Myrna Loy, Fredric March & Teresa Wright
They sure don’t make ‘em like they used to, movies, marriages, jobs. Take the 1946 film classic, “The Best Years of our Lives,” the story of three returning World War II veterans who meet by chance on the way home and whose lives become entangled. At one point, Teresa Wright, who has fallen in love with one of the men, asks her mother, played by Myrna Loy, why her love life can’t be as tranquil as that of her marriage to Fredric March, who plays her father. Loy, who is cracking open peas, says without pause: “You don’t know how many times I told your father I hated him — and meant it.”
I think of that film often as I carry home the frustrations of my job and inflict them on those closest to me. Gabbing with my favorite newsroom old timer the other day, I heard how he spent two months in a remote locale during the mid 1960s and filed 30 typewritten dispatches. They had to be carried out by hand. Now there’s content! I, by way of contrast, spent late Friday afternoon by explaining to my section editors at the day-end news meeting why my story about rising egg prices didn’t fit the pre-assigned concept graphic of a decorated Easter egg.
In any event, I’m off for two weeks. At the moment I’m driving to a weeklong campout in the desert to chaperone my 15-year-old son, a homeschooler who can’t wait to connect with friends scattered throughout the state who, like him, count the days between these periodic tribal gatherings. It’s the first time he and I will be alone this long without the complications of the rest of the family and I’m looking forward to that.
I also need to do some soul-searching and deep-thinking. The last time I was here was five years ago when the invasion of Iraq had just been launched. I had volunteered to go over there but had been turned down. Perhaps just as well as, unbeknownst to me, my wife was even then gestating the suprise daughter who is now four-years-old, and the family delight.
I even dusted off the unpublished novel I wrote about 20 years ago before I became a reporter. In fact my failure to sell that manuscript sent me down the path toward newspaper journalism. The protaginist is a young sailor of Italian-American extraction who has conflicts with authority during his tour at the end of the Vietnam War. He reminds me of someone I used to know.
2 users commented in " The Best Jobs of Our Lives "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackTom,
If you can simply tell the story of what you’re going through as you try to do your job as a journalist, the way you see that job, in a world that’s redefining the job daily, you will not only make sense of it for yourself, but you’ll be telling a story that will resonate with your professional colleagues, and you’ll make the impact you want to make.
I bailed out of professional journalism a while back, not entirely by choice, but primary among several reasons was disgust at the kinds of things in which I found myself investing my time and talents.
It’s difficult enough meeting the metaphysical demands of journalism (what is the truth?), and when you add in the necessity of making a living, and dealing with organizations that are being pulled out of shape by the forces, imo, of late-phase capitalism in what appears to be a death spiral — it all adds up.
You’re a good man and a fine journalist. Don’t let the bastards push you into spoiling your chances to tell your story and having it listened to. You’ll find a way to tell the story, in a way that can’t be written off as the work of a disgruntled employee or otherwise marginalized person. Make that your crusade, how to temper your emotional response and let your anger fuel the creative fire.
-D oug
I liked your 2008 egg story. It was timely and relevant. If I wanted a plain story about Easter eggs, I would have just checked the archives for 2007, 2006, 1970. . .
Leave A Reply