Travelin' Man

June 16-22, 2014

This just in

By W. Christopher Barrier

In junior high and high school, I seemed to attract newsletter assignments, from church, the Boy Scouts, alumni committees, the Key Club, and other sources. Fifty years later, I am still doing high school reunion sheets, all of this at least faintly journalistic.

My college editing and illustrating at Hendrix by contrast looked pretty much like the real thing (except for our April Fool’s edition, of course). The College Profile was produced by hot lead and linotypes machines, just like the Log Cabin Democrat itself, same size, same format and the same type fonts.

Afternoon delight ...

Co-editor Walter Nunn and I spent most Saturday afternoons at the LCD press room working with printer Lewis Robbins to design that week’s paper, moving type and photos around, doing the final copy reading (and melting typos), and figuring out what to do if we ran out of text before we ran out of space or vice versa.

I doubt that many readers of this account were ever exposed to the horrendous noise produced by a linotype machine, not to mention the heat necessary to melt lead. I had learned a little American sign language several years back at Camp Quapaw from the troop of deaf Scouts in the tent group next door. And, sure enough, one of the LCD operators turned out to be one of my tutors, who explained that being deaf was actually an advantage in that trade (which no longer exists).

Such a deal ...

Like a small town weekly, we had to sell ads to cover a fair amount of our costs. If we got through the year with a profit, the editors split it with the business manager, which caused a little tension – Walter and I loved having black and white photos for “color” in our product, but photo engravings cost money, as did their shipment by bus from the engraver in Little

Rock. Our business manager Carlos Kron was unimpressed with our esthetic aspirations.

As it turned out, our campus journalism gave us a faint aura of celebrity. A Hendrix freshman from a town I think of as Deltaville, had been tasked by folks at home to recruit a trio of college sophisticates to judge the annual yearbook beauty contest, so he came up with editor me, the student body vice president Bruce and Carlos, mostly because he was a foreign exchange student from Paraguay. As I recall, the contest did not require the girls to come up with talents to exhibit, but I can’t remember whether swimwear was involved. I don’t think so.

It is better to look good ...

In any event, the early bets were on Dina, a gorgeous, glossy young woman who we figured had been winning beauty contests since kindergarten (and still could today, actually). But, my political sense and the audience’s reaction led me to think their favorite, just this once, was a dewy sweetheart named Betinna. So I bullied Bruce and Carlos into voting for Betinna, with Dina as the obvious runner up. Our handler was sweet on Dina, but he, along with student body president and football captain Jack, confirmed that I had called it exactly right.

Another show ...

I had yet another unexpected experience at the confluence of beauty contests and journalism (both Southern staples), as my editing chores were winding down. My friend and roommate Bill Stroud, from a family full of real newspaper guys, had a summer job working for Cone Magie’s three small papers in Carlisle, England and, I think, Lonoke in the summer of 1963. Bill enticed me over to Lonoke for a weekend with the promise of – you guessed it – a beauty contest, the first ever Miss Carlisle pageant. I would cover it as a reporter, he would take the pictures. We would collaborate on the front page story and share a byline.

The first talent number was a “comic dance,” with a hillbillyish costume complete with blackened teeth, bare feet and a tattered dress. I think she was the same contestant who obviously was wearing a girdle under her swimsuit in that competition. The judge was, as I recall, a very chic former Miss Arkansas in a white flannel suit and auburn hair, hard to compete with. Think Frances Jane Anderson Cranford. The winner was Elsie Jane Palsa, who did an “interpretive dance,” also made up for the occasion, but good enough to make us think she could improve considerably with professional coaching.

Learning what not to do ...

All of these experiences were profoundly educational. My brother Mike went to a top-tier journalism school and he and I returned from time to time to the topic of owning, editing and publishing a small newspaper, in a small town or suburb. When it dawned on us that in Cone Magie’s world it apparently took three small papers to support one publisher, not the other way around, we put that day dream on the shelf and checked the schedule for the next LSAT.

But, I think of those experiences when I watch Hendrix surge to the forefront of “engaged learning.” Editing the Profile was certainly the most profoundly engaging learning I did in those four years. Not only did I get to manage and lead groups of very bright young people, I got to interview campus visitors, from Dave Brubeck to young David Pryor. And cover the Miss Conway pageant, of course.

And I also got to strike a blow for freedom of expression. Bob Lancaster, lately of the Arkansas Times, was then a rebellious Southern State student who couldn’t get published in The Bray, so we added him to our stable of lively columnists, from “The Garden Spot” to “Quinn Martin, Young Prophet” under the name “Auspice,” an enriching experience for all of us.