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charles stough
the houston post 1968-1969
dayton daily news
45 s. ludlow st.
dayton, ohio 45401
chief copyboy, BONG Bull newsletter
copyboy@dma.org
subscribe to the BONG Bull at
bong-l-subscribe@topica.com

If you haven't seen Charley Stough's newsletter, you must. The BONG Bull -- that stands for Burned Out Newspapercreatures Guild (aren't you ashamed?) -- is full of irreverent humor, honed to satisfy a journalist's cynical sensibilities; lots of newsroom yesteryear nuggets; and lately, plugs for Charley's mystery novel, Warm Spit, "a novel of Texas crime and culture." He'll tell you to buy it at www.booksamillion.com because of the bookseller's speedy delivery and, of course, because it's a great book.

POST MEMORIES: "I was there in 1968-69, when it was down at Polk St. Ed Hunter was night m.e., the news editor Mr. Bowman wore pink-tinted glasses, (Mickey) Herskowitz was young and a wastebasket fire was the most exciting thing that ever happened except for the Sugarland Express story. Sorry, I've forgotten most of the other names, even the proprietor of the greasy spoon across the street. But I miss the spirit, smell, etc.

I do recall that (Leon) Forscheimer and one or two other staffers, for some reason, owned race horses of local renown. Never got around to asking how they got into that. I feared maybe it would be like asking, "Say, did I hear you sell Amway?"

I left there for the SA Light and nearness to my kids' grandparents, then to Phoenix to run the family's weekly paper, then to Dayton after we sold the weekly. A healthy line of defunct papers in my pedigree, no?"

FROM THE BONG BULL: "Steve Bennish at the next desk asks whatever happened to the stamp columnists. Every paper used to have one. Was it a parallel extinction, the postage meters doing to stamp writers what corporate newspapering was doing to reporting skills? Specialized publications siphon off the stamp geeks just like PR jobs took all the smart newspaper managers? Something in the stamp glue?
The Chief Copyboy recalls with something like fondness the irascible Leon Forscheimer, slot man and stamp columnist at the old Houston Post in the '60s. Never read a single column he wrote, except the one that came down from the composing room after he forgot to put the copy in a plastic carrier before stuffing it into the air tube. Had to read it to glue the pieces back together.
It was a time of conspiracy thinking everywhere, not just in Texas and Idaho like it is today. Leon dreaded the Reperf Conspiracy.
"In every sheet of 50 stamps," he said in hushed tones one night, "32 stamps are perforated on only three sides, and four on only two. But when you see individual stamps for sale at the shows, they all have perforations on all four sides. Why is that?
"Someone," he declared, "is reperfing them!"
Where the stamp columnists went, no one can be sure. But BONG says that when you find a reperfer, look around."