Adventuring: My Life as a Pilot, Foreign Correspondent and Travel Adventure Filmmaker

By Hal Hays McClure

Hal Hays McClure always wanted adventure, and he found it the first time he left home; He was jailed on suspicion of spying for Nazi Germany- Texas of all places.
After his Air Force service, he became a newspaper reporter and editor and then a foreign correspondent and bureau chief for the Associated Press before turning to shooting and producing independent Travel-Adventure films.
His adventurous life has whisked him from the sound stages of Hollywood and the streets of Manhattan to the battlefields of the Middle East and the jungles of Asia.
He has shot a dozen Travel-Adventure films, including the Story Book England, the Magic of Malaysia and the Echo of Hoofbeats-the Story of the Pony Express.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468598124

Hal Hays McClure

"Adventuring" is a memoir about Hal Hays McClure's adventures as an Air Force Pilot, newspaperman, editor, an AP foreign correspondent and bureau chief and travel adventure filmmaker. He covered stories that took him from the sound stages of Hollywood and the bright lights of Times Square to the battlefields of the Middle East and Asia before he turned to shooting travel adventure films that included a hunt for the real Dracula in the mountains of Transylvania. He also headed upriver searching for an headhunters' village in Borneo, and accompanied today's Pony Express riders across half of America, among other adventure documentaries.

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© 2012 by Hal Hays McClure. All rights reserved.

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

Published by AuthorHouse 10/11/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4685-9811-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-9812-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012907940

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

In Memory

Serendib

eBook Readers Note

Coming Attractions

Reel I   Flight

Fuchida and Me

Kid ‘Spy’ in Texas

Washington at War

Adventure West

The Gooney Bird

Wings Over Europe

Reel II   Foreign Correspondent

Rustling News

The AP and Hollywood

Bugging Across North Africa

Big Time in the Big Apple

Southeast Asia Battle Grounds

Winging Into the Stone Age

The Jungles of Kuala Lumpur

‘Boo, Boo, Baby, I’m a Spy’

The Pope in ‘Dixie’

Bloody Cyprus

When the Sun Was Rising

3 O’clock Country

God’s Wilderness

Champagne Spy

Israeli Trinity

Hollywood in Israel

A Quiet Day In October

Selling the Three-Wheel Car

Holy Moley

Shalom, Israel

Reel III   Travel Filmmaker

Hello, Sexless Sunsets

Have Camera, Will Travel—Again

Shooting Jordan

Back ‘Home’ in Turkey

Going Dutch

Chasing Dracula

Behind the Scenes In Britain

Malaysian Magic

My Road to Morocco

Ride Pony, Ride

‘Yere Not Irish’

Take a Bow Serendib

Acknowledgements

In Memory

Of all past and present travel adventure filmmakers, and especially my own beloved adventurer,

Dottie Millar McClure.

Serendib

Serendib was the name early Arab sea traders gave the island of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. In the 18th century the English writer Hugh Walpole wrote a whimsical story of The Three Princes of Serendib who roamed the island often encountering—by chance—wonderful things, thus coining the word serendipity—defined as the seeming gift of finding something good accidentally.

Wonderful, even life-saving events have happened in my own accidental encounters with Serendib.

eBook Readers Note

At times, while perusing the eBbook edition, you will be offered the choice of interrupting your reading to view a short video of the subject the author has just covered in print. Go for it by clicking the subject, or just continue reading. You should be in a wireless environment—WiFi, etc.—able to pick up a signal connecting you to YouTube or Vimeo.

Coming Attractions

Life’s swift flight has been one hell of a journey.

I have been fortunate on this long trip because I was able to follow the three great passions of my life: the love of the written word, the moving image and the desire to travel.

A terrific trifecta.

Couple those passions with the enjoyment of meeting the creatures that inhabit our planet: the great, the not-so great, the not-so-good—and people, too.

My lifelong affair with motion pictures began, I was told, when my parents took me to my first movie in Indianapolis at age 10 months. Mother said my head was up, my eyes following the black and white action on the screen. She couldn’t remember the name of that picture, however, but she thought it might have been a Harold Lloyd comedy. The McClures loved comedy. Lloyd made two pictures about then—it could have been Grandma’s Boy or Dr. Jack.

I grew up in the shadow of Hollywood. But as much as I love movies I never wanted to toil in the Hollywood vineyard—in any capacity: producer, writer, director or cinematographer. However, I eventually worked at all those jobs and more—not as a member of the Hollywood scene, but producing and shooting my own travel adventure films.

I loved the entire concept of how films were crafted, how the raw ingredients evolved into the amazing end product we still love to enjoy in our local movie emporium, auditorium, performing arts center, on the telly, digital media and the Internet.

This book, however, would have told a different story had I not harbored an early and unwavering ambition to be a newspaper reporter, a resolve that carried me through World War II and the enticing siren call of commercial airline piloting.

I was 12 years old when I decided I wanted to be a journalist. By the time I was in high school I had focused on becoming a foreign correspondent. Looking back, it was probably journalism’s glamour, excitement and travel opportunities that attracted and consumed me. I ignored any downside.

Journalism did eventually send me to Hollywood and other waystops of the world. Many of which were often beautiful, strange and sometimes dangerous.

When I traded in my Associated Press trench coat for a film shooter’s vest, the delicious travel life continued apace.

As we shall see.

Reel I

Flight

Chapter 1

Fuchida and Me

I took my first airplane ride on a historical Sunday morning in 1941.

Later, years later, I would discover that a Japanese pilot, Commander Mitsuo Fuchida—along with many orther Japanese airmen—were in the air at the same time that fateful Sunday. Fuchida’s destination: Pearl Harbor. Mine: the warm, not-quite-wintry blue skies of Southern California.

There were also many other world-away differences in our flights. I was only a passenger in an open cockpit Stearman biplane, while Fuchida was in a Mitsubishi 97 bomber leading more than 183 of His Imperial Majesty’s aircraft in an attack on the U.S. Navy Base on Oahu.

While this was my first flight, Commander Fuchida, at 38, was a veteran aviator. I was 20 and had never been in the air until that Sunday. Fuchida wore a bandana emblazoned with the Japanese word for Certain Victory—Hissho. I wore a short-sleeve sport shirt with a Sears Roebuck logo on the inside collar and wishing I had worn a sweater.

As my civilian pilot did lazy turns—no loops or chandelles to frighten his passenger—I admired the stunning views of the San Gabriel Mountains, lorded over by the snow-fringed 10,000-foot Mount Baldy, with waves of dark green orange groves rolling eastward toward San Bernardino, and little Tonka Toy cars crawling ant-like along Foothill Boulevard. Westward lay the Ozian-like Los Angeles skyline, dominated by the 30-story, phallic-looking City Hall, L.A.’s highest building in those pre-smog, clear-sky days.

As it turned out, Fuchida was also enjoying his view as he homed in on Honolulu radio station KGMB—ironically broadcasting all night on the U.S. Army’s orders to help guide a flight of American B17s flying into Hawaii from San Francisco.

Fuchida would recall later—as, of all things, a Presbyterian missionary—that when his flight broke through the clouds and he saw Pearl Harbor’s Battleship Row lying peacefully at anchor, he thought, What a wonderful sight.¹

One American historical recap of this moment would describe Fuchida as an executioner admiring the beauty of his victim.

After admiring Pearl, Fuchida dropped two flares to signal his bombers to attack, and got on with the deadly business at hand.

Do not interpret my first plane ride as a youthful desire to be a flier. In those dim-past days preceding World War II, pilots were bigger-than-life super heroes—from Charles Lindbergh and Wiley Post to Amelia Earhart, to name only a few. Earth-bound mortals with no mechanical skills could only dream of flying in the company of such winged wonders. I had no such dream.

My five-dollar thrill ride was a new, exciting experience, just a bit of low-grade derring-do on a Sunday off from my job as a prosaic credit department clerk at Sears Roebuck’s main Southern California store.

That I would eventually enlist in the U.S. Army Air Corps—later the U.S. Army Air Force and finally the U.S. Air Force—and take my first training flight in the same type plane, also a Stearman, was then unimaginable.

Later that day, heading home in my 1930 DeSoto coupe with a couple of pals, we heard over my portable radio that America was at war. The date President Roosevelt would historically fix in our collective memory as the day that would live in infamy. That moment-in-time when Americans remembered exactly what he or she was doing when Pearl was hit.

Me? I was flying.

Chapter 2

Kid ‘Spy’ in Texas

In the months before Pearl Harbor I had been training to bicycle my way down to Southern Mexico and Central America. I had been intrigued with the ancient Mayan and Aztec civilizations and their glorious ruined cities.

I talked another old friend and college classmate, Robert Firth, to head south with me right after January 1, 1942. On weekends, to get ready for the grueling trip, we would ride our bikes in and around Southern California’s mountains to build our strength and stamina.

To learn more about these ancient peoples and their cities I had been reading and attending lectures. One Sunday I monitored a talk at UCLA by one of my favorite authors and experts on the Aztecs and Maya, Dr. Victor Wolfgang von Hagen. I was particularly interested in the Mayan, the most advanced pre-Columbian civilization in the western hemisphere.

After von Hagen’s excellent lecture, I introduced myself and told him of my plans, asking for any pointers or advice on our trip.

He was quite helpful, advising me of certain ruins I must visit, places I could stay, native experts I should meet. He even gave me his address in Santa Monica just in case I had any more questions.

The war wiped out the bike trip to Central America, but I still wanted some kind of adventure before I joined the Army or whatever. I decided to bus and hitchhike my way to Washington, D.C., the scene of all the major governmental action.

I laugh when I see a photo of me heading off on that first big adventure wearing a suit and raincoat. Under the coat I wore a lightweight sports jacket, a light sweater—and no gloves. One is spoiled living in balmy Southern California where freezing temperatures are found only in the nearby mountains.

Oh, I forgot my fedora. Almost every male wore a hat in those days. In my ancient suitcase were shirts and a tie, pajamas, socks, underwear and a shaving kit. I also carried a cheap Argus camera and an address book and notebook to keep a record of the trip.

I still remember how cold it was when we passengers crawled from the bus at Lordsburg, New Mexico early the next morning after leaving California. What in the hell was I doing?

Later, when we were deep in Texas, I encountered racial segregation for the first time. There were Whites Only restrooms, drinking fountains, lunch counters, segregated movie houses and theaters and on and on. As the bus bore on toward Houston—my youthful sensibilities outraged—I made several acerbic notes in my journal to illustrate the snapshots I had taken of these injustices."

At that time living in an all-white Los Angeles neighborhood, I knew little of racial bias. I believed Los Angeles was relatively free of bigotry or race hatred. The Zoot Suit battles between servicemen and Latinos and the World War II incarceration of California’s Nisei Japanese population were in the near future.

Arriving in Houston, the bus leg of my journey ended—or so I thought—I spent the night at the Houston YMCA. The next morning I began waving my thumb. It was easy to get rides then because hitchhiking in the 1940s was still relatively safe—for both driver and hitcher.

The second ride I grabbed that morning was in a Chevy pickup driven by a friendly, middle-aged Texan in work Levis and a rough cotton shirt. Yeah, he was going my way. I struck up a conversation, small talk, mainly about the weather.

Where you goin’?

Washington, D.C.

Isn’t it real cold there now? You ain’t dressed for January. Hardly even dressed for Texas.

I never knew it was going to be this cold. I’m from California.

You taking pictures? he asked, pointing toward the camera hanging around my neck.

Yeah. If I see any.

Driving past a large oil refinery named Humble I asked a couple inane questions: Is Humble a big company? I never heard of it in California.

The driver looked at me. I honestly don’t know.

Humble. Is that the name of someone or is it how the company feels when people buy its gasoline? Bad joke, bad timing.

He never answered, and moments later we were in a small town.

This is Goose Creek. Far’s I go.

I thanked him and he drove away fast.

Less than five minutes later, before I could catch another ride, a sheriff’s patrol car pulled up and two hefty deputies stepped out.

Oh, oh, I thought, hitchhiking must be forbidden here.

You have any identification, asked one of the uniforms, a big man wearing a wide unsmiling, face.

I showed him my billfold containing my driver’s license. He looked at it and didn’t return it.

What y’all doin’ in Texas? asked the smaller man, wearing sunglasses and frowning.

Just passing through, officer.

Goin’ where? asked the big deputy.

Washington. Washington, D.C. I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was illegal to hitchhike here.

It ain’t illegal, he said, patting me down for weapons.

Whatcha got in that suitcase? Sun Glasses asked, opening it and rifling through my clothes. He took out my journal and address book, thumbed through the pages and replaced everything. He grunted, stood up and returned to the radio car to report, I guessed.

Now I’m getting nervous. What the hell was going on? They must think I’m somebody else.

I couldn’t quite catch the radio conversation, but Sun Glasses returned and ordered me into the patrol car’s back seat. He threw the suitcase in the trunk, and we were off down the main street to the sheriff’s Goose Creek substation. And lockup.

At the substation, Sun Glasses went through my pockets, taking out all my change, keys, a St. Christopher’s medal a girlfriend had given me. He then shoved me through a door leading to a small—dare I say, intimate—jail.

Take any of those empty cells, Sun Glasses ordered.

But I haven’t done anything, I kept repeating.

Shut up.

I shut up.

The jail had a half-dozen separate 10x10-foot cells, comprised of thin interlaced steel bars on the sides and tops. Each cell contained two cots and a porcelain toilet bowl sans seat. None of the cells was locked, their doors opening onto a central exercise area, about 20x20 feet.

I counted only two other inmates, who appeared to be sleeping or comatose. I chose the farthest cell from the sleepers and sat on one of the cots covered with a dingy gray wool blanket.

Well, wiseass, I thought, you wanted adventure, and you got adventure—but this kind?

It was late in the afternoon before I was ordered to the office for an interview with the head deputy, an avuncular looking sergeant with a crown of graying hair and reading glasses riding half-staff down a long thin nose.

He looked like a reasonable man. One who could understand this obvious mix-up. His first words disabused me of that idea.

You really hate Texans, don’t you, kid. You don’t like what we do, or how we treat our niggers. You don’t like anything about Texas. Right?

I didn’t answer.

He waved my journal in front of me. You some kind of rabble-rousing commie sent down here to spy, cause us hell?

No, sir. I haven’t done anything except to hitchhike. On my way to Washington.

He leaned forward, at the same time removing his glasses. Bullshit. Why were you askin’ all those questions ’bout our refinery?

A light turned on. The driver had reported me. I was just making conversation. I could care less about your refinery.

He wasn’t through. Now he had my address book and was leafing through it. Ah. Here. What about this… this Victor Wolfsomething? He some kinda Nazi?

No, sir. He’s an anthropologist. I attended one of his lectures. At UCLA.

For a long moment he glared at me, his eyes half closed. Harry, he ordered, take the Commie back to the lockup.

Harry alias Sun Glasses, who had been standing behind me in the doorway said, Yes, sir. Come on, you, grabbing my shoulder.

As I was hustled from the room, I shouted. I want a lawyer.

No lawyer, Commie, yelled the sergeant.

In seconds I was back in my cell. I flopped down and stared at the steel bars overhead. I was worried, but I had learned a little about police procedure when I briefly edited a weekly in the San Fernando Valley. They would have to charge me or let me go. But we were at war so maybe Texas had dumped all habeas corpus rights in the gulf.

What’re you in for, kid, and why do they call you Commie?

An older man, one of the sleepers, was sitting on his bunk two cells over. He wore a crumpled suit, a soiled white shirt and no tie. He looked old, maybe 40.

I don’t know, I said, sitting up. Vagrancy maybe, but I had over $50 when they picked me up. That charge wouldn’t stick.

Looks like you’ll be in here overnight then.

Yeah, I replied morosely. Why are you here?

The usual: D and D. He shook his head. When I get drunk I always get disorderly. This time they say I broke a bar mirror. God, I feel awful.

He looked it.

This ain’t a bad place, kid. They don’t beat you, but the food’s lousy. They say someone must be getting a rake-off on the restaurant chow.

He was right about the food. It was some kind of meat paste sandwiched between two stale pieces of white bread. Black coffee was in paper cups.

As the night wore on, the cells slowly began filling. The deputies dragged someone into my block and dumped him on the cot next to me. In seconds he was snoring. Loudly.

Later, I discovered the jail was coed when around midnight two women were brought in and locked in their cells, not to keep them in but to keep the male prisoners out. This awakened everybody.

Is that you, Shirley? yelled a prisoner.

No, it ain’t Shirley, replied one of the women in a low raspy voice.

Oh, it’s Helen, yelled another. I looooove you, Helen.

That prompted laughs, whistles and catcalls from some of the male prisoners.

Shut up, we’re trying to sleep.

One of the younger prisoners, a burly guy who looked like a trucker, went over to stand outside the women’s cell.

Helen, don’t be that way.

I was an idiot to take your check last time, she rasped. It bounced all the way to Houston.

I got dough now. The cops are keepin’ it for me. Soon’s I get out.

I couldn’t hear what was said next, but the trucker laughed delightedly and started fumbling with his fly.

Way to go, someone yelled. More whistles, yells.

Stop the noise, I’m tryin’ to sleep. Angry.

It won’t take long, snickered Helen. It never does.

Yells, whistles.

I wondered how in the world Helen accomplished fellatio between the rather hellish small opening between the bars.

It was difficult to sleep, but I finally managed while Helen, I think, was on her third trick.

An hour or so later I came suddenly awake, my body aflame. Throwing off the dirty blanket, and shedding my shirt and undershirt I could see in the dim light that my chest and stomach were covered with bloody blotches.

Bed bugs. Voracious bed bugs.

I threw the blanket on the floor and wrapped myself up in my raincoat and tried to go back to sleep. As I lay there looking up at the latticed grill I saw several shadowy things crawling slowly in the half-light. Rats. Big ones.

Breakfast was weak coffee and luke-warm grits. And by noon there were only two of us left when Deputy Harry came in.

You got visitors.

Two youngish, officious looking men in dark suits were waiting in the office. They were polite, but no smiles.

The older of the two did the questioning.

Tell us about Wolfgang von Hagen. How do you know him?

I explained about the Mayans and the lecture at UCLA.

And that’s all? You only saw him once?

Yes.

You have his home address in your book.

He gave it to me. He said if I had questions I could write him.

Did you take pictures of the refinery or any other possible enemy target?

Jesus Christ, no. I answered angrily.

We’re developing your film. So don’t lie to us.

I’m not. Are you FBI?

He didn’t reply but kept asking for more information: My background, my parents’ names and addresses, other references. I gave them my former bosses at Sears Roebuck and the L.A. Public Library, my last two employers. They left without telling me how long they were going to keep me and I was led back to my cell despite my pleas.

I spent another stressful night fighting bedbugs and my fears. No women, so it was quieter. A couple drunks were tossed in. I didn’t sleep well or long.

The next afternoon Harry yelled at me. Kid, get your ass over here.

Now what?

Harry opened the cell door. Come on, you’re leavin’.

I’m free?

Yeah, it’s not my idea. Or the sergeant’s.

I collected all my stuff, including the Argus, my address book and journal—and my money. I didn’t count it.

I never saw the head deputy as Harry pushed me outside and into the patrol car—the front seat this time.

Where are we going? I asked.

Harry slammed the car into gear and we headed into traffic. Almost immediately he braked to a hard stop in front of a Greyhound bus station.

Harry handed me an envelope. Here’s a bus ticket to New Orleans. Bus leaves in 10 minutes. Be on it. I’ll wait till you are.

I took the ticket. That was nice of you folks buying me a ticket.

We didn’t. We used your money. And one more thing.

Yeah?

Don’t come back. Ever.

I had mixed emotions as the bus pulled away, leaving Harry standing beside his patrol car. Hard eyes in a hard face.

I was happy to get the hell out of Goose Creek. But damn, I now had less than $31 to get me to Washington.

As the miles rolled on our way to the Big Easy—I never heard anyone call New Orleans that in those days—I wrote down my Goose Creek experiences in my journal.

Oh, don’t look for Goose Creek on your Texas map—it’s now part of Houston. I followed orders. I never went back, except once, when I showed my film on Turkey at a Houston museum, if I remember correctly. A nice place.

The rest of the trip after Texas was anticlimax. I stayed at the YMCA in New Orleans, tried and failed to jump aboard a slow moving freight car on a dark, bone-freezing night in Alabama, and had a Salvation Army overnighter in Atlanta.

The last ride—and the best—was with two young guys on their way to New York from Florida who took me all the way to within sight of the Washington Monument. I think I paid my way by telling them, in great detail, my Goose Creek experience.

I slept a lot on that final leg, and almost collapsed of cold when I stepped out of the warm car. California looked pretty good about then. I had $9.22 in my pocket.

There’s a great kicker to the Goose Creek story: Nearly a quarter century later, in 1964 or ’65, I was based in Istanbul as chief of bureau for the Associated Press when one afternoon I had a call from Norman Scott, a good friend and the Public Affairs Officer at the nearby U.S. Consulate.

I’ve got a gentleman sitting in my office who would make a good feature story. He’s working on a book about the Roman roads, said Norm, a career U.S. Information Service officer and former weekly newspaper editor in Colorado. You interested?

What’s his name?

Von Hagen. Victor Wolfgang von Hagen.

Great God. Yes, yes, I fairly yelled. Don’t let him leave. I’ll be right over.

I had almost forgotten about von Hagen since my Texas jail escapade. Jumping from my dolmuş taxi I ran up the stairs to Norm’s office on Istikal Caddesi, to find a large, florid-faced man wearing glasses, probably in his late 50s or early 60s, waiting patiently with Norm.

Do you have plenty of time for an interview? I asked von Hagen.

He had. I hustled him across the street to a small restaurant I knew. Over Turkish coffees I told him how we had briefly met years before at UCLA. He didn’t remember me, of course.

His interest in the Roman Empire was a departure from his scholarship on the ancient civilizations of Latin America. He was living in Italy while working on a book about the amazing highways Rome constructed almost everywhere they ruled. He and his Italian photographer, Adolfo Tomeucci, were tracing these roads in Russia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe. Their search had also led them to Turkey.

Before we get started on our Roman Roads interview, I told him, I’ve a story to tell you first. You’re in it.

Then I told him about Goose Creek.

He was both angry and amused at my story. This is amazing. I’m going to write this in my autobiography.*

Did FBI think you were some kind of an enemy alien? I asked.

I was born in St. Louis, for God’s sake. I wasn’t an alien. The day after Pearl Harbor, the FBI swooped in, rousted me from my home in Santa Monica and carted me off to jail. They quickly released me when they determined I was a citizen and not a spy of any kind.

I never knew you were even arrested, I said. What made them believe you were an enemy alien?

I suppose it was something I said—remarks they construed as pro-Hitler.

True, he had been an outspoken opponent of the U.S. entering the then European war. Pearl harbor changed that.

Von Hagen’s book, The Roads That Led to Rome, was released to good reviews.

Chapter 3

Washington at War

The next day, after spending a restful night at the YMCA, I answered a want ad and landed a job at—of all desirable places—The Washington Post. It wasn’t in Editorial but in the Post’s Circulation Department. At least I had my foot in the door, hoping I could move over to the news side, famously bossed by Alexander (Casey) Jones, the Post’s much-heralded managing editor.

I worked the swing shift taking subscription Stops and Starts for the route managers who oversaw carrier boy deliveries. Most of the men—I don’t remember any women working that shift—were also holding down day jobs, mainly with the federal government.

A couple weeks later, I followed their second-job example by landing another circulation job at the Capital News Service, a distribution company that delivered local and out-of-town newspapers to government offices, including the White House.

I got a thrill the first time I packed up The New York Times, The Daily News, The Wall Street Journal, and other national papers, plus the locals, for delivery to the White House. I visualized President Roosevelt reading these papers over breakfast. I learned later that he did read all the major papers—not at breakfast—but in bed, grousing whenever he read some anti-Roosevelt blast.

One day, shortly after my arrival, I was walking along Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House when this big limo zipped past. I could see President Roosevelt talking animatedly to someone beside him—some South American political figure, as I recall. It was a great kick. I was an unabashed Roosevelt fan raised in a former Republican family that switched to the New Deal during the great Depression.

In those days, the American public knew the President had been crippled by polio, but didn’t know how badly. The White House press knew, but never reported it. That would not happen today. There would be stories about the history of poliomyelitis tracing it back to Rome, reports from his doctors, graphics on where the President had been hit hardest. The public did have a right to know, even back in those stone-aged Washington days.

I had rented a $5-a-week room just across the District line in Tacoma Park, Maryland. I was lucky to find it because Washington was about to be inundated with newcomers arriving for Government jobs as the war effort really got underway. There was an excitement in the air as the war effort grew and the nation’s capital began to fill.

Jokes about room shortages were common. One told how a frantic newcomer searching for a room happened to see a man drowning in the Potomac River. He yelled for the man to give him his address so he could notify authorities. The drowning man complied and the newcomer rushed to the address only to find the room already rented.

How could this be, he shouted. The renter only drowned a few minutes ago.

I know, said the landlord. I rented it to guy who pushed him in.

I got up every day at 4 a.m. to catch a bus for work at the Capital News Service by 5 a.m. This schedule gave me time to roam the capital, catching all the historic sites before reporting to the Post at 3 p.m. At the time, I didn’t know much about Washington, except the great Presidential memorials.

The old Post building—now long gone—was on E Street in the heart of downtown. It had one rickety elevator, which most employees avoided if they were in a hurry. Occasionally, I would see the publisher, Eugene Meyer, and his daughter Katharine Graham, a young married woman of 24, destined to assume the publisher’s title—and fame—after her husband Phil’s untimely death in 1963.

On my breaks I would wander into the City Room, in those days, a big brightly lit place where the decibel level elevated by reporters’ voices, ringing phones, noisy typewriters and teletype machines rose exponentially with approaching deadlines. Today’s computer-generated newsrooms seem almost oases of silence in comparison.

I’ve been a cartoonist junkie—and would be artist—all my life, so I was delighted watching the Post’s editorial cartoonist, LeBaron Coakley, working on his daily drawing in his second floor studio. One day I got the nerve to introduce myself, telling him how much I admired his work, and that I had studied cartooning through a correspondence school in Cleveland. I didn’t tell him I was in junior high at the time.

W.L. Evans? he smiled.

Yeah, did you study with them?

He laughed. No. I’ve seen their magazine ads.

I remember paying the school $7.50 for a dozen or more lessons, which I returned to the school for critiquing. I drew a strip called Musty Mann. It was pretty bad.

Before I left the Post Coakley autographed one of his original published cartoons. It joined my schoolboy collection from comic strip cartoonists, including Billy DeBeck who drew Barney Google; Chic Young’s Blondie and Krazy Kat’s George Herriman. Today’s editorial cartoonists, who are recognized celebrity-artists, make copies of their work, but rarely give away their valuable originals. They are saved for sales and art museums.

Coakley lasted until 1943 when the paper temporarily dropped editorial cartoons. It resumed them three years later when Publisher Phil Graham hired the famed Herbert Block—Herblock.

Years later, after winning a Pulitzer, his then boss, Katharine Graham, who had then succeeded her husband, called him a genius. And he certainly was.

I met Herb in the mid-1960s when I was in Istanbul for the AP and he showed up on a visit. Al Friendly, a retired editor of the Post, who was fascinated with the country, kept a pied-à-terre on the Turkish Riviera for his family and visiting pals.

Herb had never met the late Coakley as we reminisced about those early Post days, I remember how pleased he was when I gave him a couple of my new Japanese ballpoints, the first such pen that could draw a thin black line—and you never had to fuss with an open bottle of India ink.

Herb drew his last cartoon for the Post in 2001 at age 91. I suspect he had not used a Japanese ballpoint.

Seeing Coakley at work may have prompted me to doodle away with my own amateur cartoon version of life on the Post Circulation night shift. I was unaware that one of my pals thumb-tacked several on the bulletin board.

One afternoon I came in and was told the circulation manager wanted to see me.

Max Lund, then in his 40s, was a solidly compact man, with black hair and eyes. He was in his glass-enclosed office when I reported for work. I had never met him, but I knew he was well liked by the staff. He had a couple of my cartoons on his desk. Oh, oh. I was going to be fired. I had been there less than two months.

You drew these? he asked.

Yes, sir.

Not bad. But Coakley doesn’t have to worry.

Maybe he wasn’t going to fire me.

Instead, Lund was breaking new ground by offering me the job as Circulation Promotion Manager, the Post’s first. It came with a $5 week raise, upping my weekly salary to $25. Sounds preposterous even now.

I was to turn out a weekly newsletter for the paper’s carrier boys—reporting on Post contests, special bonus trips to theaters, circuses or whatever. I also had to read advance copies of Parade magazine, included in the Post’s Sunday editions, to inform my young salesmen—there were no girls—of the features they could use to attract new subscribers.

I loved the job, which also gave me nights off, and I soon dropped the early morning Capital News stint.

During my short stay at the newspaper I also wrote a promotional radio script aired on the Post’s station, WINX. I don’t remember much about it, except that it was patriotic and started with Thomas Paine’s These are the times that try men’s souls.

Well, hell, there was a war on.

The Circulation Department was involved—in only a minor way, I admit—with a breaking news story when a young American pilot from Washington, John Gillespie Magee Jr., flying with the Royal Canadian Air Force, had been killed over the English Channel in December 1941. The 19-year-old pilot had written a spiritual poem about flying that has since become a classic. Called High Flight, it reads in part:

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings . . .

I’ve topped the windswept heights with

easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew.

And while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

The pilot’s family lived in Washington and his young brother was a Post carrier boy. I talked to the Magee family and his young carrier brother. I wrote it up for the carrier news bulletin. Cityside took note. I was almost a reporter.

The only other incident I remember at the paper involved one of the district route managers who would drop in at night to pick up their subscription starts-and-stops slips that we had prepared for them. Often when one of us younger telephone clerks would walk down the corridor to the men’s room, Tom, one of the route managers from across the Potomac, would follow us in and engage in conversation while we used the urinal.

The first time this happened to me I asked one of my nightsider colleagues what was going on.

Oh, you’ve met Toilet Tom, I see. He’s a weirdo, all right. Most of us use the stalls when he follows us in. If you don’t talk to him he’ll go away.

None of us were surprised when we read a Post story that Toilet Tom had been arrested for molesting a couple of his carrier boys.

I was doing well at the Post, and even had a little pocket money. Also I had discovered, for the first time, about a life at night. When I had left home I was quite innocent in many ways. I didn’t drink or smoke and was still a virgin—hard to believe these days, but not so uncommon in my time when many young people of both sexes were saving themselves for marriage.

Now I was on my own for the first time, with my own pad, and, most importantly, without parental oversight. I didn’t go wild but I was having a great time.

My best friend and guide to this new life was Ernie Courie, in his mid-30s, with a wonderful wry sense of humor. Of Lebanese descent, he was an old Washington hand working for one of the big government offices and moonlighting at Post Circulation. He knew the city, its nightlife, its foibles, its scandals.

Occasionally, after work we would hit one of the neighborhood bars for drinks and laughs. My drink du jour was a Cuba Libre, a nauseous concoction of rum, lime and Coca Cola. Better known as Rum and Coke. Luckily, I couldn’t drink more than one of those a night.

I also occasionally dated a young woman I had met at a drug store lunch counter. It was nothing serious.

Despite my new job I was still antsy about moving over to the Post’s news side. This ambition was bolstered when, through another of my Circulation buddies, I met a young reporter about my age working at the United Press.

Over drinks I learned he had been a UP copy boy a few months earlier, but because of the war and shortage of staffers, he had been promoted to the news side and was now the bureau’s Latin American editor. When he showed me his White House press pass I was envious.

Do you think there’s an opening at UP? I asked.

Probably. They always need copy boys these days. But they only pay $15 a week.

I winced at that, but the desire to get into reporting the news—not delivering it—was overpowering. So despite the drastic weekly pay drop I walked into the Washington bureau of the United Press a few days later and asked the bureau chief for a job.

Sure, I could use another copy boy. I can always use a copy boy. Christ, everybody’s going into the Army. I can’t keep up

I was delighted. When could I start?

How about now?

I told him I would first have to give the Post notice.

A copy boy’s main duty in wire service offices—before computerization—was to shepherd all the wire stories arriving or departing on the office Teletype machines. That would include the main national news wires, and any regional and city wires. He would have to bind and file these wire stories, plus the original typed stories as well. It was hard and dirty work at times. At the end of a long shift some of copy boys looked