Morning Assignment

LATE LAST FALL, I was tossing back shots from steamy mugs of coffee with a few old chums, who, like me, are former members of the Fourth Estate. Just chatting and strolling down Geezer Lane, trying to outdo one another on stories we had covered and the quirky reporters and editors we had worked with in our previous lives.

 

The talk somehow got around to great American writers and authors and the predictable lament about how there few or none anymore. Such subjective snobs we can sometimes be. So, we focused on the past: All of us agreed, in general, about the undeniable greats: Poe, Melville, Twain, Harper Lee, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Alcott, and so forth and so many.

As the discussion winded down, it came down to one question: Who is the best American author you have ever read? When it was posed to me, I had an immediate answer. The fellow I had in mind was no novelist. He was real writer.

Joe Aaron.

He was the author of giant works such as A Pig In The Gray Panel Truck, A Dandelion in Winter, Day of a President, Just a 100 Miles From Home and The Journey in the Red Jalopy. I have them all in my library, each signed by him, thanks to my Mama – one of his greatest fans. All were collective works and vignettes from the body of his works.
His name probably is not familiar to you. But it would be if you read the Evansville Courier from the late 1950s into the mid-1980s. Every morning, his column always was on the menu with a side order of humor: Sip coffee, eat your cereal or eggs, smoke a cigarette and read Morning Assignment. Then head off into the workaday world or any other direction you traveled.

Joe covered so many things, ordinary and offbeat situations; traveling the highways and byways of southern Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and more cosmopolitan areas in two or three states away. Mainly, he wrote about folks who offered to share a slice of their worlds with him. Often hilarious and zany, sometimes whimsical and poignant, but always interesting. The guy down the street who collected hubcaps, or the woman who swore her Mynah bird spoke in three languages, but didn’t utter a chirp when the columnist showed up for the interview. He chronicled the daily life of men and women at work and at home; was an unabashed champion for kids and underdogs.

He could be cheeky at times, but more often was an amplifier for the lost and found dreams of people willing to open up. Rarely passed judgment unless it was warranted. When he did, it was a polite yet a clear,roaring thunder.

Joe always seemed to ask the most important questions: How does this work? Why do you do this? What the hell is that all about? And he told a good story as best you can in the restricted 750 words or so allotted in a daily.

ONE OF THE FEW ENCOUNTERS I ever had with the man was back in the early 1980s at a Society of Professional Journalists contest dinner and awards ceremony. I head reaped some undeserved award for a column I had written for the Mount Vernon Democrat, a small daily one score miles west of Evansville. As I walked back with plaque in hand, he winked and said, Congratulations, kid! I like your first name.

High praise from a giant to a fledgling still searching for confidence to string nouns, verbs and adjectives into an understandable, cogent story.

In 1986, it was announced the Courier (a locally owned newspaper) was being bought out by the competitive chain owner (Scripps Howard), the city’s afternoon newspaper, the Evansville Press. Not so unusual in this age when media-goliaths gobble up the bones of struggling, good community newspapers. Sound familiar?

Former Courier reporter Thomas Kunkel later put a part of this in perspective in American Journalism Review:

“… Joe could have worked anywhere, but he was a Courier guy through and through. That made it hard for him to choke down this unholy transaction--although he intended to stay on at the morning paper and keep writing, like the pro he was. But on the first day of the new order, even as his office was being relocated, Joe keeled over in the newsroom and died. He was 57. Now, I have to say this wasn't exactly a surprise, upsetting as it was. Joe had a terrible heart…”

But he had a great heart for understanding his fellow humans and their souls.

WHEN IT COMES TO GIANTS, we have many Americans who have penned great thoughts, words and deeds. Those who force us to think, to search and to discover. Take your pick.

But in that Pantheon, I have no qualms whatsoever about including a bald, sheepishly smiling fellow who churned out wisdom, fun, occasional rightehous indignation -- and the simple, pure  joy of living life. Each morning, you could munch your Wheaties, nibble on bacon  or toast and have a side order of good writing. Then go out to face the day.

That was Joe Aaron’s morning assignment for nearly three decades.