maybe a little bit around the edges.
I might not recommend what my son is doing, but I do understand it.
And that brings me to the second dusty old letter I found under the house. It was a letter to my father postmarked January 1985.
My father died in 1980.
Inside was a form letter from something called the Comedy Centre.
“Thanks so much for the one-liners you submitted,” the yellow paper said. Included was a cheque for US$5 (RM20).
I think that’s why my father wrote, and why I write, and the reason maybe my son will. We hope to create something more than what we are, something that might endure, even though in the end, it may just be a clever one-liner.
The form letter concluded, “Please keep writing and send your material to the address below.”
I never cashed the US$5 cheque. It was worth too much.