Bud says: My Life As a Muckracker As told to Dr. Freud (part five b)

I’m back Doc.

Hope you enjoyed your time at the Cape. We used to go to Wellfleet every year. Magnificent. Seemed like every shrink in the country was there.

What a great beach, but I shouldn’t dwell too much on the past, right Doc?

Left my Mastercard with your wife when I came in, so it’s okay to start.

You may recall we were talking about my five week-long trip in Europe in the 50’s, in search of insight into their highly touted socialized medicine and senior care. The big trauma for me, was when my girlfriend Bette ditched me in Copenhagen. Think I handled that pretty well considering how much I hated rejection. (Since my dad left me when I was five, right? Everybody wants to be wanted, but some more than others.)

Remember that attractive lady (turned out to be a Yugo agent) who commandeered my cab to take me to a better place? It seems she was a PR person working for the Tito government, whose job was to welcome important guests. My welcome turned out to be fairly warm and fuzzy, but I was suspicious.

She checked me into a so-called luxury hotel, owned by the government.

“I want you to enjoy your time here.”

She smiled at me. I smiled back.

“We are going to the ballet tonight, and the symphony tomorrow. See you later.”

“Thank you," I muttered.

“But what about my conference?”

“I will provide you with transportation,” she promised.

Well, all’s well that ends well. When the meetings ended, my first thought was to get a flight back to civilization ASAP. I took a cab to the airport, with tickets in my fist for JAT Airlines, Jugoslovenski Aerotransport. There must have been 200 people waiting for the same DC3- flight over the Alps to Zurich. Somehow I pushed my way to the window, shoved my ticket and $100 in American cash into the agent’s face.

“Yes sir!” he exclaimed.

“Go right aboard.”

I was told that only a limited number of passengers were allowed, so that the old DC-3 could make it over the mountains. I swallowed hard, settled into my precious seat, and experienced one of the most both breathtaking airplane rides ever. We literally flew through the Alps. Awesome. Somehow we made it to Zurich where I spent a couple of days cleaning up, catching my breath, and unwinding. Then it was on to Amsterdam.

My European adventure was coming to an end in Schaveningen, a Dutch resort town on the Atlantic. A world conference there for child care givers.

The Cleveland welfare warriors were acclaimed again in the Netherlands, as trendsetters in their profession.

My flight back from Amsterdam to New York, Idlewild (now JFK) was booked on the Dutch airline, KLM. They flew Lockheed Constellations. New turbo props with a frighteningly checkered safety record. KLM had lost two planes over the ocean in recent months. Remember Doc, this was to be my first trans-Atlantic flight.

I was so troubled that I changed my flight to a day earlier to be on the same plane as the Clevelanders. At worst, we would all go down together and make headlines in the Cleveland papers. At best, I would have some friends to talk and drink with on the flight. Would you call that obsessive compulsive, or just a panic attack? There were no pills for that in those days, so I just sucked it up.

And all went relatively well. Back in the states I found myself suddenly an overnight expert on socialized medicine and welfare care for the needy, and was put on the lecture circuit by the Press. The ladies’ clubs loved it, but it convinced me that I was not, definitely not, cut out for this diversion in my professional career.

That over, I moved on to become assistant city editor. I was one of the youngest ever at the Press or any major newspaper. The hooker was that I was assigned to the early shift, coming in daily at five in the morning to prepare for the 8 a.m. editors conference and the 9 a.m. early deadline for the first City Edition. It was challenging for a kid like me. I was alone in the office, except for one copy boy and the overnight cleaning lady, and I had to plan assignments for the entire staff as they came in.

I had to speed read the Plain Dealer cover to cover, scan the overnight memos and stories, and check the morning news on the radio. At six, Louis Seltzer, the renowned editor, was on the phone.

“Weidenthal, what you got for today?” he would say, predictably.

“See that story inside the PD on page six about that old lady who’s being evicted from her house on the west side? We could pick up on and maybe use it. Remember to get a picture.”

At that hour my body was awake but my mind was still in bed.

”Louis we have some great stuff,” was my usual retort, with fingers on both hands crossed.

“See you later.”

In order to accommodate my new assignment I had moved to the bachelors’ quarters at the Lake Shore Country Club in Bratenahl, right on the lake and backing up to the freeway. It was a convenient seven minute drive to downtown offices. Alarm set for 4:15, I'd take a quick shower, jump in the car and be at the office at Ninth and Rockwell in no time. The night copy boy always had my regular breakfast ready for me; a sweet roll and a glass of buttermilk.

I knew I was on my way up when the Press asked me to attend the highly esteemed American Press Institute for city editors at Columbia University in New York. I shared my wisdom there with the likes of Alan Newhart, city editor of the Miami Herald, who would later found the enormously successful USA Today. The city editors of the New York Times and the Chicago Sun Times were there, among others. This was big stuff. I tried to appear all-knowing and furiously took notes to present to my editors when I returned to CLE town two weeks later.

But there was more to the trip. Big time, Doc. Much more.

One of my favorite cousins, a New Yorker, fixed me up with a friend whom she had known at NYU. This friend was of all things, a journalist, working at Time magazine. My cousin let slip to her that I was a journalist on the way up…sure to be an editor.

On our first date we went to Nick’s, a jazz club in Greenwich Village. We agreed that we both loved the cornet of Muggsy Spanier and the sounds of his quartet. A good start.

Was it love on the first date? Who knew? It was on the second date, when things really got interesting. I wrote about it in the Press, in a column about the return of Frank Sinatra to the big time. The show was hailed by the network as “Ole Blue Eyes” is back.” Frank, of course was for my generation, the Beatles, Elvis, and hip hop all wrapped into one.

I have a copy of my Press article, framed and hanging in my apartment, along with a personal letter I received from Ole Blue Eyes himself. You know the name, don’t you Doc.? I’m reading, Doc. Right from the article.

“There was this cute little gal from Time Magazine. We had met on a blind date. On the second date I had come to her parents west side apartment. With the old folks off to a movie or something convenient, my young friend connected her record player. She had brought out her records. They were mostly Sinatra.

Soon we danced and Frank sang. I remember the words: ‘It was winter in Manhattan, gentle snowflakes filled the air. The streets were covered with a film of ice.’

It was a deeper Sinatra voice, augmented by better fidelity. I suspect we fell in love as we danced that night. Grace and I were married in Manhattan several months later. Her dowry: a bundle of Sinatra albums, and that old record player. We still have them. From time to time we haul out the albums and get sentimental over some of greatest music ever produced on records. They have a special meaning for us that the years don’t erase. The critics can say what they want about Ole Blue Eyes coming back. In our little house in Cleveland Heights he never went away.”