1 Back in the day, I covered professional basketball for a wire service and part of the job was to enter the locker room after the game and ask questions. The players are all exhausted, of course, icing their wounds, and if they've lost the game, in no mood to chat with strangers. Darryl Dawkins, a huge man known for feats of strength and a fiery temper, had been ejected late in the game for fighting. 'Darryl' I asked, 'do you think you getting kicked out is what lost the game for your team?' Darryl removed the ice packs from his knees and rose. And rose some more. Six feet, eleven inches tall, 251 pounds. He gazed down at me. 'Am I gonna have to kill me a sportswriter?' he asked. Then he smiled. Sort of. And went into the shower.

2 I once wrote a magazine story about the murder of a police officer. The killer was from the underbelly of society and each member of his family had a tale of woe - prison, drugs, jail. But his estranged wife's story was the worst. She was living in a trailer strewn with diapers (nappies) and toys. 'How many kids do you have?' / 'Two, now' she said. / 'Now?' / 'We had another one but my father got in the car and backed up and didn't notice the baby playing in the yard. Died on that spot right over there.'

3 First day in the office of my first newspaper job. It was July, in Texas, 105 degrees outside. I'm fresh out of college, ready to bring down a president like Woodward and Bernstein did, or at least turn the journalism world on its head. However, I'm in Sports, and my assignment is Little League baseball. Twelve-year-olds afraid of the ball, crazed parents howling at the umpire, ice cream and pizza after the game. I've come into the office just long enough to scan the assignment board and find out where the darling youngsters are doing battle, when an old man I've never seen before, apparently a fixture in the Sports Department, comes over. His eyes are bloodshot, his breath like a cat box. He takes a deep drag off his cigarette and looks down at my feet. I'm wearing flip-flops, the better to face the summer heat with. 'No shower shoes in the office' he says, and walks away.

4 I was a stringer for high school football. I'd go to the game, write the story, call it in, and someone else would edit it for the newspaper. One Friday night I wrote, 'The Youngstown Bears scored five touchdowns, while the Woodrow Wilson Wildcats could only manage six points.' To save space, the editor changed it to, 'The winners scored five touchdowns, while the losers could only manage six points.' Next day I get a phone call from the Wildcats coach. 'I got forty-seven young men over here ready to whip your ass' he says. 'Why? Did I spell your names wrong?' / 'What do you mean calling my boys losers?'

5 I had my first play produced in London. It was about Baptists. Their core belief, the thing that makes them Baptists, is that someday all the good people will be lifted up in a sudden rapture into heaven and all the bad people will have to fend for themselves with Satan. I offered to tutor the actors in the ways of Baptists. No need, I was told. At our first table-reading, I asked if there was anything confusing in the script. Nope. Every word's crystal clear. We began to read and came to one of my favorite jokes: after an explosion, a guy says 'I'm going to be very disappointed if this is the Rapture and I'm still here.' No one laughed. An actor raised his hand. 'What exactly is this Rapture?'

6 Back when dinosaurs ruled the earth, newspapers were 'pasted up' in a 'back shop' by unionised employees who had, in their contracts, complete control over the sticky pieces of copy, the glue, the coffee machine, everything. Writers like me could come back to the shop and give polite directions, nothing more. I had just escaped from college, where we wrote, edited, designed, pasted up, even delivered the newspaper. Anyway, first day on the new job, I peeled up a paragraph and told the paste-up man, 'Move this over there'. He whirled around. He wasn't smiling. 'You're new, I'll give you one. But just one.' / 'Yes?' / 'Next time you touch a piece of copy, you'll get an Exacto knife in the back of the hand.'

7 As a freelancer, you're often forced to write on spec - on the speculation that the publication will be so thrilled with your work that they'll buy it, a one-way bargain if ever there was one. I asked a magazine if they'd like a story about a Texas entrepreneur. He was fascinating - son of a pig farmer, he'd risen to own a restaurant empire. Almost kicked out of the Army for selling goods he didn't own, he'd managed to get a business degree at night and open a dozen popular Dallas cafes by day. Multiple marriages, a slew of children, a private jet, etcetera. He and I got along great; I spent weeks on the story. Turned it in and waited. Finally came the answer: no thanks. And no fee. I demanded to speak to the editor-in-chief. 'This is crazy', I told her. 'You said you wanted it.' / 'No. We said we'd read it' she said. 'We read it. We don't want it. If you don't like it, don't do any more stories on spec.' This one turned out OK, though. The entrepreneur offered me a job.

END

(c) Larry Herold 17 June 2009