Chapter 14

 

 

Squint Eye could be found at the Club Festival usually on a daily basis. He was the only regular that could be counted on to be drowning his sorrows in Scotch, which he lovingly described as “the delicious brown liquid.”

He was the kind of heavy drinker who was never out of alcohol at his home. You might see him at the local Oregon Liquor Control Commission-sanctioned liquor store early in the morning, making purchases. State law cut off liquor sales at 2:30 a.m., but at 7 a.m. retail outlets could, theoretically, begin selling the stuff.

Because as anyone who drinks alcohol professionally knows, you don’t want to run out of liquor. There’s no reason to run out anyway, since the stuff is available in its many forms at grocery stores and convenience markets; except for hard liquor, which in a state like Oregon is only available at the OLCC outlets.

An early morning run assured that the hard stuff was available by noon. Squint Eye was enough of a gentleman at least to wait until noon to start drinking. Of course, that might mean that he’d be passed out by 3 p.m. Then, after a good rest, he’d be back at the stuff by dinner time.

Squint Eye was a former media maven, a man who’d been involved in the mass media nearly all his life. Starting in his sophomore year in high school with the school literary magazine, then the school newspaper his senior year. He took a photography class his junior year.

After high school, he joined the U.S. Air Force, where he worked on several base newspapers; while in the military, he also worked as a radio station disk jockey, and a TV producer and broadcaster. After serving his country, he became a writer and editor for magazines and newspapers.

Growing up in the ’60s, he looked forward to a lucrative career in the media industry.

He’d grouse later that the women’s liberation movement had changed the playing field, so that by the time he began looking for work in public relations in the ’70s, the landscape had changed so that women dominated the field. Women also seeped into the rest of the media industry, from print to radio to TV. Like much of the world of work, women, rightly, had found a place to succeed in mass media.

But for Squint, there was only some sort of conspiracy, some sort of rigged game with marked cards and loaded dice. Struggle as he might, he never found success in his dream career of public relations, so he stuck to what he knew. He stuck with the craft of writing. He was a consummate writer, and as he found out, that led to many writing and editing gigs.

After he became a newspaper editor, he’d developed a rule: All editors need to be good writers, but not all writers make good editors.

Here’s how his logic worked:

An editor needs thoroughly to understand the craft of writing, the hard work and mental toughness it takes to create out of thin air a coherent sentence, a well-turned phrase and ultimately a thoughtful article. Grammar, syntax and an innate understanding of the language are requisites for the writer.

But not all writers can be editors. Not all writers want to be editors. Some writers, those who have crossed swords with strict editors, dislike the role the editor plays. Some writers go so far as to contend that no matter how well a piece is written, an editor will change something in the article. It was like a dog marking a fire hydrant by urinating on it, marking its territory. Not that the concept is true, but there is some merit in the statement. Some writers also feel that to justify their paid occupation, an editor must do something to the article, to prove that the editor is paying attention.

Writing as a craft is hard work, but admittedly not in the sense of working in a factory or being a lumberjack; that is most certainly hard, physical work, along with the stress of having to stay alert at all times to what you are doing. Squint’s father was lead man when his dad worked at the mill, so Squint knew that being a “Mill Willy” wasn’t necessarily brainless work.

But one thing aspiring writers find out right away: It’s easy to churn out one or two articles, that’s fun, but to have to write interesting copy day in and day out, week after week, month after month, that takes dedication and discipline.

It really doesn’t matter if you work on a daily newspaper or on a monthly magazine, each article is a challenge, each subject a mountain to climb. It’s also a challenge to make some subjects interesting, but as the wise editor once said, there are no dull subjects, just dull writers.

Squint Eye had a long and fairly illustrious writing and editing career. He’d enjoyed the game, and got to meet hundreds of interesting people. His life was richer for the experience, both professionally and personally. He felt lucky to have been able to do what he loved to do, and to be paid for it. The personal benefit meant that what he learned “on the job” was how other people viewed life, how others lived and worked. He’d learned much over the years.

One aspect of the craft that Squint particularly enjoyed was the fact that to write an article, the writer absorbs anywhere from twice as much to ten times as much information as will ultimately go into the article. It’s a matter of space, be it time in a broadcast or inches in a magazine and newspaper. There’s only so much time or space available. The most stimulating aspect of that equation is that the writer often times gets to know the whole story, and sometimes gets to know facts that the subject doesn’t want the public to know; and you have to respect your subject, Squint found out, if you want to be able ever to speak to that subject again. So there’s a bit of a gentleman’s agreement about the whole thing. There really is such a thing as “off the record.”

Sometimes, though, what people feel should be off the record is made public record, and oft times, in Squint’s experience, it had more to do with “running off at the mouth” as opposed to the writer digging up some secreted fact. More than once in his writing career, a subject called after an article had been printed, and exclaimed, “I never said that!” when, in fact, the subject did say that, but was associating so freely that he or she didn’t remember. Then it’s a case of the subject’s word against the author’s word, but the argument usually doesn’t go far. In the best case, there’s a recording of the conversation; at the least, though, there’s the concept that the writer wouldn’t have said it if he or she didn’t first hear it somewhere.

So Squint Eye would be found pretty much on a daily basis at his favorite watering hole, living his life through memory. But as the philosopher once said, the life lived in memory can be as fulfilling as a life lived in the here and now; memories cannot be taken away, only forgotten, and they can be relived time and time again.

Squint Eye raised his left hand, extending his index finger.

“One more round,” he croaked, and the waitress knew what to get.

Squint was sharing his table with another former journalist; unfortunately, although an excellent reporter, Squint had a mental block when it came to names. He couldn’t remember the fellow’s name sitting across from him, but that didn’t matter.

Out of the blue, Squint’s buddy began pontificating.

“A punch in the eye is worth two in the jaw,” he slurred, ostensibly to Squint Eye, although the general audience included anyone within ear shot. The din at the Club Festival was audibly like a concrete block of noise. The aggregate racket included glass breaking, men screaming, women moaning and the beat of some form of music from the bar’s audio system.

“Get to them first, I always say,” his buddy continued, but by this time Squint had his mind on other action in the club. Twenty feet away a woman with jet black hair caught Squint’s attention. Squint’s friend put his head down on the table to rest.

Squint was a good judge of character, a skill he’d acquired as a journalist, trying to determine if a source was reliable or not. There were many ways to tell if a person is telling the truth or lying. It’s in their look, in the structure of their words, in any number of body language expressions that give away a poker face.

With decades in the writing craft, he knew he possessed not only the ability to come up with the right word at the right moment, with the ability to instantly express any desire, want or need, but he also possessed the ability to tell exactly what a person is feeling, not thinking, from the look in their eyes and face, including the angle of the head on the shoulders.

“The eyes give it away,” Squint Eye told the drunk friend at the table at the Club Festival. “It has to do with the integrity of the eyes. The eyes don’t lie, Chico.”

The last reference was to the movie Scarface with Al Pacino, with Pacino’s character, Tony Montana, mapping out his personal philosophy.

“But it’s the whole face,” he continued, with no particular attention from his buddy, “the look around the eyes, above and below, and around the mouth. The tilt of the head, that’s important, too. It’s been a lifetime of looking at photographs of men and women, in mug shots, pornography, newspapers, magazines, books, movies and TV. It’s been a lifetime of observing, Chico.”

The weary man finally raised his head.

“Don’t call me Chico,” he said. “My name is Ted.”

“Sorry, partner,” Squint Eye said truly apologetically.

He noticed the woman with the jet black hair immediately, but couldn’t place her. He recognized the hair, and the approximate height and weight, but there were several items out of place. For instance, the girl he knew didn’t wear glasses, and wasn’t in high heels, and the makeup was all wrong.

Then, after going over her visage gently, he hit on something that was unmistakable. She was wearing the same damned hoop earrings! Of course! She tried to change everything else about herself, but those signature hoops caught his attention, and he immediately recognized them from a prior engagement.

The power of observation can be uncanny, if let loose from the restraints of day-to-day living.

Squint thought to himself, “I am a professional!” He’d seen and participated in many an editorial battle, usually writer versus editor, and of course you know the editor’s got the edge on you.

Squint had known what it is to be a professional at anything you do – from driving a fork lift to editing a book – and he especially enjoyed the word “executive” added to his title.

Squint sat starring at his drink, contemplating his life and the world of mass media.

He’d seen and done it all over the course of 40 years as a writer. He’d not just been a scribe and on-the-air talent in radio and TV broadcasting, he’d worked in radio and newspaper advertising sales. He chuckled to himself that shock radio talk show host Howard Stern considered himself to be the “King of All Media.”

“If anyone is king of all media,” Squint thought to himself, “that’s me.” Squint saw Howard Stern as merely talent, a radio station voice with little actual experience in the mass media. Squint, on the other hand, had been writing for all manner of newspapers, magazines and Web sites for years, and had generated millions of original, hard-thinking words.

He’d seen the world of the mass media from the inside, and had plenty of stories to tell.

He also knew that his experiences shaped him as a person, outside of the work place. As he reflected, he looked at the whole of his life from a sociological perspective.

He remembered that one sociological view said men in the 20th century were identified by their work. To sociologists, men defined themselves by how they earned money, be it logger, factory worker or white collar worker.

That same logic, again in the 20th century, defined women by what they typically did, which was run the house and raise the kids. “Housewife” was the phrase that was used for many years. The role of women began to change significantly during World War II, as women went into the industrialized workplace to accomplish work formerly only done by men. With that introduction to the “real world of work,” women were on the brink of a revolution.

The 1960s and 1970s solidified that change in roles with women’s liberation. Women were no longer tied to the home, and began doing work previously dominated by men. Think of the military, fire fighting and law enforcement, to begin with, and then branch out into mill work and construction, all manner of dangerous work and top-flight executives in major corporations.

So as the 21st century dawned, women worked alongside men in virtually every occupation.

So it could be said that by the 21st century, men and women would begin to identify themselves by their occupations.

Squint saw it all clearly. Through his squinty eyes.

He saw that a nurse, whether female or male, saw the world through a nurse’s eyes, whether on the job or off the job. A nurse’s background influenced the way that person functioned in the non-work world.

“It’s something I’ve seen in myself,” he thought to himself. That is, being a journalist has colored his non-work life with its own attitude. Same might be said of a cop or a private detective, that after work, before work, when work is not being accomplished, that cop or private eye would use some of the same work skills for everyday living.

In his experience, Squint witnessed nurses treat anyone they encountered as if they were medical cases to be observed and managed, while cops viewed strangers with eyes wide open, as if at any moment a person could turn from stranger to suspect.

From his personal and professional point of view, Squint thought of himself as a person who held back judgment on all people he ran into, because he found out through years of reporting that the truth of the matter was always concealed, never obvious and often times transient.

“The truth is a slippery thing,” he’d tell his friends, the few he had. Facts, they might be abundant, but to get to the truth of the matter, that was another question entirely.

Squint knew that the average citizen relied on the mass media to expose the truth about the world, and those truths ranged from the actions of politicians to the safety of consumer goods. It was a constant battle to try to figure out where the truth was, and which news organization was the most straightforward about telling the truth.

He rejected the alternative media notion of corporate media not telling the whole story, while alternative media had some sort of magic formula for discerning the truth. It wasn’t that simple, he thought.

For Squint, he’d also found out something odd.

For years he thought of President John F. Kennedy as a saint, and thought of someone like Frank Sinatra as immoral and corrupt.

Strangely enough, through the years, the more he found out about Jack Kennedy, the less impressed he was with the man. He’d been part of a rich family that practically bought the presidency for him.

Conversely, the more he read about Frank Sinatra, the more impressed he was with how unbigoted and free-minded the man was, supporting black performers and fighting for equal rights for all men. Squint had to remind himself that the phrase “all men” was telling, because as far as he could tell, Frank Sinatra possessed the old fashion male chauvinism that dominated America up until the late 20th century.

Squint had a lot on his mind. Always.

One of the customers in the Club Festival was waving his hand at Emily Lou Resnick.

“What now?” she thought as she ambled over to the table.

She had been serving the man and his buddy straight shots of tequila for the past hour, and they were both good and drunk.

“Hey there,” the customer slurred, still waving his hand. “I got a question for you.”

Emily Lou tried to keep from rolling her eyes, but she couldn’t help it.

“Sorry to bother you, sister,” he said, with a disgusted tone.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean any disrespect. It’s been a long night, that’s all.”

The two drunken men looked at each other and laughed. They didn’t really care what the waitress had to say. They were fully tanked and filled with none-too-bright ideas.

“Anyway,” the customer continued, “I need to know something.”

“Shoot,” Emily Lou said.

“Why is there a worm in a bottle of tequila?”

She tried not to smirk, and this time succeeded in hiding her disdain. It wasn’t a bad question, she thought to herself. But she didn’t have the answer.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll go ask the manager.”

She did an about face and headed to the back of the club.

The two drunken men returned to a previous conversation and quickly forgot the about the waitress.

Emily Lou knew that their query was strange, but now her interest was piqued.

“Why is there a worm in that stuff?” she asked herself on the way to Lou’s office. Now she wanted to know.

She walked down a corridor to the back room where Lou’s office was located, all the while mulling the question over in her mind. She had no idea why the worm was there, yet she’d heard about it since she was old enough to drink.

She stood in front of Lou’s office; the door was closed; she could hear some sort of noise or music inside, and hesitated to knock on the door. She didn’t want to interrupt Lou if he was occupied with someone else or otherwise busy. She liked Lou well enough, and he was a decent boss, but he could get cranky.

She knocked on the door.

“Come in,” he said, almost immediately. He was sitting at his cluttered desk in the cramped office, with the lone television set in the club broadcasting some program. Emily Lou paused for a second or two, still working over the question in her mind.

“Do you hear them?” Lou said as he turned to her. “Do you hear them?”

All Emily Lou could hear was some rhythmic noise coming from the TV. She had no idea what he was talking about.

“Hear what, Lou?” she said.

“It’s the choppers,” he said in a serious tone. “They’re comin’ in!”

Emily Lou had a puzzled look on her face.

“Choppers?” she asked.

“They’re coming in for a landing!” Lou exclaimed.

Emily Lou looked around the room, still not really comprehending what Lou was talking about. Then she looked over at the TV and saw a motion picture of old style Army helicopters on the screen.

“Lou, are you OK?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, and started to laugh.

He was watching the Public Broadcasting Service’s rebroadcast of Vietnam: A Television History, which began each episode with the sound and film of helicopters landing.

She got the joke, if there was much of one, and shrugged her shoulders.

“Lou, you are so weird sometimes,” she said.

Lou took a deep breath, realizing that watching old films of the Vietnam War was interesting only to him. Lou Brodsky was still fighting the war in his mind. He’d known buddies in the Army and Marines who had died fighting that long, losing war. He also had buddies that were forever scarred by their service in, as he called it, “The Nam.”

“Sorry,” he said, “I get worked up a bit watching this program. What can I do for you?”

Emily Lou had forgotten why she came to see Lou. She thought back, then remembered.

“Lou, some customer wants to know why there’s a worm in a bottle of tequila.”

Lou grimaced. He looked to the side and gathered his thoughts.

“That’s a good question,” he responded. “From what I understand, the whole tequila worm thing is a myth, and if there is a worm, it’s not in tequila, but in similar hard liquor from Mexico called mescal. Who’s asking, anyway?”

“Some bonehead out in the bar who’s been doing straight shots of tequila for the past hour.”

“Well,” Lou said, “tell your bonehead customer that the whole thing is a joke, that it was probably started as some sort of marketing scheme. Tell him the worm’s not in tequila, it’s in another drink, a similar drink. Is this really important?”

“No,” she said, realizing she was wasting her boss’s time. “But you know customers, when they get a burr up their ass, they get twitchy. I’ll do my best.”

“That’s all you can do,” Lou said. “I understand. The customer’s always right. I appreciate what you’re tryin’ to do.”

“Thanks, Lou,” she said, turning around. “I’ll get out of your hair.”

By the time she returned to the barroom, the men had paid their bill and vamoosed. Emily Lou was relieved that she didn’t have to deal with the situation.