by Jim Thompson
Semaj Nosmot. How mellifluous the name had sounded when I invented it, and how hideous it became to me! Ah, vanity, vanity, what pitfalls dost thou mask. Semaj Nosmo…
I used that pen name only once, but unfortunately that once was on a return envelope. I returned home from school one evening to find myself addressed as Semaj and Nosmot, and I could see nothing at all funny about it—a fact which I was soon stating at the top of my lungs—but I was the only one who couldn’t. Mom and Pop soon called a halt, seeing that I was badly hurt and upset, but they could not restrain an occasional snicker and chuckle, nor were they very successful in restraining Maxine and Freddie.
Wherever I went in the house there were whispers of “nosmot” and “snotpot” and “semaj” and “messy jam.” And even as I started to flee the house, a chorus of catcalls drifted in from the street:
Se-maj-uh Nos-mot
Fell in u-h pisspot
Maxine and Freddie had found the joke too good to keep. It had gotten into the public domain, all of which constituted enemy territory.
The above doggerel comprises but one of the jibes to which I was subjected in the ensuing weeks, and since there is no point in repeating it and the others are largely unprintable, I shall spare you further details of my ordeal. The point is that I had ceased to pursue writing for fear of being pursued by Nosmot.
But the furor had died down by now. The razzers had worn their material threadbare and were as weary of it as I was. It seemed safe enough to resume writing, but with the returns from magazines so small I tackled a new outlet. I gathered up the several invoices from my free-lance checks and exhibited them to the editor of the Fort Worth Press, modestly suggesting that in me there was at least the making of a star reporter.
He did not seem to look at me in quite that way. Or, for that matter, in any other way. With the ears beneath my pork-pie hat growing redder, he remained bent over his work for the space of perhaps ten minutes. And he appeared deaf to the jovial patter which poured more and more desperately from my lips.
My skin-tight Valentino pants suddenly seemed six sizes too large for me. There was a terrible lump in the vicinity of my Adam’s apple. Somehow, I gathered, I had erred grievously in my approach, but I could not think how it could have been. As a close student of Hollywood movies, I had become an expert on editor-reporter relations.
Reporters always sat down on the editor’s desk. They always kept their hats on their heads, and cigarettes in their mouths. They always addressed the editor as “Old Socks” or “Kiddo” and tossed off such bright remarks as, “Don’t pump me, Mac, I’m full of beer.” I had done all these things. It looked to me like this guy didn’t know his stuff.
At last, he looked up. Then he stood up. Silently, he plucked the hat from my head and the cigarette from my mouth. Then, he placed his palms against my shoulder and gently but firmly pushed me from his desk.
“Would you like to sit down?” he asked politely.
“Y-yes, sir,” I stuttered.
“Please do,” he said, gesturing to a chair.
I sank into it. He asked my age.
“Ffff-Fourfifteen,” I swallowed. “Almost fifteen.”
“Oh?” His face softened. “I’d have said you were older. These checks—they’re really yours? You’ve actually sold to those magazines?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s very good. I’ve never been able to sell as much as a two-line joke to a magazine. Why don’t you just keep on with it? Why do you want a job on a newspaper?”
I explained the situation pretty incoherently, I imagine, but he seemed to understand.
“Well,” he said, at last, “I can’t offer you a thing. You go to school, you say, until three-thirty in the afternoon?”
“Yes, sir. But—”
“Can’t offer you a thing. Nothing at all. Do you use a typewriter?”
“Yes, s—”
“Nope, it’s out of the question. Nothing I can do for you. Know the city pretty well?”
“Y—”
“Well,” he said casually, “I think we can probably work something out for you. But first—”
This was long before the founding of the American Newspaper Guild. Seasoned reporters drew twenty-five dollars and less for a work week of fifty and sixty hours, and youngsters breaking in frequently worked for no reward but the experience. So, for the times, the terms of my employment were more than generous.
I reported on the job at four in the afternoon (at eight A.M. on Saturdays), and remained as long as I was needed. For my principal duties as copy boy, phone-answerer, coffee-procurer and occasional typist, I was paid four dollars a week. For the unimportant stories I was allowed to cover, I was paid three dollars a column—to the extent that they were used in the paper.
Due to their very nature, my stories were usually left out of the paper or appeared in such boiled-down form that the cash rewards were infinitesimal. About all I could count on was my four dollars’ salary—which just about paid my expenses.
This circumstance, coupled with the fact that I was away from home to all hours, soon resulted in a series of conferences between Pop and me. The discussions ended several months later when I ended my employment with the Press.
As is apparent, I was a very perverse young man. I customarily headed myself in exactly the opposite of the direction which others tried to head me, and I resented all attempts at reforming me. With this kind of make-up, I had profited about as little personally from my experience on the Press as I had in cash. But the seeds of improvement had been sown through the medium of example. I had been shown and allowed to observe, instead of being told. And gradually the seeds sprouted.
I abandoned my Valentino pants and haircut. I ceased to smoke except when I actually wanted a cigarette. I became careful about such things as shined shoes and clean fingernails. I started to become courteous. I was still guarded and terse, ever on the lookout for slights and insults, but I did not ordinarily go out of my way to be offensive. As long as I was treated properly—and my standards in this matter were high—I treated others properly.
I would like to say, in this connection, that good manners and consistent courtesy toward others are the most valuable assets a reporter can have. I know, having worked on metropolitan dailies in various of these United States. In my time, I have interviewed hundreds of people, notorious and notable. Movie stars and murderers, railroad presidents and perjurers, princes, panderers, diplomats, demagogues, the judges and the judged. I have interviewed people who “never gave interviews,” who “never saw reporters,” who had “no statement for the press.”
I once interviewed a West Coast industrialist, third-highest-salaried man in the United States. Because of his morbid fear of kidnappers he had made his home into a virtual fortress, and he was almost hysterical when I, having got hold of his phone number, called him up. He had never given an interview, he had never had his picture taken, and he would not do so now.
I told him I could understand his feelings and we would forget about the story. But would he be kind enough to talk to me for my own personal benefit? I had made no whopping success of my own life, I said, and I would appreciate a few pointers from a man who had. Grudgingly, and after checking back to see that the call was bona fide, he consented.
I went out to his house in the morning and I stayed on through lunch and into the afternoon. Finally, as I was getting ready to leave, he said that he felt rather uncomfortable about withholding the story. I said he didn’t need to feel that way at all. I was in his debt for the privilege of talking to him.
“Oh, hell,” he laughed abruptly. “I’m probably a damned fool, but—”
I got the story. Also a picture. Soon after that, since no one tried to rob or kidnap him, the industrialist got rid of his guards and his armament, and began enjoying life and his income.
Only once in my experience as a reporter did courtesy and consideration fail to pay off. That was in the case of a Washington real est
ate lobbyist, an ill-mannered boor with an inflated head whom all-wise Providence has since removed from circulation.
This man had sent advance notice of his arrival in the city where I was working, and I and the opposition reporters were at the train to meet him. We were there at his invitation, understand. But he looked through us coldly. If we wanted to talk to him, he said, we could do it at his hotel. We followed him there, and still he had “no time” for us. Perhaps, after he had had his breakfast.
We waited while he had his breakfast. We waited while he got his haircut. We waited while he kidded interminably with the cigar-stand girl. He then advised us that he was going up to his suite for a nap, and that he would “probably” be able to see us in an hour or so.
The other reporters and I looked at each other. We went to the house phones and conferred with our editors. Their opinion of this character happily coincided with ours—that he was a pea-brain who needed a lesson in manners, and that the pearls of wisdom which he allegedly had for our community should be retained for shoving purposes.
I relayed this message to the lobbyist. He slammed up the phone, threatening to get “all you bastards and your editors, too.”
He got in touch with our publishers. He got in touch with our managing editors and our desk men. He threatened and blustered. He pleaded, he begged. He tried to bring outside influence to bear on the newspapers.
He called press conferences, and no reporters showed up. He addressed banquets and meetings, and issued a steady stream of press releases. Not a word of what he said or wrote appeared in the newspapers.
Now, the real estate interests are probably the most powerful bloc in any community. But the potential club they formed, and which our friend had waxed vain in swinging, could swing more than one way. And so he soon found out.
The local realty operators began to look at him askance. What kind of man was it, they wondered, who could so mortally offend three large newspapers? In how many other cities had he incurred similar displeasure? They and other groups around the country were paying for his activities. They were paying him to influence legislation, to make them look good to the public. Was this the way he went about it?
The lobbyist was in complete disfavor with his nominal supporters when, at week’s end, he sneaked out of town. But despite the all-around frost he had received, his manners remained virtually as bad as ever.
Back in Washington, he dished out considerably more boorishness than a certain party girl cared to take. She retaliated vigorously and effectively.
Her attack didn’t quite kill him, more’s the pity. But being concentrated on the area which the Marquis of Queensberry held sacrosanct, it did the next best thing.
Briefly, while the lobbyist may still be interested in women, he has nothing to interest them.
Noblesse oblige!
16
After leaving the Press, I found brief employment on Western World, an oil and mining weekly. I had no regular hours, being summoned for work only during certain rush periods when extra help was needed. Neither did I have any regular duties. I did a little of everything, from addressing envelopes for the subscription department to reading copy to running errands to rewriting brief items. Occasionally, when there was space to fill, I also wrote poems—very bad ones, I fear—of the Robert Service type.
My pay was a magnificent three dollars a day, but I never knew when I would be called to work, having to hold myself in readiness at all times. And the times that I was called seemed constantly to conflict with my family’s plans and schedules. Also, or so I imagined, my adult colleagues were not treating me with proper respect but consistently took advantage of their age and my youth to heap me with indignities.
They were all my bosses. All had the privilege of sending “kid Shakespeare” and “young Pulitzer” after coffee or carbon paper, and they invariably chose to do so at the worst possible moments. As surely as there were visitors in the office, as surely as I was in the throes of epic composition, frowning importantly as I addressed my typewriter, there would be a cry of, “Hey kid,” followed by the suggestion that I wake up or get the lead out and busy myself with some quasi-humiliating errand or task.
This was probably all for my own good. A writer who cannot take it may as well forget about writing. But I had taken and was taking so much elsewhere, actually or in my imagination, that I could take little more. And finally, after a wild scene in which, to my horror, I very nearly bawled, I stormed out of the office and returned no more.
I went into a kind of decline during the next few months. I could not muster the slightest interest in the several part-time jobs I secured—in a grocery store, a bottling plant and on an ice wagon—and was soon severed from them. To all practical intents and purposes, I ceased to look for others. I was not unwilling to work, but I was not going to work for nothing—“nothing,” being the standard rate of pay as I saw it. Moreover, I was not going to work at something that “didn’t make any sense”—a category as generally standard as the rate of pay.
I played hooky more and more often, spending my school hours in burlesque houses. To finance these expeditions, I put in an occasional day at the golf course.
A photograph of this period reveals me as a thin, neat, solemn-faced young man, surprisingly innocuous-looking at first glance. It is only when you look more closely that you see the watchfully narrowed eyes, the stiffness of the lips, the expression that wavers cautiously between smile and frown. I looked like I hoped for the best, but expected the worst. I looked like I had done just about all I was going to do to get along and others had better start getting along with me.
I found people who met this last requirement at one of the smaller burlesque houses which soon received my entire patronage. It opened around ten in the morning, and except for interludes of cowboy pictures the stage shows were continuous. The performers saw me a dozen times a day, always applauding wildly. They began to wink at me, to nod, and soon we were greeting each other and exchanging brief pleasantries across the footlights.
There was an amplitude of seats during the hours of my attendance, so the manager-owner-bouncer made no objection to my semi-permanent occupancy of one of them. In fact, amiable man that he was, he came to profess pleasure over my patronage and alarm at my absences. He said he felt kind of funny opening the house without me, meanwhile sliding a pack of cigarettes into my pocket or asking if I’d had my coffee yet. He pressed me constantly to come clean with him, to tell him what I honestly thought of his shows. And he seemed never annoyed nor bored with my consistently favorable reviews.
I became sort of a fixture-without-folio around the place, showing up when I could, making myself useful when I chose. I relieved the ticket-taker. I butched candy (Getcha Sweetie Sweets, gents—a be-ig prize in every package!). I assisted backstage with such widely assorted tasks as firing blank cartridges and hooking brassieres.
I drew no pay, but I was never in want. On the contrary, I ate and smoked much more amply than I had on my salaried jobs. The impression had become prevalent, somehow, that I needed looking after, and everyone took it upon himself to do so. Through the medium of the Friday “amateur shows” I was even provided with substantial amounts of spending money.
Perhaps you remember these shows, three-sided contests between the audience, the amateur and the implacable hook? Some totally talentless but determined wretch would stand stiffly center-stage reciting, say, Dan McGrew or singing Mother Machree. And the louder he talked or sang the louder became the howls and boos of the audience. He would persist, poor devil, even hurling back the squashy vegetables which were hurled at him. But his evil destiny would not be denied. The dreaded hook—a long pole with a shepherd’s crook at the end—suddenly fastened around his neck, a stagehand yanked vigorously and the hapless amateur literally soared into the wings.
Lest nasty suspicions arise in the minds of the spectators, I could only appear on the show every two or three weeks. But I did very well at that, usually receiving
the five-dollar grand prize, or at least the three-dollar second prize. And, yes, the judging was completely fair. My friend, the manager, held the various prizes over the various participants’ heads. The amount of applause one received determined the size of his prize, if any.
I had a half-dozen very corny and completely unoriginal routines worked out with the assistance of the show’s regular comics, but my act was usually confined to two which seemed to delight the audience more each time they saw them.
In one I dashed onto the stage with a prop bundle of newspapers under my arm, madly shouting such nonsense as “seven shot in a crap game,” “ten found dead in a graveyard,” “woman killed—Dick Ramsay’s wife,” “big disaster at soup factory—vegetables turnip and pea”—and so on for a matter of three or four minutes.
The second act, and the most popular of the two, was somewhat more elaborate. I strolled out of the wings, clad only in a lace baby cap and a diaper, and with a simulated chaw of tobacco in my cheek. Then, taking exaggerated aim at the props about the stage, I spat—the pit drummer providing suitable sound effects. And with every simulated expectoration a chair fell apart, a picture shattered, a milk bottle exploded or a table was shorn of a leg.
That was all there was to it, but the audience loved it. It was almost always the winner of the grand five-dollar prize.
One evening, following my act, when I was lounging backstage in my diaper, a man in puttees and a checkered coat suddenly appeared as from nowhere and virtually hurled himself upon me. I was, of course, guilty of all sorts of crimes, from truancy to smoking on streetcars, and I was sure the total had long since equaled a capital offense. Thus I could only believe that this man was a detective and his rapid-fire babble an indictment. I neither heard what he said nor was able to reply. It was left to the performers to interpret to me and respond for me, which they repeatedly and enthusiastically did. But even after he had left, with a savagely jocular slap at my diaper, I remained in a trembling daze.
