Crazy Henry: Journalist

 

CRAZY HENRY: JOURNALIST.

Why should I have been surprised when Crazy Henry, my only friend left from childhood, told me he had become a reporter? The man lived a charmed and chaotic life, guarded over by some fairy godmother with a hangover.

We were shucking corn in his kitchen for a homeless shelter, saving the husks so Crazy Henry could make dried apple and corn husk dolls to give to his nieces and nephews at Christmas. I'd seen him make them before; ugly, misshapen gargoyles that would scare the pants off Boris Karloff.

And out of the blue he says: "I just got a job as a reporter on the Fergus Falls Sentinel."

I didn't bother to reply. Sometimes Crazy Henry will say things just to get a rise out of me, like "I'm going to the Moon next Tuesday," or "Didja hear? They've created a Peter Sellers clone."

Or wait. No, that's not correct. I'm the one who tells him outrageous things from time to time to see if he'll take the bait. That's right -- I should have been the one to say I was going to become a reporter.

But it was Crazy Henry who said it. I waited for more, which I was sure would be forthcoming. Crazy Henry has to talk when he works with his hands. His doesn't like to listen to music or watch CNN -- he likes to shuck corn or shell peas and talk. Once, when I was helping him pull weeds, he recited Hamlet's soliloquy in Ebonics. So I just waited.

Sure enough, he went on: "See, my aunt here in the city, the one that was mayor for a while before they kicked her out, she got me the job cuz she said she was worried I was being stifled by my surroundings and lack of intelligent friends."

"Now wait just a darn minute . . . " I began, but he just kept going.

 "She knows the publisher of the Fergus Falls Sentinel, so she set me up as their new high school sports reporter. I start this weekend. The high school has a big caber toss competition on Saturday."

"Well congratulations" I told him. "What are you going to do with your apartment here in the city -- and by the way, what the hell is a caber toss?"

But instead of answering my questions he went and got a copy of the Fergus Falls Sentinel, and we forgot about the corn to read it together.

"There's no funnies" I said critically. "Can't be a real newspaper without Hi and Lois."

"But look at this" he said. "It's called 'Pet of the Week.' Ain't that a cute little puppy?"

"Bah" I replied scornfully. "That's strictly social media stuff. Do they have any hard-hitting news? Any scandals or double suicides, stuff like that?"

"Here's an article on how to waterproof your clothesline."

"Fiddlesticks!" I told him.

Then the van came to pick up the corn.

***************************

I drove Crazy Henry up to Fergus Falls on Friday, because his car was in the shop. The editor met us at the old brick newspaper building and showed Crazy Henry where his desk was and where he would be sleeping until he could find his own place -- a cot in the basement next to some rusty tanks of carbolic acid.

"We used to use the carbolic acid to mix with lamp black to make our own printing ink" explained the editor. "But now we buy it direct from China -- saves a lot of money."

"Can I get right to work, chief? I'm rarin' to go!" asked Crazy Henry eagerly.

The editor smiled indulgently at Crazy Henry, then handed him a sheaf of papers.

"Here's tomorrow's regional weather forecast from the NOAA. See if you can come up with a two-hundred word rewrite."

I never saw Crazy Henry so excited in my life. He sat at his keyboard for an hour, happy as a bivalve, while I wandered around the newspaper office, which seemed to be completely deserted except for an elderly lady in a side office who was knitting.

He finally showed me his rewrite, which read, in part: Small disturbances in the mesosphere will lead to big problems for local peanut farmers today, as conditions ripen for a derecho of epic proportions. Better batten down the hatches and lock up your daughters . . .

"They don't grow peanuts around here" was all I told Crazy Henry. "They grow sugar beets."

"Peanuts sell more newspapers" he told me, so pompously that I said goodbye and drove back home. He'd be back in a week, I told myself: he couldn't write his way out of a paper bag.

But a month later the newspaper changed its format completely, to become an online dating service -- and they put Crazy Henry in charge of it. He gets a huge salary and stock options. Now he owns the biggest house in town and drives a used Lincoln Town Car.

In his spare time he runs the local 'Defund Garrison Keillor' campaign. He offered me a job up there as manager of the Fergus Falls Sentinel Antique Shop -- apparently they're selling off all the printing press equipment piece by piece as well as the carbolic acid carboys in the basement. Or maybe he wants to turn it into a museum -- I wasn't listening very carefully when he talked to me.  

I'd been evicted from my apartment and was shucking corn at the homeless shelter where I'm staying. I told Crazy Henry I'd think about his offer and get back to him. You never want to appear too eager when a job offer comes your way.

Torku from stories in today's New York Times.

 

Amazon.com unveiled Amazon Halo, a health and wellness tracker that the company said also tracks its users’ emotions

track emotions of a cactus

in the brittle sunlight of August

to impress the healthy green moss.

Using tax dollars to move whole communities out of flood zones, an idea long dismissed as radical, is swiftly becoming policy, marking a new and more disruptive phase of climate change.

a single shutter flaps in the silent breeze:

a green frog rests on a yellow lily pad on a sofa:

finches drown at their bird feeders.

New Video Shows Largest Hydrogen Bomb Ever Exploded

flying in the dark of day

a moth collapses on a cold ember

glowing sickish orange. 

As a sale of the National Enquirer collapses, some wonder if the tabloid is too hot to handle

a blue flame licks at the temple of folly:

as the weeds burn but are never consumed:

a muffled tocsin in the summer silence.

Congress left town and let jobless benefits lapse. Unemployed Americans say they won’t forget it.

The rich are a minority so small we hardly see 'em/trouble is, we all would very much just like to be 'em/And if we can't we toady to their ostentatious whims/while the poor and needy must make do with pious hymns/If Congress can't be bothered with the problems of a pauper/it's time their reelection plans all now should come a cropper!

Crazy Henry's Cure for Melancholy.

 

I was mourning the love I had for a woman long ago in my life. The tears welled up in my eyes, but instead of streaming down my cheeks they trickled down the inside of my throat -- scalding it.

Bam!

Someone had run full tilt into my front door. It was Crazy Henry; he always forgot that I kept my front door locked so he collided with it while trying to turn the door knob.

I was weary of his buffoonery, and thought to ignore him. But I knew he would not go away -- he would simply stand there patiently, sensing somehow that no matter how quiet my place was I was still inside of it.

So I let him in.

He bustled about like a dust devil, picking up magazines and throwing them down again; grabbing a handful of stale orange circus peanuts that I kept on the coffee table to discourage guests from staying too long; and rattling the Venetian blinds in a vain attempt to get them level.

"How's tricks, boychik?" he finally asked, settling into the rattan chair I had just brought in from the patio before the snows came.

Boychik. So he wanted to play Yiddish today . . . 

"Oy vey iz mir" I replied glumly. "I'm in mourning for a long ago lost love. She still haunts me."

Crazy Henry began to look truly concerned about my predicament, until he noticed that the Venetian blinds were still crooked. As he got up to go monkey with them again he said: "Let's go get something to eat -- that'll cheer you up. My treat."

I immediately shot out of my slump to stare at him open-mouthed. This was unprecedented; Crazy Henry never paid when we went out to eat. I always had to foot the bill.

But suddenly I resented his attempt to distract me from my melancholy. So I suggested we go eat at The Sisters, a very expensive deli and sports bar next to the stadium. That would put a monkey wrench in his fun factory.

"Okay" he said cheerfully. "I'll drive."

But when we got there, The Sisters was closed. On a weekday, yet. 

There was a sign in the window saying: 'We lost our lease."

"Let's try the Lebanese Grill over on Hennepin" Crazy Henry suggested.

But they were closed, too. The sign in the window said: "Closed by Order of the Secretariat." 

"Third time's the charm" said Crazy Henry, while I slumped lower and let my mind slide back into nostalgic misery.

"She loved Elvis Presley movies" I said morosely. "I hated them. Still do."

"Guess we can try a drive-through" said Crazy Henry hopefully.

But at Chik-fil-A the kid in the window said "We can't serve you without a ration sticker on your windshield."

Crazy Henry didn't believe in fighting against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, so he just turned to me to say: "I'll cook you a steak dinner; how about it?"

"Whatever." 

There was no meat at the supermarket. Instead there was a big banner saying: "Welcome Vegans to the Promised Land!"

This discouraged even Crazy Henry, who drove us silently back to his place where we had a bowl of popcorn with tap water to drink.

But the more Crazy Henry brooded the better I began to feel, until at last I slapped him on the back and told him happily:

"Here's looking at you, boychik -- and don't forget, we'll always have Orville Redenbacher." 

Knock

 

Therefore, if you will ask of me you shall receive; if you will knock it shall be opened unto you.

D&C 14:5

What courage does it take to knock/what wisdom to inquire?

The honest heart will do it now/The cunning will hang fire.

Crazy Henry Goes to Bollywood.

 

I never said Crazy Henry didn't have talent; it's just that he gets distracted so easily that he never sticks to anything long enough to make his mark.

Take Bollywood, for instance.

We were making snickerdoodle cookies at his place, to throw at the crows that infest his neighborhood. Crazy Henry's theory of animal control is that if you feed animals, including crows, stuff that is full of wheat bran, they will experience digestive distress. which, in turn, they will associate with the place where they ate the stuff that gave them a belly ache, and thus never come back to that place again. Crazy Henry calls it humane poisoning.

I call it a waste of good cookie dough.

Crazy Henry had just slid out the last dozen snickerdoodle cookies when his doorbell rang.

I answered it, to find a tall dark skinned gentleman in a crisp white turban smiling toothily at me.

"Is this the home of Mr. Henry van Jones?" he asked politely.

"Sure is" I replied. "C'mon in and I'll get him for you."

The man in the crisp white turban came in and sat on the sofa in the living room. He kept a smile fixed on his face like a Band Aid. 

When Crazy Henry came in to shake his hand, the man in the crisp white turban began talking rapidly and enthusiastically. I didn't pay any attention to what he was saying, because just then the smoke alarm went off in the kitchen -- so I ran in there to find that Crazy Henry had not turned off the oven and had left one of his oven mitts inside of it. It was now beginning to roast. I got the mitt out, opened the kitchen window, and used a cookie sheet to fan the smoke out the window. Then I had to get on a chair and disconnect the battery from the smoke alarm because it wouldn't stop bleeping.

When I finally came back into the living room I found Crazy Henry signing a sheaf of onion skin papers.

"What's going on here?" I asked.

"I'm goin' to Bollywood!" replied Crazy Henry, obviously very pleased with himself.

"What the what?" I exclaimed. "What for?"

"To play the sitar in some movies."

"How is that possible?" I asked him in disbelief. "I never seen you play a sitar before."

"Oh, I studied it back in ninth grade."

"You did not!" I was indignant; Crazy Henry and I had gone all through grade school and high school together. He couldn't play a shoehorn, let alone a sitar. 

"You were sent back a grade and had to repeat ninth grade twice" I reminded him.

"Yeah, but that second time I went to a sitar camp up in Toronto for most of the year -- bet ya didn't know that, didja?" he replied unctuously. 

"But . . . but . . . but . . . " I spluttered, completely evicted from my comfort zone. 

Crazy Henry -- maestro of the sitar? In a pig's eye!

"It's some kind of scam" I told him, scowling at the man in the crisp white turban. "I bet he wants money from you to cover the cost of your trip to India."

"Nope." Crazy Henry flashed a wad of greenbacks in my face like a fan dancer. "Fact is, Amahdi here just give me ten thousand dollars travel money to get to Mumbai by next month."

Amahdi silently bowed to me. I felt like sticking my tongue out at him, but for the sake of international relations kept my trap shut.

"Well" I said to Crazy Henry. "Good luck and don't forget your old friends back here around Minnehaha Falls."

"Never in a million years" he said, with tears in his eyes. We embraced. 

Amahdi just kept on smiling. He offered me a wad of cash, too, just on general principles I guess -- but I waved them away. The whole thing was a fantasy, so why not add to the fantasy and spurn a small fortune in cash?

Crazy Henry sent me a few postcards from Mumbai, and called me once or twice to say that the place was lousy with turmeric and coriander. They even stuffed his mattress with it. When I asked him how the Bollywood movie business was he just said "Oh it's just like any other business, y'know -- I get up at seven to be at the studio by nine and then go home at six to eat dinner and play some curling with the local team. We make two movies every week -- I got a contract to make a hundred movies this year."

So he was a roaring success. By golly, I was glad for him. He always was a friendly and honest guy -- he deserved a big break like that.

Just before Thanksgiving he came back to his old apartment on Stintson Boulevard. But first he stopped by my place, cuz he didn't have a key anymore to his own apartment. I went over with him, burning to get all the latest Bollywood gossip.

"When do you go back?" I asked him.

"I guess I'm not going back" he replied nonchalantly. "Did you know there's no winter in Mumbai? I need snow in my life."

What was there for me to say? He was absolutely right -- life without snow and icicles is a wretched existence. Torture, really. 

So I helped him unpack and told him the crows were all gone, for now.

But when they came back in April I promised to help him make more purgative snickerdoodles. 

This Work

 

And no one can assist in this work except he shall be humble and full of love . . .

D&C 12:8

A man may think he's serving well/and so his self esteem will swell/But God keeps not a detailed chart/of anything but loving heart.

The modest live as well as kings

 

Better is little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble therewith.

Proverbs 15:16

The modest live as well as kings/when in the Lord their faith has wings/Great treasures lead to joy and ease/as often as chalk turns to cheese.

Meet Phred Dvorak.

 

Phred Dvorak.  WSJ. 

(One of a series of thumbnail biographies of prominent journalists)

Phred Dvorak wanders around Asia for the Wall Street Journal, looking for a decent glass of bubble tea. When she finally finds it, she will retire to her ant farm in the Berkshire-Hathaway Hills to continue her ongoing romance series for Harlequin Books -- featuring protagonist Clinty O'Bomba, impetuous Irish heiress who looks for love in all the wrong crevasses. 

She graduated Carpe Vinum from UC Berkeley in Asian Stutters.

Stationed in Tokyo for many years, Ms Dvorak developed a taste for yakatori, miso, wai wai, ke-mo sa-bee, and gefilte fish. She likes to cook for guests in her well-equipped kitchen in her elegant condo on the shores of Lake Sacagawea in Singapore. She often seats a dozen people at her dining room table -- although she only ever manages to feed about four of 'em.

Her journalistic credentials include a stint as blurbist for Pottery Barn, and ten years with the Mumbo Sauce Review -- where she edited solecisms and swept out the break room each night.

Her most recent literary award is the 2019 Dickens & Fenster Trophy for Promising Young Funambulists.  

In her spare time she likes to refurbish rotary phones and raise the Titanic. 

Sunday Email to my Kids. August 23, 2020.

 

Hello, my little chickadees!

I was so grateful to be able to spend some time with Virginia, Cici, and Addie, this past week when they came up from Texas. I can never get my fill of seeing any of you kids, or the grand kids. I wish I saw more of all of you . . . 

Well, as I cast my feeble thought back over the past week I really don’t come up with much to write about. Adam has been very good in giving me rewrite assignments -- I’m still saving up to get a pair of new glasses!

Did I mention before that they now take attendance at the pool at Provo Rec Center?  Only 19 people are allowed in the deep water pool at one time for our morning exercise class -- so you have to make a reservation (which I forgot to do for this coming week -- drat!) Sometimes the instructor actually asks people who are already in the pool to get out if they don’t have a reservation. I’m usually on the stand-by list, and usually get to go in. I sure love to go swimming == it’s usually the highlight of my day.

This morning I did a prose poem called “The Government School.”  I emailed it out to about forty different reporters. Didn’t hear anything back from them -- except one, who apparently didn’t like it and tersely replied only “Pls remover from list.”  That made me kind of peeved, so in revenge I made up a nonsense thumbnail biography of him and posted it on my largely inactive blog. I feel much better now.

Here’s the prose poem that reporter Gregory Zuckerman had such a problem with, and then a copy of his faux bio I posted on my blog:

We were working in the cook tent, my friend Maria and I, 

when the bloody men appeared.

At first I took them to be

new roustabouts,

or maybe reporters from

the local rag.

I've noticed in the past few years

that journalists are getting more and more

frowzy and fly-blown.

Things, I guess, are tough all over.

Anyway.

They asked for beans and tortillas.

With scowls and threatening motions

with their forks and spoons.

Mental midgets,

I thought to myself as I served them.

'Bloody idiots' Maria whispered to me

as they took their tin plates to a picnic

table and silently wolfed down their food.

When they left I felt like a sentence of death

had been lifted from me.

I didn't like anything about them.

'Who were those guys?' 

I asked Trey when he came in for 

an early lunch.

Since he owns and operates the show

he gets to eat whenever he wants.

"What guys?" he asked.

"Those rotten looking guys that just left"

said Maria. She is sweet on Trey,

and gives him extra gravy on his

mashed potatoes.

"They're from the government school down the road."

He took his tin tray back to his trailer.

I could tell Maria wanted to follow him back to

his trailer for some hanky panky,

but there were thirty-odd people expecting lunch

in an hour, so I couldn't let her go.

The entire student body from the government school

came to the matinee. Their clothes were shabby

and sullen.

They didn't applaud anything

except when the elephants defecated.

They didn't buy anything

except sour pickles on a stick.

Their eyes were angry blue marbles.

When they left, trooping out like a chain gang,

they left behind pamphlets about their school

under the bleachers.

I told the crew to throw them all away 

with the rest of the trash.

But Maria kept one to read while

we got dinner ready before the

evening performance.

That's why she didn't get the potatoes

peeled in time.

"Hey" she said to me while we ladled out

the stew that evening,

"That place up the road is a government school

for journalists  -- they're being trained to sit

quietly and take notes of what the President

and his Cabinet says all the time."

"Any money in it?" I grunted back, my back

beginning to ache.

"Sure. They make good money when they can

start a war or make minorities feel insecure. It's all

in the pamphlet." Just then Maria dropped

the ladle into the stew -- again.

"Oh, get out of here!" I yelled at her in 

deep frustration.

She flounced out.

And left the show.

Didn't even say goodbye to Trey.

I didn't hear anything about her 

for several years.

During that time I quit the show

and went back to school.

Now I'm a corporate lawyer in

New York.

That's when I met Maria again.

She enrolled in that government school

after she left the big top.

Got her own radio show and started making

powerful enemies. 

She hired me to dig up the dirt on them;

which I did.

So they all became her friends.

She starts a new war about once a year;

usually in South America. 

Then goes down to conduct peace negotiations

and give away powdered milk and blankets.

She tells me she misses doing the Spanish Web.

**************************************

A noted author, as well as a respected journalist for the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Zuckerman began life as a tree surgeon. It was only after he became infected with Dutch elm disease that he decided to find a safer career and became a reporter.

His first  job was as a cub reporter with the Washoe County Impediment -- a weekly paper in Nevada that printed mostly lost animal announcements and ran large ads for the Aetherius Society. 

After five years apprenticeship he found work as an obituary writer for the Dracula Fan Club newsletter.

Then he hit the big time with his first book:  "Public Enema Number One: The Fallacy of Prune Juice."  It topped the New York Times bestseller list for ten weeks in a row.

He began work at the Wall Street Journal, reporting on ticker tape parades, in 2008, and has gone from triumph to triumph ever since.

His honors include the Heim Potts Award for Best Punctuation; The Tilden Medallion for Most Consistent Parchesi in an Amateur; and the prestigious Miller-Cockleburr Citation for his work with displaced ground sloths. 

His hobbies include growing club moss, cheating at crossword puzzles, and carving darning eggs out of soapstone.

It’s all basically nonsense, so I don’t understand why Zuckerman wanted no more contact from me. Guess you can’t please everyone.  You may have noticed that the prose poem (which I entitled “The Government School) is kinda autobiographical. Although I doubt you can actually learn anything truthful or useful about me from reading it. I am growing quite fond of ambiguity in my work.

Other than that, my apple dumplings, there’s not much to report here at La Maison Tork.  My older brother Billy is forwarding me tons of political nonsense by email, which I’m ignoring, and a Wall Street Journal reporter, Bob Davis, who really likes my work, sent me a complimentary copy of his new book, Superpower Showdown. It’s all about the trade war between Trump and China, which is not something I’m very interested in, so I find reading the book slow going -- I’m only on chapter three. Still, it was a nice thought.

Guess I’ll eat some beans and rice and then take a long Sunday afternoon nap. Then watch Netflix and/or TCM until it’s time to go to bed. What an exciting life I lead!

Love, dad.

Meet Gregory Zuckerman.

 

A noted author, as well as a respected journalist for the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Zuckerman began life as a tree surgeon. It was only after he became infected with Dutch elm disease that he decided to find a safer career and became a reporter.

His first  job was as a cub reporter with the Washoe County Impediment -- a weekly paper in Nevada that printed mostly lost animal announcements and ran large ads for the Aetherius Society. 

After five years apprenticeship he found work as an obituary writer for the Dracula Fan Club newsletter.

Then he hit the big time with his first book:  "Public Enema Number One: The Fallacy of Prune Juice."  It topped the New York Times bestseller list for ten weeks in a row.

He began work at the Wall Street Journal, reporting on ticker tape parades, in 2008, and has gone from triumph to triumph ever since.

His honors include the Heim Potts Award for Best Punctuation; The Tilden Medallion for Most Consistent Parchesi in an Amateur; and the prestigious Miller-Cockleburr Citation for his work with displaced ground sloths. 

His hobbies include growing club moss, cheating at crossword puzzles, and carving darning eggs out of soapstone.