When I saw his obituary from the Riverside Press-Enterprise dated two and a half years ago, it took
the wind right out of me. I was trying to track down a friend and former
colleague to send him a video about my 60 Chevy I just finished, since he’d
always been fond of the car.
George Rooney. He’d died at age 59 of ALS, Lou Gehrig’s
disease, in May 2011. WHAT!!??
Oh man…
George was one of the nicest people I’ve ever worked with,
or met for that matter. I’d lost contact with him for around 20 years. But he
was a guy that had been there for me through some of the toughest formative
years of my journalism career. Kind of an older, more experienced brother – four
years older – who helped calm me down when I’d been ready to hit the panic button.
Which in those times of feverish paranoia, and rampant fear and loathing, was
fairly often. I often sought George’s advice through exasperated phone calls.
I was a young newspaper reporter looking for a full time
job, my first one. I found one at the Palm
Springs Desert Sun because of a short typed note George had sent to a Los Angeles Times reporter I worked with
in the Times’ then-San Diego bureau.
There, I was a lowly copy aide. The editor there told me straight up that the Times never hired copy aides as reporters, so I shouldn’t entertain any
fantasies that that would happen. He
didn’t tell me, however, that such things did
happen when they were related to somebody with clout on the staff. I saw more
than a few cases of no-qualifications- necessary nepotism in my year there.
But I really didn’t care, the Times culture was so full of itself and bloated with bored but talented writers out of favor with newsroom honchos. I was ready to bail from what was
known as the “velvet coffin” after being there a year.
In his note, George told the Times
reporter, David Smollar, whom he’d known from a few years earlier covering
county government for a small San Diego paper, that he got the Sun’s city hall beat to “punch up”
coverage. And, by the way, there was an opening for a police reporter there in Palm Springs, if
he knew anybody that might want to apply.
George was mentioned more than once by reporters in the Times San Diego newsroom as a guy who always helped
them by sharing info – which I'm thinking they were too lazy to get on their own -- when
they needed it.
Smollar showed me the note, and I added the Desert Sun to the list of newspapers I was applying
to.
The Sun was the first paper that offered me the full time
reporting job I wanted, so I just took it. But it turned out to be, to this
day, the gnarliest job I ever had, three years of slave labor, boiler room
style. It was big time dues paying, and I struggled with hanging in there.
George, the leader of the staff of six or so reporters, always helped me cope.
Covering the cops was no fun at all. The cops hated whomever
covered them, feeling all reporters did was, at worst, make them look bad, or
at best, waste their time. I was considered no exception. Their strategy: Do
the minimum in cooperating with reporters.
Then there was our editor, a hopeless drunk, often showing up
with greasy tangled hair, and wearing clothes that resembled pajamas. He
finally got the boot only to be replaced by a guy who couldn’t edit, write, or
spell, for that matter. The editor that replaced him actually knew what he was
doing. But by then I was actively looking to jump out of the plane without a
parachute. George eventually switched to covering courts and moved to the Palm
Desert office. After four years of hard labor, he was hired by the much better
paying Riverside Press-Enterprise.
George was a positive guy to work around. He didn’t get
caught up in bitching like everybody else. He’d joke about the bubbling crap-fest we were swimming in,
and giggle. It was his way of blowing off steam. But he was always a total pro,
and I looked up to his breezy easygoing way of doing things. On the few times
when he had a little time to kill he’d go to the microfiche viewing machine off in a corner of the newsroom and
pull up ancient Desert Sun stories
and photos for some light entertainment. One time he was giggling continuously
at stuff he was pulling up, a parade of awful, hysterical stuff. Soon we were
all gathered around roaring over his shoulder at the crudely purveyed news and photos of
yore.
When he wasn’t in the main newsroom anymore, I missed him.
So I’d call him at the Palm Desert office down valley and vent how shitty
everything was at the main office. I did my job well enough. But wow, I hated it! I had no coping skills with
adversity, and I was neck deep in it.
He never told me to shut up and deal with it, but I called
him enough times that he had a right to. One call I remember I was about to
lose it, telling George the list of stupid crazy crap I was wading through and
that I couldn’t believe it.
“Just don’t think about it,” he told me.
That sounded good, so I tried it. Couldn’t do it. But still,
he felt my pain, and tried to help.
He coped by joking, laughing. He was a good joke teller,
often starting one with a very sincere face as if he were telling you a true story, as he got you to believe it. Then he’d hit the punch line. He coulda been
an actor.
He’d do full sections of dialog from Monty Python movies,
laughing as he did it with a British accent. And like me, he loved reciting the many barbs, wordplay and literary references of Firesign Theatre.
George was from Wisconsin, a real Midwesterner, tall and
rangy, dark brown eyes and hair and, in those days, bangs and a scraggly beard.
His dad was Irish, his mom Italian, but he looked all Italian. Married to his University
of Wisconsin-Madison sweetheart, Sally, he was steadfastly loyal. He loved Badgers
football and basketball, followed the Milwaukee Braves, then Brewers, had
affection for the Chicago “Cubbies,” and of course, was a Green Bay Packers
fan.
He never wore sunglasses for some reason, even in the
glaring desert sunshine, telling me he couldn’t see as well with them. I think the
real reason was he thought they were too flashy. He always had a handkerchief
in his back pocket, which my father, also a Midwesterner, also did. The
handkerchief, no sunglasses and several other things showed that George was
definitely a no frills guy, Old School to the bone.
He believed in union labor and tried to help organize
unionization of the poorly paid, overworked staff at the Sun. It didn’t happen,
and he knew which management spy was taking notes at the organizing meetings.
He made it clear who she was and that he was no fan of hers. He once pounded
his desk with his fist, smiling and yelled, “Let’s shut ‘em down!” followed by
a high-pitched laugh.
He was pretty irked when he found out the custodian who regularly cleaned the tiny Palm Desert bureau, an older guy, was let go. “He needs the work,”
scoffed George. He knew even menial jobs were important to somebody. “It keeps you young,” he
said.
He’d mock the publisher, a tall old white-haired overly tan,
bulbous-nosed guy who wore white shoes, white belt and loose fitting casual golf clothes. The
guy was rarely in the office, and part of the local good old boys hardy-har-har
business establishment.
“He wouldn’t know a news story if it bit him on the nose,”
George would say, laughing.
George brushed off pretension or phoniness. A guy on the
staff played guitar and sang a horrible folk song at a party, and George hated
it so much, he walked out. He thought the guy was a deluded buffoon to act like
he could play and sing well.
I play guitar and after hearing him pooh-pooh the bad
amateur, made sure I never brought out my guitar when he was around. (A few
years later, when his son Tim was playing in a band, George told me he snuck in
unnoticed to check it out. “They were pretty good!” he said, very proud.)
George was a good dad, better than most.
His father once chided him for changing his daughter’s
diaper, he told me. His dad was really old school, and didn’t think that was
among a father’s duties. But George shrugged him off.
He and Sally took parenting seriously. But he once joked
having kids reminds you of your own “creeping fartism.” How could it not?
He'd curse sportswriters who took five paragraphs to get to the game score. He
believed people, himself included, wanted to read the score up top, not as casual,
buried information due to a lame attempt at a literary intro.
Color photographs were beginning to appear in newspapers
back then to add appeal to readers. But George didn’t think they added anything. To him, the old school
gray and white newspapers did the job just fine delivering news stories.
George drove a Mercury, or “the Merc” as he called it, and
had an abiding faith in unpretentious American made cars. I think he’d owned
more than one Merc in his time.
He loved the outdoors, hiked and fished. I remember going on
hikes with him, Sally and seeing their then infant daughter Kristin’s little
socked feet dangling from her seat on George’s backpack-style kid carrier.
One weekend, he and I drove in my 60 Chevy to hike and camp
in the Golden Trout Wilderness area of the Southern Sierra Nevadas. I noticed
George put a hatchet near his sleeping bag before nodding off. I figured he
learned that in the Boy Scouts as something to ward off bears or other
predators. I’d done my share of camping at that point, and it never occurred to
me to have a hatchet at the ready. Kinda freaked me out.
After those years of working together, we kept in touch
during occasional summers. Every time we met, without fail, George asked:
“Still driving the Chevy?”
He lit up when I’d tell him I was.
That’s why when I recently finished the video on the Chevy,
I knew he’d like it, even though it did have me singing and playing guitar on
it. He loved the Chevy.
So George, if you happen to be looking down on this, here’s
a Chevy update. She’s still alive and well. Miss you, brother.
Mark Eric Larson has written two
books of essays, "The NERVE...of Some People's Kids," and "Don't
Force it, Get a Bigger Hammer. To read, visit:
http://www.scribd.com/Mark%20Eric%20Larson/shelfHis blog of personal essays is at: http://marksmuzings.blogspot.com/
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