Cub Reporter
So here’s how it started. My son Joe gave me a new book about Jimmy Breslin for my birthday. Great read. And you gotta watch the HBO documentary Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists. Those two were the best New York newspaper columnists.
The other day I hit a chapter where twelve-year-old Jimmy starts a neighborhood newspaper. I think he called it The Flash. Things were going well until young Jimmy decided to write a blurb about a neighborhood kid who was a peeping tom. Oh man, Jimmy’s parents went wacknuts and that was the end of his little newspaper. Then a memory hit me like a George Foreman shot to the kisser. I also had a neighborhood newspaper when I was a kid. I had a toy Cub printing press, and I’d set the type, create the graphics, write the stories, and crank it out.
I called my paper the Goodyearpark Bugle. Like Jimmy, things were rolling along pretty good until I discovered the neighbors’ mail was being delivered to the wrong houses. So I decided to follow the mailman on my Columbia Fire Arrow bike to see what was up. Over the course of my investigation, I witnessed the mailman taking swigs from a bottle of hooch. He was not only carrying a big bag—he was half in it. This made the front page of the next Bugle.
Soon enough, one of my sisters squawked to my father about what I reported and that was it for the Bugle. Hey Bub, all I was doing was looking out for the neighborhood. So much for freedom of the press. Keep your dukes up.
Keep your dukes up.
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