My Grandfather

We struggle with how much to reveal about ourselves online, because we know that there are nutbags out there that will fuck with you. We know what some of the right-wing freaktards are capable of. We've seen their behavior often enough when you cross them politically.

The dreckmeisters at FOX NOISE, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, etc., and lots of rightard bloggers whip people up into a frenzy of hate. It really has become a toxic culture in so many ways.

We've heard about the harassment. Character assassination. The death threats. The random bullet(s) in your house. The car crash that wasn't really an accident. There are some real psychos out there.

In that paranoid spirit, in this article that was written about my grandfather in 1951, I am going to mask the names and places, mostly. I'll use "Pop" when it refers to my paternal grandfather, "Dad" when it mentions my father, "Mammaw" when it mentions my paternal grandmother, and "Dallas" when it refers to the actual town where Pop lived, etc...

In this article, Pop, like Mark Morford in his recent "Outrage Fatigue" (click here) column, is talking to me. Is he talking to you?

Some people have seen a one-man band and marvel at the person's ability to toot and beat an old assortment of musical instruments and whang out a tune. Maybe that's a crude analogy, but Pop, publisher of the Dallas News, comes close to it in producing his one-man newspaper every week.

Publishing a one-man newspaper means filling in the positions of editor, general manager, reporter, advertising salesman, copyreader, typesetter, composing room foreman, printer, proofreader, pressman, circulation manager, inserter, folder, mailer, janitor and anything else that needs to be filled in. Publisher Pop fills that order every week.

(Caption to photo at left: Pop has gathered the new stories, set up his ads and is now hand-feeding his printing press with the latest issue of the Dallas News, which he will later fold, wrap and mail.)

Pop didn't always hanker to be a newspaperman. He recalls that his boyhood ambition was to become a professional baseball player. However fate stepped in and fortune, or to Pop's way of thinking - misfortune, tapped him for the newspaper business.

His father, the late Pop, Sr., purchased the News, "sight-unseen," through a classified ad that appeared in the Publisher's Auxiliary in 1916. The publisher at that time was ol' Charlie. The News, established in 1910, has remained in Pop's family since August 15, 1916.

As a boy, Pop helped his father by working in the composing room and press room, but his blood just wouldn't mix with the printer's ink. Soon after high school, he left home and secured a position with a drug store in Oklahoma, as remote from type and presses as he could get. But it didn't last long.

(Photo at right taken in 1915 - Pop is lower right; Pop Sr upper right; LJS, Pop's grandfather in upper left; lower left is Pop's great-grandfather JMS)

In 1922, during President Harding's administration, Pop's father, being a life-long Republican, was appointed postmaster of Dallas. He called Pop home from his job in Oklahoma. "He sort of beat around the bush about it," Pop recalls. "He said he wanted to be postmaster, but he didn't want to sell the newspaper because he had an idea the Republicans were in office only temporarily. And he didn't want to lease it out because he was afraid somebody would bang up the equipment."

Being the only son, Pop resigned himself to his fate and offered to run the newspaper during his father's tenure as postmaster, which lasted until his death in June, 1928, during his second term. Thus, on April 1, 1922, after only 30 days experience, 22-year-old Pop entered the newspaper profession - "a profession that I had absolutely no desire for in my youth." Nevertheless, Pop, like many other newspapermen who curse the day they got involved in newspapering, has done little about leaving the business, since he's still running the Dallas News.

During his 30 days of breaking-in, Pop learned to set type by hand. But he could never match his sister, who could set four galleys of 10-point type a day.

Somehow, with his father's occasional help and that of his sister, Pop managed to carry on as editor and publisher of the Dallas News, oldest business institution in town. The newspaper then had a circulation of 250, an advertising rate of 15c an inch and a subscription rate of one dollar a year, "payable in cash, cucumbers or cordwood." Writing and setting ads, however, came fairly easy to Pop from the beginning, due to a background of sign painting and showcard lettering.

The News, of course, saw some changes under Pop's guidance. For 15 years it was a 4-page, 5-column handset newspaper, later going to 6-columns. After the purchase of its first Linotype some twelve years ago, the News switched to a 12-em, 7-column format and chased the ads off the front page.

Time, moreover, has changed the reluctant editor-publisher into a well-moulded newspaperman who, like many other publishers, has set out to accomplish certain goals for the good of the community. A newspaperman for some 29 of his 51 years, Pop says his chief pleasure in being a newspaper publisher has been that "of being in a position to serve the progress and best interests of the community. To speak out on the things you know to be right, and to know that you are being heard by your people whether they agree or not."

"You take a lot of country papers," he explains, "that don't take stands on things because they don't want to rock the boat. The way I see it, the hell with the boat. If it needs rocking, rock it. Some people won't like it, but some wouldn't like it if you didn't."

Boat-rocking by the Dallas News has brought results. In 1948 the town of Dallas was incorporated, and the News can claim some credit for tilting the boat in that direction. Recently the News started another boat-rocking, 20-month campaign to build a fire station and buy a fire engine. As Pop explained, tilting the boat might make a few people seasick. Nevertheless, that last campaign also paid off.

In getting out the weekly issue, there are no particular working-day habits at the News plant. "Every day is a habit with us," Pop says, "and even though it sometimes means burning midnight oil, we see to it that today's work is done today."

When Pop says "we" he means he and his only helper, Miss Billie Jean Kennard (pictured), who runs the Linotype. Pop taught her to set type on the complicated machine, which neither understands too well. Both of them learned long ago that when it stops working, it probably can be repaired by simply taking it apart and putting it back together, even though they don't know just why. When Pop purchased the Linotype in 1939, the salesman told him it would set all the News' type in half a day, leaving plenty of time for fishing and golf. "That sounded pretty good to me," Pop says, "so I bought it. I haven't had a day off since. It opened up work I never could do before, and I've been on the go hard ever since."

There is usually no hurry in getting out the News, and although his readers sometimes tell him there is nothing in it, they squawk loudly if their issue doesn't arrive on Friday. However, to Shop Foreman Pop ("It's not going to come out till I get it printed.") getting one issue out means starting in on the next. Immediately after the newspaper goes into the mail, forms are cleared of everything that is dead. Fridays and Saturdays are spent on job printing, changing regular ads, setting copy, usually the "canned stuff" that might be used the following week, and maintaining a clean office and shop.

When news needs to be brought in, Reporter Pop pushes out his motor scooter and scats around town picking up a few items. He finds it's cheaper to run his scooter than his car because of the many stops he makes in digging up stories for the News. "I get about 50 or 60 miles a gallon on this putt-putt," he says. "Once I drove into a filling station and had the oil changed and the tank filled. It only holds two gallons of gas and a quart of oil. Feller worked on it an hour and I owed him 60c. He told me not to come back."

Pop married the former Mammaw Houston in Dallas on May 25, 1922. They have two sons, Navyman JLS, a Machinist's Mate 1/c on the USS Copahee, and Dad, Navy veteran of World War II and now director of the high school band in Dallas.

When the new fire truck rolls out, Reporter Pop can usually be seen flying along behind it in his scooter to cover the story. As most country weekly editors, however, Pop is interested only in news that affects Dallas. "We don't worry about anything but local news," he says. "We let the Houston Post and the Chronicle print all that heavyweight stuff."

Summing up pretty well the attitude of most of his fellow country newspaper publishers, Pop says, "We don't compete with any other newspaper and there is no newspaper in the world that can compete with us."