Just My Type by Rick Smith
Just My Type
By Rick Smith
It was a dream come true. Or at least it had the potential of being so.
I had had no reason to suspect that my required attendance at my high school’s Fall Open House would result in such an event…but it did.
As a senior and Sports Editor of our high school newspaper, I assisted in representing the Journalism department during the schools Fall Open House. Other student editors were also there, as well as our journalism teacher. We all interacted with visitors that night.
Author Rick Smith is pictured on the cover his book REMF. Photo courtesy Rick Smith.
One of the visitors was Doc Bowler, the Managing Editor of our local newspaper, “The Billings Gazette.” After the Open House concluded, our journalism teacher told me Mr. Bowler had asked him for potential part-time sports writers and that he had given Mr. Bowler my name. Mr. Bowler left word for me to come see him if I was interested.
I was more than interested.
As a young journalist, I’d self-identified with Jimmy Olsen for years. Jimmy was the cub reporter in Superman comic books, which I loved. I could see myself as Jimmy Olsen…someday, maybe someday.
So, I made “someday” the next day and promptly proceeded to The Billings Gazette after school to talk to Mr. Bowler. I waited for a while after explaining the nature of my visit to the receptionist in the newsroom. Finally, Mr. Bowler came out and took me into his corner office which had windows along two sides so he could watch over the newsroom. I was nervous.
He explained the job to me – it meant working every Friday and Saturday night to help with area sports reports. The Billings Gazette had a circulation of 65,000 daily, reaching communities far north in the state. It was important to include game reports for all these small communities in the paper’s circulation area.
Thus, Friday and Saturday nights became extremely intense for about two hours as phone calls flooded in, and everybody scrambled to meet a first edition print deadline of 10:30 p.m.
“Oh, yes,” I told Mr. Bowler. I wanted the job.
He handed me a formal application and casually asked, “You do type, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” I replied with more confidence than I was entitled. I was a hunter and pecker, not a trained typist. My answer was honest. So, Mr. Bowler directed me to a desk just outside his office saying, ”You can use that typewriter right over there to complete your application.”
The typewriter was an old, manual Underwood model. You had to bang on the keys, and it delivered a clackity-clack sound when energized with finger strokes. I rolled the application into the typewriter and properly position into place the first line of information to complete: NAME. My name.
I looked closely at the keys and saw something that threw me into instant panic. The something I saw was nothing…no letters on the keys. I could not be sure which key was which. A hunter and pecker needs something to hunt. Oh, no!
I figured going back into Mr. Bowler’s office to ask him where the “RN was on the typewriter wouldn’t be a good idea. I had to trust my gut and I went ahead and guessed on the first key. An “F” came up on my application. Fick Smith. I dove deeper into panic mode, almost shredding the application with an abrasive old typewriter eraser.
Suddenly, a new idea popped into my head.
Using a finger on my left hand as a test, I would pound it with a key and then look at it to see if I had picked the correct letter. If I had, to backspace and enter it onto the application. The absurd process slowly progressed, and I eventually returned the application to Mr. Bowler error free. I fretted the entire time that he would glance out his office window and see my strange technique.
But he did not…and I got the job. Jimmy Olsen would have been proud of me.
All the other typewriters in the newsroom had letters on the keys and I never had a problem typing quickly and accurately. I eventually got up to typing one hundred words a minute -when the keys had letters.
I loved that job with The Billings Gazette. It was everything I had dreamed it would be. I also remember wondering at bedtime the first night after being hired just what in the world I would be doing with all the money I would be earning at $1.25 an hour.
I bought my first car. Sometimes the dreams you dare to dream really do come true.
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