What’s on my mind? This is a writer’s story about writing. I am that writer. Before I joined a Big City Newspaper, I worked for a smaller one. I was young. I needed the money.
I knew zip! about the complexities of producing a daily paper. Truthfully, I still don’t - never have, never will. All I’ve ever wanted to do was write, which I have, my whole life.
I started in the Women’s Section, where I was given a desk next to the society columnist. Pat knew everything about everyone, including the stuff the lawyers wouldn’t let her tell. I knew nothing about anyone, and found every tittle and tattle fascinating.
It was the era of typewriters, Reporter Boys, and Copy Boys. From my bird’s-eye-view in the Women’s Section, I saw how fast those Big, Brawny, Hunky, Handsome Reporter Boys typed those Big, Breaking News Stories.
I spent most of my working day staring at those Reporter Boys. Whenever Pat asked what I was doing, I’d say: “Thinking.” She could hardly suggest I stop.
Each time one of those Chesty, Muscled, Reporter Boys took a lungful and yelled something I couldn’t quite hear, a runner materialized, waiting for the Gorgeous, Intelligent, Reporter Boy to r-r-rip a piece of paper from his typewriter and hand it to him (In truth, the Reporter Boys were Reporter Men aka reporters, but as any woman might, I fondly considered them “boys.”)
The runners were known as Copy Boys. Despite my expansive and penetrative knowledge of how newspapers worked, this little fact was lost on me. I simply thought of them as “runners.” Where and why they ran, I had no idea.
Some of the Copy Boys (mainly the ones with sunken chests and anemia who wouldn’t know a football from a frying pan) went on to became Reporter Boys - but they were never the Reporter Boys I idolized.
Some of the Copy Boys (mainly the ones with sunken chests and anemia who wouldn’t know a football from a frying pan) went on to became Reporter Boys - but they were never the Reporter Boys I idolized.
The Reporter Boys I idolized had a broad knowledge of international affairs, as evidenced by whispered rumors of Russian hands and Roman fingers. Unfortunately (or fortunately), their “broad knowledge” didn’t extend to this particular broad.
I was fascinated by the Reporter Boys’ ease and competence in the newsroom. I asked Pat what the Reporter Boys shouted that made the Copy Boys come running, but she had a cigarette clamped between her teeth and was banging out her column and had no time to waste.
(Pat didn’t actually smoke, but - hardened as she was to the truths of the social circles she frequented - looked like one of those women who should smoke. Lifting the veil, Pat saw the tensions and pretensions under the glamorous lives she wrote about. She shared these tidbits in daily, hour-long calls to her socialite sister, who - as everyone knew - was Pat’s secret source.)
To my question of: “Why are the Reporter Boys always shouting?” Pat mumbled something I couldn’t quite hear. I tried to read her lips, but the cloud of imaginary smoke from her imaginary cigarette was too thick, so I cobbled together a consonant and a vowel, raised one arm, and shrieked:
“COFFEE!” To my surprise, a Copy Boy sprinted to my side, trembling with anticipation. I knew the drill, and r-r-ripped a piece of paper from my typewriter so he’d get it straight. On it, I’d typed: “2 SUGARS. 1 CREAM.” The Copy Boy’s mouth dangled open.
“Chop-chop!” I said. He looked at me. He looked at the list. He looked at me, again. “Capiche?” I asked, fingers drumming the desk.
Technically, I, in my little wool suit and faux pearls, was his superior. I was a Reporter! He, in his butt-stretched, ill-fitting corduroy pants, was a lowly Coffee Boy, staring vacantly at She Who Must Be Obeyed.
Or so I thought.
Little did I know that when the Reporter Boys yelled “Copy!” the Copy Boy’s actual job was to snatch each completed page (known as “copy”) from a Reporter Boy’s important story-in-progress, running with it to wherever the hell it was typeset, whatever the hell that means.
I screamed “COFFEE!” twice a day, every day, for the entire six years I worked for that newspaper. Although I was a lonely single mother of three lusty-lunged babies, my musings about the nature of the Copy Boy’s services never strayed beyond their caffeinated parameters.
We of the Women’s Section operated in our own universe, critiquing and gossiping about one another’s stories, writing one another’s headlines, and, at the end of the day, handing everything over to Merv, the Managing Editor, who personally eyeballed every little thing we wrote about bazaars, bat mitzvahs, and society balls.
I never knew why Merv insisted on doing this, but he began checking our work around the time Pat attended some posh party boasting a statue newly installed in a reflecting pool. Pat headlined her column: “Ballet Beauty Mounted in Pool.”
I, too, felt the sting of embarrassment after writing a sensitive piece about a man courageous enough to reveal the pain his incurable stuttering had caused him. Helen, the big-bosomed dragon who sat across from me, headlined my story: “It’s Not F-F-F-F-Funny.” In doing so, she broke the man’s spirit and heart.
I bolted soon after, finding work at a larger newspaper, happily fetching my own coffee, and leaving the bazaars and bat mitzvahs behind.
© Nicole Parton, 2019
