The Working Life

My first real job was after college--Oklahoma University, 1957. I had a BA degree in Journalism, had worked on the school daily newspaper, had not given any real thought to what would come "after".

Hurriedly, in the few months before graduation, I tried to find work, but I really didn't have any idea what to do with myself. Knew I had to earn money, be on my own. Plastics was not an option (reference to movie The Graduate).

I bundled together some clippings from the newspaper: very few serious articles, mostly satire and humor columns I'd done to amuse myself. I didn't really have anything to offer. In fact, some of my work on the paper that year had been suicidally stupid. For instance, I'd headlined a story about the Oklahoma Governor's visit to Hawaii: "Governor Gets Kissed, Lei'd." Not smart in a school that depended for its very life on the politicians a few miles down the road. I had no references from faculty. Hadn't done particularly well academically.

So, to help me, when firms came recruiting, I was given newspaper assignments that got me frontpage bylines. One interviewer, from Gulf States Utilities, was interested and invited me to interview, at which I showed my ignorance by my assumption that they were Gulf Oil, and mentioned my dad's longterm employment by Phillips Petroleum. They forgave me, though, because I had a front page byline that day.

I flew down for an interview in Beaumont, Texas. They hired me and I moved down a week after graduation. Again, I had no longterm plan, just figured I'd work there for awhile and then...and then...

Fortunately I fit in fairly well with the small group in the public relations department. I wrote dull press releases that got used because GSU had a sweetheart deal with the local morning and evening newspapers. But somehow, ambition grew inside me and I started working harder, taught myself photography, took the Famous Artists Course in Illustration and Cartooning, and was finally given the editorship of the monthly magazine published for employees. This was a "house organ" because its only purpose was to enhance the company and keep employees relatively pleased with their lot.

And I sold a short story to a science fiction magazine and thought that made me a professional writer.

In some ways it was possibly the best job I ever had, before or after. I had almost complete control on all editorial material, could do stories and illustrations my own way, and I had enough good sense to play the corporate game. It was intoxicating, seeing my own words in print month after month.

And then ambition grew faster. I started imagining that I was good, a good writer, a good photographer. I read LIFE and LOOK magazines, and tried in my own publication to imitate their styles, imagined that perhaps that was my destiny, to be a photojournalist for the big time.

I set my sights on New York City, and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. I figured that, in the words of the song I hadn't heard yet, that if I could make it there I could make it anywhere.

I applied and was rejected because I didn't have the tuition. I got married and applied again, telling them my wife could work to support me and help pay tuition. They let me in.

The rest was downhill, with some bumps that made me think I was going in the opposite direction.

First Job in NYC

For some reason, this cloudy humid day, I recall my first job in NYC back in 1962. Yes, it's ancient history, kiddies. I had just received my MS diploma from Columbia U's Graduate Journalism School, and was broke and separated from my then-wife. 

She found me in the West Side bar after our graduation ceremony and handed me, with a smile, a telegram. It was from Roberta Ashley, picture editor at This Week magazine, offering me a position as her assistant. I quickly accepted the job, despite the doubts of Penn Kimball, my faculty advisor (he was right, of course). I needed money.

My first day on the job, in midtown at Lexington Avenue, I met the other staff and support personnel. And Mrs. Ashley told me to go to Brooks Brothers and buy a new suit, since my Midwestern attire, which had got me through a year of grad school, was not appropriate for work in this office.  I bought a gray wool 3-season single-breasted that I wore for years until the cuffs frayed.

There were two other guys approximately my age working on the Articles side. They didn't seem friendly. Gradually I found out why: they suspected that I was a homosexual. I retained my southern accent, a quiet slow-speaking voice and wasn't cruelly cynical in the intellectual style. The way I found out was at a party at a columnist's penthouse. My pregnant new wife decided not to appear in her old pregnancy dress, and waited in the car, so I went alone. The two articles guys appeared and introduced me to a good-looking woman... and then they withdrew, stood about 15 feet away and stared at us while whispering to each other. It was a social test. As I did with all social tests, I flunked. I didn't know what to say to the woman and didn't feel emboldened to put the moves on her. 

I started out well at the job: had an article published (I Raided Castro's Cuba, an as-told-to that I wrote in Hemingwayesque style) and some photographs, but the work was not challenging and I wasn't making any new contacts in the photographic world with people who could imagine and photograph and bring in cute picture essays. The job lasted a bit more than a year until I was let go because the weekly magazine was not selling any advertising (it had lost the Herald Tribune, its only NYC outlet). 

Desperate, with a baby coming to my second wife, I took the first job that appeared, with Time-Life Books, a friendlier place to work, yet with sharp class distinctions based on family, birthplace, and university (preferably Ivy League)....