From a feature writer to feature attraction--now there's a
real booze-to-riches success story!
* * * * *
I never thought I'd like circus life, but a year of it has changed me.
It's in my blood now and I suppose I'll never give it up--even if
they'd let me.
This job is better than anything I could get in the newspaper racket.
I work all summer, it's true, but I get the winter off, though some of
the offers for winter work are mighty tempting. Maybe if I hadn't been
kicked off the paper, I'd be city editor now, knocking my brains out.
Who knows? But maybe I'd just be a rewrite man, or in the slot,
writing heads, or copyreading. But the thought of newspaper work after
all this appalls me.
Trlk, the Sybillian, should be thanked for the whole thing, I suppose,
though it would be a grudging thank-you I'd give him, considering all
the trouble he caused. Still....
I first saw him on a July morning at the beginning of the vacation
schedule, when four of us on the local side were trying to do five
people's work.
My first inkling anything was wrong came when I returned from the
courthouse beat and stuck a sheet of paper in the typewriter to write
the probate court notes.
I struck the keys. They wouldn't go all the way down. I opened the
cover plate, looked in to see what was wrong. I saw nothing, so I
tried again. Oscar Phipps, the city editor, was giving me the eye. I
figured maybe he was pulling a trick on me. But then I knew _he_
hadn't. He wasn't the type.
* * * * *
The back space, tabular, margin release, shift and shift lock worked
perfectly. But the keys only went down a short way before they
stopped. All except one key. The cap _D_.
I hit the _D_. It worked fine the first time, but not the second. I
tried all the keys again. This time only the _i_ worked. Now I had
_Di_. I went ahead testing. Pretty soon I had
_Dimly_