Word-Slinger

Over a week ago I viewed an ad on TV.
I don’t remember what it was for, but they were interviewing people, actors I suppose, who had been pigeon-holed.
I only remember one, some flaccid gray-haired dude they labeled an “art-supporter.”
It’s just like the bachelorette shows, dudes pigeon-holed as a graphic-designer from Los Angeles, or a masseuse from Simi Valley.
To me this is a cheap shot, or I’d like to think people are far more complex than the pigeon-hole assigned to them.
But I wondered how they’d pigeon-hole me. My preference was “word-slinger.”
This “word-slinger” bit goes back a long way; to my 12th-grade English class in 1962.
My English-teacher told me I could write really well.
“But Dr. Zink,” I said — his name was Zink; “it’s only slinging words.”
“But Hughes,” he said; “you do that way better than most.”
I thought him joking, but now that I look back, it was my ability to sling words that got me that job at a boys summer-camp while I was in high-school.
I carried this talent through college. What I remember is acing freshman Physics-lab because I could assemble a great lab-report.
This was despite my usually mucking up experiments.
I also wrote a small humor-column senior year for the college newspaper.
After college I fell into motorsports reporting, mainly because I was trying to freelance motorsports photography.
I started doing photographs for a small weekly newspaper in Rochester (NY) called “City/East.”
Their business-manager, a car-guy like me, asked if I knew anyone who could write motorsports coverage.
“Well, maybe I could do it,” I said.
So began my four-year career covering motorsports for City/East.
The hardest part was cranking my report. Typing and retyping when errors piled up.
Once in a while a flash would occur. At Lime Rock Park in Connecticut I was given trackside credentials, a rare event, so I stationed myself outside a sharp hairpin corner.
A 427-Camaro was trying to stay ahead of a turbocharged 911 Porsche (“poor-SHA”), but it couldn’t corner as well.
The Camaro would blast the corner at insane speeds, its driver sawing the wheel to correct slides.
The Porsche would strafe the corner getting one/two then three wheels in the air.
Eventually the Porsche won, and my report reflected what I saw. It was exciting to watch.
It was the finest story I turned in, and that was after at first just reporting the race results. Finally I just let ‘er rip!
There were others, like on hot-rodding, dune-buggies, and off-road rallying. Expository stuff.
City/East was during a down-time. I had been “laid off” — I always say fired — from my earlier job at a bank. Mainly because I wasn’t a viper, obsessed with ripping people off to make money.
For seven years I wandered around in the wilderness wondering what to do with myself. During that time I was trying to become a freelance motorsport photographer, and I wrote for City/East.
There was no money in it; they were essentially a tax-dodge. I’d depreciate my camera equipment against what little income I had.
I remember interviewing for Motor Trend Magazine. They were interviewing off-the-wall, not even employment agencies.
They were somewhat interested, but I wasn’t interested in moving to Los Angeles. The guy they hired lasted a year.
I gave up the freelance photography, deciding I’d interview as a copy-writer at local ad agencies.
I interviewed at quite a few, and some were interested. I’d present City/East articles as my portfolio.
But no one would, or could, hire me. Ad agencies were already adequately staffed, or so said those interested.
Our next-door neighbor, who drove transit-bus for Regional Transit Service, the supplier of transit bus-service in Rochester and environs, suggested I apply as a bus-driver for RTS. It would be temporary employment, while I tried to find permanent employ as a copy-writer.
“Temporary” turned out to be 16 & 1/2 years. It paid well, so I stayed at it.
During that time I joined Division 282 of the nationwide Amalgamated Transit Union, our bus-union.
I became somewhat involved in union activities.
Copy-writing was forgotten until a fellow union-employee suggested we do a union newsletter.
This piqued my interest, so I gave it a shot using Microsoft Word® on our humble PC at that time.
Off and running! I’d write giant articles to put in the newsletter, and my friend circulated my newsletter to local politicos who funded Transit.
I followed my wife’s advice to just sling, baby. Forget editing; I didn’t have time for it, and what I wrote was usually good enough.
Transit management was aghast, although some told me they loved it.
Particularly aghast was their highly-paid Public-Relations honcho. At long last the union’s story was getting out — plus what it was like to drive bus.
Local politicians would call up the Public-Relations guy saying “What’s going on down there, Howard? You told me everything was hunky-dory, yet I have this union newsletter reporting a bus fell off a lift.”
“Don’t read that stuff!” Howard would scream. “That thing was written by union activists!”
Beyond that the PR guy was supposed to publish a bimonthly house-organ, but usually failed.
Yet here was I, a full-time bus-driver, publishing an unpaid monthly newsletter.
My newsletter became fun. I was slinging words with gay abandon.
My particular joy was getting that overpaid PR guy all bent outta shape. He refused to talk to me, running into a bathroom at a Transit Christmas-party.
“Just keep it positive!” he screamed.
I began to realize that long ago Zink was right. I ain’t Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky, but I do have a talent slinging words.
I had a stroke about one year into my newsletter. It ended my career driving bus, but it wasn’t because of my newsletter, despite long hours and lack of sleep. It was a heart-defect, a PFO.
Perhaps my greatest joy following my stroke, was finding I could still sling words, and it was much easier with a word-processor.
My post-stroke rehabilitation wanted to get my job back driving bus.
I wasn’t interested.
Slinging words was much more fun; I joined a newspaper.
So now, 50-some years after Zink told me I could write, I see he wasn’t joking.

• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her dearly.