A major tipping point in 1949

When I was about to leave the University of Southern California as my GI bill benefits were quickly running out, I was worried.

Elizabeth Jones, a professor who had been teaching journalism, became a job placement expert.

Los Angeles had five different newspapers published each day, but I had procrastinated and the available jobs for journalism students had been claimed by some of my classmates.

Ms. Jones told me there was one opening in Lancaster on the Antelope Valley Ledger-Gazette.

On the first Saturday in June 1949, I used a huge bus — one with a big dog painted on its side — to make the trip.

I was interviewed by Publisher Ted Rupner and Editor Bob Woods.

Ted told me he would hire me at a salary of $40 a week, but with the caveat that he would save $5 a week to be paid to me at the end of my first year.

A previous reporter, also from USC, had quit the job after just a few months — not a good sign.

I stayed in Lancaster for two nights and covered a Board of Trade meeting in the jury room of the Justice of the Peace court in the Cedar Avenue building.

After typing up the story, I returned to L.A. and went through the typical hat-andgown graduation program.

In Lancaster, I had been offered a single room rental in a couple’s home at $8 a week. The wife was a piano teacher and often I was serenaded by a practicing pupil trying to play “Home on the Range.”

The paper was a weekly, on the streets on Thursdays, and I covered the Sheriff’s Station, many meetings and the AV College and AV High School weekend football games.

The newspaper business was struggling to build editions by typing words into a linotype machine that produced columns of news and social events.

On two occasions, the type for a full page “pied,” dropping pounds of lead lines in a heap on the floor. It was decided that it was easier to reset the type for the page, instead of restoring a full-page puzzle.

The publisher carefully flipped page after page to complete the printing process, a wrist numbing that took some amount of time. I accepted the job of bundling papers to be hauled to the post office.

But my main job was covering the local news, including photographing accidents where close friends had died, many meetings and individual stories of the high desert inhabitants.

I have been practicing journalism ever since, hoping to get it right some day.