Another Kind of Writer, 1946: The Ups and Downs and Starts and Stops of One Writer's Beginnings . . .

By Wallace J. Gordon

Where do writers come from and how do they get that way? Good question. With a lot of answers. Wallace J. Gordon has been writing for a living for something like forever-fifty five years and counting- and after piling up mountains of rejection slips for short stories and a novel, he made a successful and satisfying detour into the advertising business, writing ads and commercials for clients ranging from Coca-Cola and Dodge to the neighborhood bank.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 24, 2003
• ISBN: 9781403394316

Wallace J. Gordon

Where do writers come from and how do they get that way? Good question. With a lot of answers. Wallace J. Gordon has been writing for a living for something like forever – fifty-five years and counting – and after piling up mountains of rejection slips for short stories and a novel, he made a successful and satisfying detour into the advertising business, writing ads and commercials for clients ranging from Coco-Cola and Dodge to the neighborhood bank. However, after almost forty years of the advertising wars, he decided enough was enough, and is now writing books for himself, his wife and kids, and anyone else who happens to stumble across them. ANOTHER KIND OF WRITER, 1946, shows you how and when and where it all began, and is one of six memoirs he has written and is publishing. So far. You are cordially invited to come along for journey ...

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© 2002 by Wallace J. Gordon. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4033-9431-6 (e-book)

ISBN: 978-1-4033-9432-3 (Paperback)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2002095710

IstBooks-rev. 04/02/03

Contents

A Note About Nomenclature:

Northwestern

Rush Week

Coming Home,

The Quonset Hut,

Delta Sigma Pi.

The Secret.

The Summer Of ‘47.

Margie.

Move Over Mr Gershwin.

Paging Mr Gordon,

The Summer Of ‘48.

Changes, Changes, Changes,

New Beginnings.

I’m A Senior?

The Summer Of ‘49.

Three Months To Go:

Two Months To Go:

One Month To Go:

Another Beginning:

Look, Mom—I’m Writing!

New Kid On The Block,

Sanity Returns,

The Not-So-New Kid On The Block,

Also by Wallace J, Gordon

The Other Side of Advertising

Soldier*

For Matt and Mike and Casey.

Who weren’t there yet.

A NOTE ABOUT NOMENCLATURE:

Before we begin, a little explanation seems in order.

For the first part of this memoir, my name was Wallace J. Loftsgordon.

During my sophomore year in college, I legally changed it to Wallace J. Gordon.

My rationale at the time was something like I’m sick of having to spell my name all the time… sick of people mispronouncing it… sick of etc., etc. etc.

Made sense to me. You know how smart college sophomores are.

It was only years later that I realized that what I was really sick of was the father who gave me that name. Sick of him, sick of everything relating to him, sick of the life I’d had to lead with him and the way life had turned out because of him. And ashamed of just about everything connected with the whole business.

My mother had finally left him when I was nine, and eventually divorced him. When we left I’d just finished the fourth grade, my baby sister Cleo was barely three, and life had gotten just about as bleak as life can get.

By that time my father had been an alcoholic for several years, and had abused my mother—sometimes physically—for those same several years.

That was after he’d spent two years in the Wisconsin State Penitentiary at Waupun. And after he’d been a bootlegger for several years, which is what got him into the state penitentiary in the first place.

Along the way we’d owned two houses, rented one or two more plus numerous apartments, lived on everything from hope to a farm in Wisconsin, to several other places in Wisconsin and Minnesota, to several different parts of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where most of those moves began and ended.

Between the time Mom left my father and the time I got out of the army at 21, I’d seen him only once that I can remember. That once was the Christmas I was 11, when my father suddenly materialized for an hour or so and gave me my first bike. The shiny new red one that was repossessed several weeks later because he forgot to make the payments on it.

I don’t know if all of this really justifies the way I felt about him, but that’s irrelevant. Most of the time I just didn’t think about him. And that’s the way my life went for years. I just didn’t think about him. Not even when I was changing my name.

It was years later that I finally realized why I’d changed my name. Years later that I finally realized how much I must have hated my father. And must have hated the name he left me.

That’s why Wallace J. Gordon was born.

NORTHWESTERN

As usual, I was trying to figure out the answer. I knew what my problem was; I just didn’t know how to solve it. Hadn’t the faintest idea, in fact.

My problem? I wanted to be a writer. Had wanted to for years. Practically as long as I could remember.

I just didn’t know what to do about it.

It had started, naturally enough, with my reading. I’d learned to read early, read constantly and voraciously, and by the time I was out of grammar school I was totally addicted—everything in print was fair game, and I read everything from the comics to the classics and in between.

The next step was obvious: since books were so wonderful, the people who wrote them must be wonderful, too, right? Of course. Trouble was I didn’t know how they got that way, but as soon as I found out I was determined I’d be one of them, too. Or at least so I hoped.

Smart as I was about most things, I was pretty dumb about that. Even at 21, a young veteran of almost three years in the army during World War II, I kept thinking there was some magic formula, some secret talisman that turned ordinary people into writers. That could turn me into the kind of writer I wanted to be.

Although I didn’t realize it at the time, another part of the problem was exactly that: the kind of writer I wanted to be. I didn’t just want to write, I wanted to be a Writer. With a capital W. I wanted to be a famous writer, like Hemingway or Wolfe or Fitzgerald. A writer who wrote great books and lived in Greenwich Village or Paris, and traveled all over the world.

After all, if you’re dreaming, why not dream big? I didn’t even consider all the other possibilities: a newspaper reporter or a biographer or a historian, for example. Absolutely not. And certainly not a textbook writer or a trade magazine writer or any one of a hundred other kinds of writer.

Nope, I wanted to be a Writer. With that capital W.

Another part of the problem was even more simple, and this part I was only too painfully aware of: I wasn’t good enough to be a writer.

With or without that capital W. Ex-GI notwithstanding, I still thought of myself as a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks. In my early years we’d moved a lot, never seemed to have much money, and always seemed to be saying ‘goodbye’ to people and places. Even after Mom divorced my father and we eventually settled back in Eau Claire to stay, there was never much money and only a few friends. But there were always friendly books. An endless supply of them. And books never left you.

All the books certainly helped, but they couldn’t solve everything. I still thought of myself as Wallace J. Loftsgordon, poor kid, little kid, short kid, not-good-enough kid. It was almost as though I was wearing that as a label, and it was a label that wouldn’t go away. I still felt not good enough in spite of the fact that I was bright in school, liked by teachers and other authority figures, and was usually fairly successful at everything I tried—anything from playing the trumpet to running my paper routes to playing all kinds of intramural sports.

Nope, I simply wasn’t good enough. Especially not good enough to be a writer. So I didn’t even try. Sure, I got good grades in English, wrote the required essays and other assignments well enough to get A’s but that wasn’t really writing; that was just school work. I even won a state-wide essay contest, but again only because the teacher made me enter it. Once I even thought about working on the high school paper, but then I decided that the paper was pretty dopey and life was tough enough without also being labeled one of the weirdoes who worked on it.

Besides, I probably wasn’t good enough for that, either.

So that’s the way the world looked to me that warm September day in 1946, as my train began slowing down and approaching the railroad station in Evanston. It was the last stop on my journey from discharged Army vet, 717 Forest Street, Eau Claire, Wisconsin to incoming freshman, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.

The GI Bill and I and my $412 bank account were on our way to Northwestern because as nearly as I could determine it had the best undergraduate business school in the country. Harvard, Stanford, and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania were all equally good but all postgraduate schools. That would mean an extra year or two of battling the books and that didn’t interest me. The only

reason I could afford any of them was the GI Bill, and I’d still have to work part-time to finance the whole deal.

So NU was my choice, and I was both excited and apprehensive as I approached it: apprehensive because I probably wasn’t good enough for it, and excited because maybe they wouldn’t find that out.

And really excited because maybe college was finally the place where I’d discover that magic formula that would make me a writer.

However, just in case things didn’t turn out that way I was hedging my bet by enrolling in the School of Commerce at Northwestern. I didn’t have any idea what I’d major in yet, but Foreign Trade sounded interesting because I’d spent a lot of time in Europe during the war, I’d liked it very much, and Foreign Trade might get me back there. If I couldn’t be a writer in Paris, maybe I could run some company’s office in Paris.

(Northwestern also had a highly regarded school of journalism—Medill—but that would just prepare me for journalism, not for Writing. Can you believe how stupid I was? Or at least naive or near-sighted?)

The train finally screeched and groaned to a stop in the station.

Evanston! called the conductor. Here we go, I thought, as I picked up my suitcase—one of Mom’s old ones that still looked fairly presentable—and headed for the door. I was also carrying a fiberboard mailing case Mom had given me; we’d decided I should mail my laundry home every week or two, Mom would wash and iron it, and then she’d mail it back to me. That would be one more expense I wouldn’t have to worry about, and it would be one more way she could be sure to hear from me once in a while. Even if it was only a hasty note stuck in with the laundry.

I stepped down off the train. Several other apparent students also got off the train, looking just as apprehensive as I felt but carrying much nicer luggage.

I took a deep breath, then headed for the exit and started walking toward the campus.

This is it, I thought hopefully. The best chance I’ve got. If they don I throw me out, maybe I’ll learn how to be a writer…

I crossed the street and started walking faster.

RUSH WEEK

As I look back on it, I’m utterly astonished at the beauty of the Northwestern University campus that September of 1946. At the beauty of all of Evanston, as a matter of fact, but especially of the campus.

Everything was green and leafy and beginning to turn to gold. The campus stretched out languidly along Lake Michigan, the blue waters smiling with that tantalizing invitation any body of water has when all you can see on the other side is more blue water, beckoning, teasing, promising. Marvelous mysteries lie over here, it keeps saying. Marvelous, unknown delights.

As the carpet of campus unrolled leisurely toward the north, it was sprinkled with beautiful buildings: University Hall, with its Gothic tower and wrinkled granite; Deering Library, with its stately face and the broad meadow at its front door; the Victorian red-brick School of Commerce, the modern and sprawling Tech Center, the ivy-covered North Quadrangles housing the men’s fraternity houses.

Back down at the south end, there was Fisk Hall and Harris Hall and the Medill School of Journalism, along with the Education Building and several others. When you crossed the Sheridan Road fence that bordered the west edge of the main campus—the lake was the eastern edge—you came to the student union, modern-Gothic Scott hall; the ivy-covered South Quadrangles that housed the women’s sororities; the painted white-brick pile that was the Music Building; and a curve of left-over fraternity houses and dorms that swept down Orrington Street and led into downtown Evanston.

But above all there was the greenness. The leafiness. And the friendly, welcoming feeling of a wonderfully-American, better-off-than-usual small city embracing the everything-a-great-university-should-be establishment within it.

All of which, of course, you barely notice when you’re an incoming freshman. I’d already wasted over three years because the Army had politely but emphatically invited me to World War II, and I wasn’t really all that interested in greenness and leafiness, thanks just the same.

I had a life to catch up on.

A college to graduate from.

And a career to figure out. Hopefully, I was going to be a writer, if I ever found that magic formula. If not, I was going to be vaguely involved with the business world. I didn’t know exactly how yet, but I’d already been a retail sales clerk, a secretary/clerk/typist in a busy office, and a clerk/typist/jack of all trades in several army units. The business world was a big place, and with NU’s School of Commerce behind me I’d find room in it somewhere. Assuming I wasn’t busy being a writer.

So here I am, Northwestern, I thought to myself. Turn me into something good.

Okay, son, said Northwestern, let’s get started.

That first week was some start. Yikes. Total confusion, called Rush Week. It was designed to introduce all the incoming freshmen to the college’s many fraternities and sororities. It was the week prior to the actual beginning of college, a week during which all of us were invited to a dozen or so fraternities—sororities for girls—for get-acquainted sessions both for them and for us. At the end of the week depending on who knows what, you’d be invited to join or not to join this fraternity or that fraternity or no fraternity.

In other words, it was sort of a mass blind date. You spent the week looking at each other, parading in front of each other, making small talk, bragging about various exploits and accomplishments, and hoping to impress somebody enough to be invited to join their little club.

Otherwise, you’d just be an independent. Which meant no fraternity parties, no automatic fraternity brothers, and none of all the other magical things that were rumored to happen to fraternity members.

From my point of view, it was a week of total asininity.

It took me about ten minutes at my first fraternity rush to decide that I didn’t want any part of the whole thing. It seemed to me like nothing more than a bunch of little boys running around with a hatful of phony ideas, all trying to impress each other with how much beer they could drink or how wild their parties were or how much their fathers could help you after you graduated. I’m sure they weren’t all snobs; somehow I must have just happened to meet all the ones who were. And when I wasn’t meeting them, I was meeting the ones who

acted like rich kids who’d missed the war for one reason or another. Some of them were just out of high school, of course, so that was probably a valid excuse, but I couldn’t help wondering about the rest of them.

Then, of course, there were the veterans. Guys like me. We’d usually end up in a little group off to one side, happy to have found a few kindred spirits, and wondering what the hell we were doing with this whole rush business. Just about the time we’d start feeling good about each other, some fraternity bigshot would bust up the little gathering and hustle us off to meet some more of the brothers.

It was no wonder we had so little in common. All the brothers wanted to talk about was their parties and how much beer they could drink and where they’d gone to prep school. And all we veterans wanted to talk about was how we were going to make it through school, comparing notes and tips and ways to save money. We were all eager and impatient and going to school under the GI Bill, which paid our tuition, books, and gave us $65 a month for room and board. That was great, obviously, the only reason most of us were able to go to college, but how long it would last depended on your individual time in service and several other factors. Even if it took you all the way to your degree, it was still only part of the total story. The rest was up to you, and if you worked part-time, watched your pennies, and didn’t have a lot of fraternity expenses to pay—dues, parties, etc.—you could make it all the way. At any college in the country.

All you had to do was pass your entrance exams, get a part-time job or two, qualify under certain quotas, and a few things like that.

Plus live through Rush Week.

And believe me, that was easier said than done. By the middle of the week I was seriously wondering if I was going to make it. I was absolutely up to my ears in rush crap, phony attitudes, and all the rest of the nonsense. I hated every minute of it, virtually pouted my way through most of the interview chat sessions, and frankly didn’t give a damn for the whole fraternity system. Too juvenile, too phony, too everything. And much too absorbed with all the wrong things. I suppose it must have had some good points, but I just didn’t have time to look for them.

Wednesday evening after dinner I was sitting on the terrace of the Phi Mu Delta house, where I’d been assigned sleeping quarters for the

week. I was gloomily contemplating how miserable my college years were beginning to look and not even noticing what a lovely autumn evening it was, when a guy sat down beside me. He didn’t say anything for a few minutes, then finally looked at me sympathetically and said, Homesick? Or just fed up with Rush Week?

It was Pete Peterson, the Rush Master of the house. He was in charge of things for Rush Week and I’d met him several times during the week. Seemed like a nice guy.

No, I’m not homesick, I said, trying to be polite. Just—

He nodded. Just tired of Rush Week, he finished. I know—it happens to a lot of guys. He looked at me appraisingly. You a vet? he asked.

I nodded. North Africa, Italy, Austria, and England, I said. Plus six different states in this country.

Wow, he said quietly. That’s quite a package. No wonder all this seems a little silly to you.

Silly and stupid and a waste of time, I muttered. No offense, Pete, but I didn’t spend three years hoping to live long enough to make it to college just to put up with all this stuff.

So why are you putting up with it? he asked.

I looked at him, a little surprised. I didn’t know I had any alternative, I said. The literature all sounded like it was required. What do you mean?

Just that most of the people in school don’t belong to fraternities or sororities. At least two-thirds of them. All those instructions you got were meant for people who were really interested in Greek life. It’s certainly not required, by any means.

Yeah?

Yeah. If I felt the way you do, I’d just drop out of Rush Week, poke around the campus getting familiar with it for a couple of days, and then request independent housing at the end of the week. Just go to the Housing Office; they’ll take care of you.

No kidding, I said. That easy? Sounds perfect. Might even save my sanity. But what about the rest of my appointments? My rush dates? And where do I bunk until then?

Just skip the dates, he said. Forget about them.

And I bunk where? I asked. In a hotel or something?

You can still stay with us, he smiled. Hey, we won’t throw you out just because you think we’re a bunch of jerks.

I felt properly chagrined. Sorry, Pete, I said, I guess I was a little harsh. But believe me, this has been worse than the army ever was.

Everybody to his own thing, he said, getting up. Relax and enjoy what’s left of the week. He stuck out his hand. See you around, he said. Wallace, right?

Wally, I answered, shaking his hand. And thanks, Pete. Yeah, see you around…

I watched him go back into the house. Thanks, again, Pete, I thought. You might have just saved my college career. Looks like I know at least one frat guy who’s not just interested in beer parties…

(Interesting sidebar: Pete eventually turned out to be Peter G. Peterson, Chairman of Bell & Howell, then Secretary of Commerce in a Republican administration, then Chairman of Lehman Brothers, Something-Something on Wall Street. Can I pick ‘em or what?!)

It took me about a minute and a half to put Pete’s advice into action. I had a pleasant couple of days, and began to feel pretty good about going to college. At the end of the week I checked with the Housing Office and was assigned to my independent housing.

About six months too late.

By the time I got there, independent housing turned out to be a Quonset hut. You know, those corrugated iron temporary buildings that look like an upside-down bathtub. There were a lot of us veterans flooding the campus that fall—about 9,000 total students, as I recall, and almost half of them veterans—and once the few ivy-covered residence halls for independents were filled, it was either off-campus housing or the temporary Quonsets that had been erected in front of Fisk Hall and several other places on campus. Not the fanciest quarters in the world, but after the initial unpleasant surprise, not all that bad. Hey, the whole world was trying to get reorganized after the war. And it sure beat sleeping in the street.

So I unpacked my suitcase, put away my stuff, and sat down to contemplate my world. So far it seemed to consist of my part of a Quonset hut, a ticket to a beautiful college campus, and a chance to learn as much as I could from one of the world’s best universities. It was a beginning, but that’s all it was so far. Just a beginning. It had

taken me over nine months to get here, and I hoped the next nine months would be more rewarding. A lot more rewarding.

Over nine months, I mused. Over nine months since I got home…

COMING HOME,

It was almost midnight, December 29, 1945. A cold, windy midnight, so cold the snow crunched under my feet as I began walking home. But none of that really mattered because I was finally home. Home from the wars. More specifically, THE war: World War II.

There had been only a few of us at the station as I climbed down off the train in Eau Claire; I’d called Mom from Fort Sheridan and told her how late I’d be getting in, telling her not to meet me at the station. It would be too late, too cold, and too unnecessary; I could walk home or take a cab. I hoped she’d still be up, maybe with a nice hot pot of coffee waiting, but that was all that was necessary. We’d all waited almost three years, and we could wait another fifteen or twenty minutes. No point in half-freezing the whole family.

As I left the station and headed down the Madison Street hill, ribbons of snow began swirling around me and I started walking faster. Going downhill helped, and the wind behind me helped even more. It was the kind of muscular wind, complete with swirling snow, that spent a lot of time every winter in our part of Wisconsin; all of us were used to it, and it seemed only appropriate that it was there to greet me on my homecoming. I shivered momentarily, then turned up the big collar on my army overcoat and smiled to myself. Not even that muscular Wisconsin wind would get through that big collar.

At the bottom of the hill I walked several more familiar blocks down Madison Street, hardly believing that it was actually happening, that I was actually walking home, and the disbelief got even stronger as I turned up Forest Street. My street. Walking, walking, walking, two blocks, three blocks, more unbelievable with every step I took. And then I was there: 717 Forest Street. Home.

Wow.

I walked around the house, up on the back porch, and looked through the big window in the back door. Mom and Ted, my stepdad, were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of coffee. I just stood there for a minute, watching them, drinking in the scene and the idea that I was actually there, enjoying the anticipation of—

Suddenly Mom looked up and saw me through the glass. Her face lit up, she leaped to her feet, and I was through the door and enjoying the kind of Welcome Home only a mother can give you. Especially one who’s been waiting three long years to do it.

I didn’t think she was ever going to let go of me. And then I guess we all got a little silly. Mom was crying and laughing at the same time, Ted was pounding me on the back so hard I could hardly breathe, and then he was hugging both of us. We finally quieted down a bit and Mom uttered those immortal words of mothers everywhere.

Are you hungry? Have you had anything to eat? she wanted to know, wiping away the tears.

I laughed and admitted I could probably stand a bite or two, so she promptly started making grilled cheese sandwiches, one of my favorites. While she was doing that and I was getting out of my coat, Ted disappeared