My first job out of undergrad college was in the public relations department of Gulf Coast Utilities, Co. Located in Beaumont, Texas. I moved there and got a $75/month apartment, and soon added an air conditioner, which got 24/7 use in that humid climate.
At first my job involved writing press releases that the local newspapers had to run because of the importance of the utilities co. to their existence. After about a year, the guy who was editing the company monthly magazine (i.e. "house organ") left to edit a weekly newspaper out West--that was nearly every journalist's dream in the Forties/Fifties, not mine, though. So I became editor. I had 32 pages to play with every month! Sheer bliss.
I taught myself photography and drawing, and did cartoons and photographs and wrote meaningful editorials and still what came out was mostly crap because it was a "house organ". I doubt if many employees actually read it. But I was having fun.
And I had a deep crush on a girl who worked in the same office, but I won't talk about that right now, because she was married.
Anyway, after a few years I got the mad idea that perhaps, because I was a photographer and a writer (I had sold a short story to a science fiction magazine and finished a novel and started another one), I should go to work in NYC for LOOk or LIFE magazine.
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