JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

Writing about — and getting comments on — the holiday lull that descended on The Star’s newsroom decades ago got me reflecting on my early days at the paper, particularly how I happened to land a job here.

It was a fantastic time to get into journalism, in the late ’60s and early ’70s, with circulation strong and lots of big political stories swirling around, including the Watergate scandal.

Before going onto active duty for several months in the U.S. Army Reserve, I had been working as a reporter at a paper in northern Kentucky, The Kentucky Post and Times-Star, which was the sister paper to The Cincinnati Post and Times-Star. Subscribers in northern Kentucky got our one-section paper wrapped around the Cincinnati paper, which went to residents living on the north side of the Ohio River.

After my brief active-duty stint in the Army, I wanted to go to work for a major metropolitan daily. So, my father kindly financed a two-part fly-around to various cities — the first leg being to St. Louis and Kansas City, the second to Washington D.C., Boston, Providence and Philadelphia.

I didn’t have appointments or connections at any papers in any of those cities. It didn’t matter. Also, I didn’t have a journalism degree; I majored in English Lit. That didn’t matter, either. Back then, if you presented yourself well and had some decent “clippings” from work you’d done at a smaller paper, you had a good chance to catch on with a large newspaper; they’d give you a chance.

Upon arriving in those cities, I would make my way to the newspaper buildings, present myself at the reception desk and tell whoever greeted me I was looking for a reporting job.

In St. Louis, I got an interview with the executive editor, a stately, gray-haired man who sat behind a huge, shiny wood desk. At the time, the Post-Dispatch was one of the top papers in the country, and I knew I was biting off a big chunk, trying to get on board there, with only about seven months of reporting experience under my belt. But the editor was intrigued by me and talked to me for 20 to 30 minutes.

He eyed me closely, sizing me up, and kept coming back to the matter of my limited experience. Later I realized he was giving me a chance to convince him I would be a quick learner and would be able to do the job despite my lack of experience. But I wasn’t quick enough or aggressive enough — and certainly not very experienced in the art of the job interview — and finally he shook his head and sent me on my way.

**

When I got to Kansas City, I went to The Star’s building at 18th and Grand early one afternoon and found out that the man I needed to talk to, Donald D. “Casey” Jones, came in at 4 p.m. Casey was night city editor of The Kansas City Times, the morning edition of The Star.

To kill time, I walked downtown and took in a matinee of “True Grit,” starring John Wayne, at the old Towne Cinema. (Still one of my favorite movies ever.) When I came out, workers were spilling out of the office buildings onto the streets, having finished their day’s work and starting to head home. One of the first thoughts that went through my mind was, “This town has a lot of beautiful girls. This is pretty good.”

When I arrived back at The Star building, I was sent right up to the second-floor newsroom to see Casey Jones. He sat at an uncluttered, metal desk. Across from him, facing him at a similar desk, sat the assistant night city editor, Paul J. Haskins. Casey, a pudgy man with jowly face, thinning gray hair and relaxed manner, was an easy, non-threatening presence. But Haskins…he was something else.

He had a long, thin face — rather handsome — and hair combed up in a gentle wave and then straight back. The handsomeness was counterbalanced, however, by other factors. He constantly jiggled a leg, was missing a couple of teeth and had a searing, intimidating look in his eyes. He smoked and drank coffee almost continuously. And those eyes…They kept darting around — at senior editors in an area behind Jones, at reporters seated at desks in the back of the room and, occasionally, at me.

To the best of my ability, I kept my eyes trained on Casey Jones. When he interviewed job candidates, he took notes with a felt-tipped pen — blue, I believe, although it could have been red — on what were called “half sheets” of grainy paper that reporters sometimes used instead of notebooks. Those sheets were bound together in such a way you could rip off whatever thickness you desired, usually about an inch. The half sheets were OK in the office, when reporters were making notes from phone calls, but they didn’t work well at all in the field because they were floppy, with no backing.

As I recall, one of Casey’s first questions was, “How did you know we were hiring?” My answer: I didn’t…But the question gave me a jolt of optimism.

Casey was a sophisticated, well-traveled man who loved the arts and had a special affinity for the Nelson-Atkins Gallery. One of his favorite questions to ask job candidates, to test the breadth of their curiosity, was what magazines they read. I didn’t know about that habit, of course, but when he asked me what magazines I read, I said, “Sports Illustrated, Time and The New Yorker.”

When I said, “The New Yorker,” his eyes opened a little wider, and the felt-tip pen went quickly to the half-sheet pad.

**

I didn’t get a job offer at The Kansas City Times that day, but Casey said he would call me in a week or so.

I then made my East Coast swing…I got nowhere at the Philadelphia Inquirer and The Boston Globe. I got an offer from a second-rung paper in Washington — can’t remember its name — but rejected it. I also was offered a hinterlands bureau job at the Providence Journal-Bulletin and turned that down, too. (I recall the editor who interviewed me saying, “You think you’re hot shit, don’t you, and want to work in a big-city newsroom?” I guess I blanched at the “hot shit” line because he immediately came back with, “I mean that in a good way.”)

A couple of weeks later, back in Louisville and having heard nothing from Casey Jones, I put in a call to him. The only reason I called was my father strongly urged me to. “You’ve got nothing to lose,” he said. “They expressed interest in you. Go ahead and call.”

When I got Casey on the phone, he said, “Oh, yeah, uh, let me call you back in an hour or so.”

I stewed around the house for well over an hour — more like three or four hours — and Casey finally called back.

“Yeah,” he said, “we can offer you a general assignment job for $550 a month.”

I had been making $92.50 a week at my old job in northern Kentucky, and my mental computation was fast enough to tell me Casey’s offer was a winner.

“I’ll take it,” I said.

**

I started in September 1969. Drove out here in a driving rain in a white, big-finned 1959 Pontiac my father sold me for “$1 and other valuable considerations.” Spent the first night in a sketchy motel at Admiral and The Paseo. Rented a furnished apartment at Armour and Cherry and lived there for a few months…until somebody stole about 10 pairs of my socks that were drying on a communal line in the basement, where the clothes washer was located.

Then I moved into a rental house with four other guys — including a fellow KC Times reporter — at 5840 McGee. We split the $250-a-month rent five ways, making it even more reasonable than the apartment on Armour.

Once I landed in Brookside, I was on my way to becoming a Kansas Citian.

**

I worked for Casey and Paul for several years. Casey died of leukemia in 2000. Paul died of pneumonia and other complications of emphysema in 2003.