Gone with the wind off Lake Superior...

Written by By Jim Heffernan for the Duluth News Tribune on August 6, 2021

Some like it hot, they say. I’m one of them. I like it hot, as it has been this rare summer in Duluth and the northland. And we’re just a week into August. Whew.

 How does it happen that a native Duluthian, such as I, could be so fond of hot weather when in most years we get so little of it? That’s exactly why. We traditionally get so little of it that when we do, when the mercury hovers near 90 Fahrenheit, I become elated, but at the same time wary that it could abruptly end.

 

I learned to like it hot in my childhood, listening to my parents decrying the northeast wind’s arrival all too often in summer. That’s the wind, commonly known as the “nor’easter,” that ushers the cool air perpetually hovering over our beloved Lake Superior into our city.

 

You could be enjoying a perfectly lovely day, a southwesterly breeze wafting in nice warm air, when suddenly — oops — the wind would change to a northeaster and the temperature would drop from, maybe 80, to around 57. Ugh. Break out the sweaters and sweatshirts, raise the top of the convertible; it’s going to be cooler near the lake. (More on “Cooler Near the Lake” at the end of this column.)

 

When I was a child growing up in what was known in those ancient times as Duluth’s West End, one of our neighbors had a weathervane atop his garage in the alley behind our house, visible from our small pantry window.

 

It never failed. Even the gentle wafting of the first breaths of a nor’easter wind would reverse the arrow on that weathervane from southwest to northeast and the temperature would start dropping. In our family, we kept our eye on that weathervane whenever we were experiencing a nice warm day, just waiting for the arrow to point toward the lake and change everything. Goodbye nice warm day.

 

Oh, the dread. Oh, the disappointment. Chilly in July. That’s why I like it hot.

 

In my early 20s, when I was on active duty in the Army, I was stationed for a time at Fort Lee in Virginia in July. The weather is always hot south of Richmond, Va., in summer. Back then, there was no air conditioning in the barracks, just large screened windows in case a cool breeze might come up as the troops slept. It seldom did.

 

Fellow soldiers, some from the South, would be writhing in their bunks, sweat pouring from their brows and backs, fitful sleep caused by the unrelenting heat. I, in their midst, would throw a sheet over my boxer shorts-T-shirt clad body and sleep like a…well, I hate to employ a well-worn cliché, but how better to put it than to say I would sleep like a log in the high summer heat of the deep South. (Well, there’s “sleep like a baby” too but everybody knows babies’ sleep isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.)

 

How could a private soldier from the far north sleep soundly through hot summer nights in the South? I always figured that, being from Northern Minnesota, Duluth in particular, I was finally thawing out. 

 

Back here on the home front and recalling way back during my early years, there was one drawback whenever the blessed southerly breezes pushed the cold air back on Lake Superior. The warm wind would invariably be accompanied by a strange odor, a sort of sweet stink. This was universally known as the smell of Cloquet.

 

When you smelled Cloquet, you knew it was going to warm up, making it kind of a mixed blessing. Of course the odor came from Cloquet’s wood industries, their air quality unregulated in those days by the environmental concerns that were invoked later. The ranks of those of us who remember the stink of Cloquet are thinning.

 

Still, it was worth it if the breezes brought warm weather, as far as I was concerned.

 

I have visited the vicissitudes of Duluth weather before in this column. Years ago I composed some light verse with the title “Cooler Near the Lake.” I’ll just reprint the final two verses here, one more time…make that one last time:

 

“I know the day is coming when

The real God’s Country beckons,

And when St. Peter meets me there,

He’ll ask my home, I reckon.

When I tell him it’s Duluth,

He’ll say, “For heaven’s sake,

Ain’t that the place everyone says

Is cooler near the lake?”

 

“That’s it,” I’ll cry, “oh kindly saint,

And in this realm please spare,

From chilly off-lake breezes,

And winter underwear.”

“If it’s heat you want,” he’ll reply,

“In the other place you’ll bake!”

“Fine, send me any place except

Where it’s cooler near the lake.”

 

We’ll see.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

Juneteenth for the Twins: Calvin Griffith is out

The Minnesota Twins announced today–on Juneteenth–that the statue of former Twins owner Calvin Griffith has been removed from Target Field due to racist remarks he made in 1978 in a speech before the Waseca, MN, Lions Club in 1978. (Read the MPR story HERE) The poem below was written in response to news of that appearance and speech. 

Calvin at the Plate ~ By Jim Heffernan

Originally appeared in the Duluth News Tribune on Sunday, October 8, 1978 

& republished in 2008 in Heffernan's book, Cooler Near the Lake.

The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Lions Club that day;

The chaplain muffed the praying and the Lions would have to pay.

And so when Calvin took the stand, and after they hand dined,

The Lions sat back to listen up, looking leonine.

 

The subject would be baseball, appropriately enough,

But who could know the speaker would be dishing out such guff;

A simple little meeting, in a simple little town,

Would make the club look foolish and the speaker look a clown.

 

But Calvin didn’t know that day the ripples he would cause;

He tried his best to stand the test and gather up applause.

But his audience included, much to his distress,

A writer taking lots of notes, and he was from the press.

 

So when Calvin started talking, and missing not a point,

The air was filled with silence, and smoke filled up the joint.

The speaker tried for laughter, and getting himself none,

He thought he’d toss some spice around, to add it to the fun.

 

He started out with marriage, an honorable state,

But Calvin said it had no place on or near home plate;

He said his catcher Wynegar would be better off still free:

He didn’t care that Wynegar’s wife would deign to disagree.

 

Free love, he said, comes pretty cheap for players of the game;

A lad should take advantage, and build upon his name,

And then when extra innings in the game of life are played,

There’s plenty of time for marriage, when life’s a bit more staid.

 

There was ease in Calvin’s manner as he shifted on his hips;

There was pride in Calvin’s bearing, and a smile on Calvin’s lips;

There was scotch in Calvin’s belly, and a redness on his face,

When Calvin turned the subject to a place known as first base.

 

His voice boomed like thunder when he talked of Rod Carew;

And everyone was shocked when he called him a damn fool.

Rod sold himself too cheap, he said, so we gave him a bonus;

He really should to appreciate such treatment from the owners.

 

Then Calvin changed his visage, his voice a quiet roar;

“In the old days players cared,” he cried, “but they don’t any more.”

And throwing out an epithet, the kind we know so well,

He told the stadium commission that it could go to hell.

 

And hitting Billy Martin–he couldn’t let that pass–

He said the feisty manager could charm a monkey’s---.  

And he said Bill never punched a man who looked to be his size;

He’ll have to live with that one, until the day he dies.

 

And then as if to top the rest, ol’ Cal went on to say,

The team could leave tomorrow, but it’s still here today

Because we moved from Washington, balls, bats, gloves and sacks,

When we heard that Minnesota had but fifteen thousand blacks.

 

Oh!  Somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,

The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;

And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout,

But there was no joy in Twinsville, When Calvin G. spoke out. 

 

Dear Season Opener: Plastic Deer Threatened in City Hunt...

By Jim Heffernan
This column originally appeared in the Duluth News Tribune on Sunday, September 25, 2005, in a previous blog post and is also reprinted in my book, Cooler Near the Lake. The column created quite a stir nationally when some took it seriously. (Click HERE) I guess this might be considered some of that "outrageous nonsense" I'm accused of writing every now and again... and, of course, this is REAL FAKE NEWS! Enjoy the hunt.    

Jim

Here’s the latest fair and balanced news…

Homeowners who decorate their yards with life-sized plastic deer are complaining the sculptures are being damaged by people stalking real deer during Duluth’s special season for bowhunters.

“My decorative doe, Felicity, had an arrow sticking out of her hind quarter,” Orval Pussywillow of Hunter’s Park complained yesterday. “This has got to stop. We paid good money for our beautiful deer.” Pussywillow said his four plastic pink flamingos and a lawn ornament depicting the posterior of a fat woman bending over were unmolested.

Local police said they have received numerous complaints from throughout the city that plastic deer are being shot with arrows by hunters mistaking them for the real thing. One citizen, who declined to be identified “because I work with a bowhunter,” said she has outfitted her plastic deer with blaze orange vests to protect them from arrows.

Randy Waxwing, spokesman for the Lake Superior Spear, Boomerang & Bowhunters Ltd., said residents with plastic deer in their yards should remove them from now through season’s end December 31st to protect them during the municipal bowhunting season. “You can’t blame our people for shooting plastic deer; they’re so lifelike. Many of our own members have plastic deer themselves as inspiration for hunting season. Hunters love deer; that’s why we kill them.
Waxwing did point out that association members are complaining to him that their hunting arrows are being blunted by hitting plastic deer and not the soft flesh of real deer. “It’s a two-way street,” he said. “Good hunting arrows cost plenty.”

Thelma Twelvetrees of Thelma’s Yard, Garden and Southern Belle Figurine Emporium, which sells ornamental deer, said sales are down since the city bowhunting season was announced. “People don’t want to fork over good money for plastic deer only to have them shot full of arrows,” she said. It was not known how the decline in faux deer sales would affect city sales tax receipts.

Meanwhile, Msgr. Ernest X. Chasuble said religious leaders are concerned that fake donkeys in Christmas nativity scenes will be shot at by hunters when churches erect crèches on their lawns beginning around Thanksgiving. “Also wise men riding camels. What if they hit a wise man? Or the Holy Mother, for that matter?” Chasuble asked.

Concern about safety around Christmas crèches outside local churches was seconded by Worship Duluth, successor organization to the Duluth Church and Sunday School Bureau, in a news release. “The Christmas message of ‘Peace on Earth’ is diluted when you find arrows sticking in outdoor religious displays,” the news release stated. Religious leaders said either the hunt should be suspended during the holidays or characters in the displays should be adorned with blaze orange garments.

Officials also predict that ornamental reindeer in secular home displays will be affected.

Finally, Professor Michael Angelo, head of the Sculpture and Human Sexuality Department at the Arrowhead College of Carnal Knowledge, said plastic ornamental deer are an important part of American art on a par with department store mannequins. “I once saw a fake deer with a nude female mannequin astride it. Priceless,” said Angelo, 43, who is registered with the police.

Film at 10.

Cloquet Fire: It Was a Day to Remember…

By Jim Heffernan

* Note: Today marks the 100th anniversary of the 1918 fires. 
What follows is my column that was originally printed in the 
Duluth News Tribune and re-printed in my book, Cooler, Near the Lake.

Today marks the 70^thanniversary* of the great Cloquet fire that burned much of Northeastern Minnesota and killed hundreds of people. The ranks of those who remember it first-hand are getting thin, although there are still plenty of people in their late 70s and older around to tell about it.

Mention of the Cloquet fire brings vivid memories to me. While I missed it by more than two decades, my mother, Ruth Carlson, was age 19 and not yet married on that Oct. 12, 1918, and talked of it often when I was growing up.

Everybody who was in this area then had a story to tell about that terrible day. Many have passed the stories down through their families. This is my mother’s Cloquet fire, as she told the story often, once, a couple of years before she died in 1983, into a tape recorder.

They say that to a foot soldier huddled in a foxhole in combat the war is only as big as that foxhole. So it is with witnesses of cataclysmic events. We only see a small part and only after they are over do we learn of their scope.

My mother’s Cloquet fire story started in downtown Duluth and ended in her home on Piedmont Avenue between Third and Fourth streets in the West End. Here, in her words, is the way it was–for her.

“It was a very lovely sunshiny day. It was a Saturday and I had baked several loaves of bread. My friend and I went downtown in the afternoon to look for a birthday gift for another friend. We left about 2:30 and went to Wahl’s store, which was George A. Gray Co. then.

“(After shopping) when we came out on Superior Street a terrific wind was blowing and it was very dark. We boarded a streetcar and coming up Piedmont Avenue we met trucks with people on them screaming. Balls of fire were rolling down the avenue, paper and other debris burning. We were frightened and hurried to our homes. (At that point) we hadn’t heard what had happened.

“The wind was so strong you could hardly breathe. I got home and my family was very excited. My mother had died in April so it was my father and five (younger) sisters wondering where to go. People were driving down Piedmont Avenue in trucks and cars, screaming. They had been picked up in Hermantown where everything was on fire.

“Soon a friend of ours called and told us to pack clothes and a little food and be ready to flee down to the bay because Duluth was surrounded by fire and (he said) the bridge crossing to Superior was burning. The Woodland area was also burning. A neighbor came over crying and wringing her hands because her three children were visiting in Lakewood with their grandmother. She didn’t know if they were alive.

“Then we heard they had ordered the people from Twelfth to Tenth streets and the area all around there to vacate. There was so much smoke we could hardly breathe. The rooms were filled with smoke. They called my dad and asked if he would take the grocery truck from where he worked to Hermantown to pick up people. He couldn’t leave us alone.

“(Later in the evening) my younger sisters were sleeping and my dad and I were up watching. About 2 o’clock in the morning the wind died down. We were saved–how thankful we were. My friend and I walked up to Hermantown the next day. What a sight we saw–people weeping standing in front of ash piles that had been their homes…so much sickness,too…the people were dying from the flu. (The fire occurred during the great Spanish flu epidemic.) It was not a pretty sight to see beautiful trees and vegetation all black, but the people were brave and went back to their small farms and started to build again.

“It was a day to remember.”

I have one other family account of that fire. My father (who had not yet met my mother) was in the Army (World War I was winding down), stationed in San Francisco. He knew nothing of the fire in his hometown until newspapers reported it with front page headlines proclaiming such things as “Duluth Leveled By Fire.”

It was some time before he could determine his own parents and siblings back in Duluth had survived, and most of Duluth itself had not burned.

Originally appeared in the Duluth News Tribune on Wednesday, October 12, 1988 

and reprinted in the book by Jim Heffernan, Cooler Near the Lake (2008).

*  To learn more about the 1918 fire... click HERE, HERE and HERE.

Paul Wellstone Fifteen Years Later: Big Shoes to Fill

Today -- Oct. 25 -- is the fifteenth anniversary of the day Sen. Paul Wellstone, members of his family and aides were killed when their plane crashed on the Iron Range. Later that day, Wellstone was scheduled to meet with the Duluth News Tribune editorial board, of which I was a member. When we were informed of the tragedy, I sat down and wrote this column (below), which appeared in the next morning's News Tribune. I reprinted it here on this blog at previous anniversaries but wanted to honor a great man again today. He certainly left us with big shoes to fill.-- Jim

Wellstone Leaves Big Shoes to Fill
by Jim Heffernan
(Originally appeared in the Duluth News Tribune on Saturday, October 26, 2002 and reprinted in my book, Cooler Near the Lake, published in 2008.)

Paul Wellstone gone? Someone so full of life, of exuberance, of zest, of desire to do good by his fellow man–gone in an instant on a drizzly day right here in the Northland? Can't be, you think. But it's all too true.

I knew Wellstone the way a home-state journalist is likely to know a U.S. Senator. Since he was elected to the Senate, we saw him a couple of times a year. He'd come through for a visit with the editorial board, updating us on what was going on in Washington.

Always upbeat, often passionate about what he believed in, the interviews–chats, really–with Wellstone were something we looked forward to. Politics aside, I liked him personally. I admired his resolve to stand up for what he believed in.

I first met Wellstone in 1982 when he ran for Minnesota state auditor–and lost. Aching to be a major player in the liberal political traditions of his adopted state, the then political science professor at Carleton College in Northfield ran for a state constitutional office, probably seeing it as a stepping stone for bigger and better things to come.

I don't think he'd have made much of a state auditor, although he'd have worked at it. The job would have bored him. Wellstone had bigger things churning in that brain–a passion for helping people who need help and a conviction that government should do what it can to make people's lives better. In short, he was a liberal.

The word liberal has become a pejorative in some (conservative) circles. Those who disliked what Wellstone stood for know he was, perhaps, the most liberal member of the Senate. Wellstone wore that label proudly, unashamedly.

On the occasion of another of our editorial board meetings, after he'd been elected to the Senate, the subject of health care came up. Wellstone felt strongly that America's health care system was broken, and of course he was right. It still isn't fixed. In our conversation–four of us around a table–he became so impassioned about the subject that he began to tear up.

The rest of us, all male, became uncomfortable at his emotional display, but I never forgot it. And, reflecting on it, I could see that was what was best about Wellstone. He really felt what he believed in. He truly was a “bleeding-heart liberal” in the finest sense of that often cynical description. The world needs bleeding-heart liberals, and Wellstone filled that bill almost better than anyone else in a position to help shape American policy.

Finally, on another visit with us, I went to the newspaper's lobby to greet him and guide him to our meeting room, and as we walked up the stairs I noticed that his shoes–loafers–were shot. I mean shot. Hobos heating bean cans over fires in railroad yards had better shoes. Long cracks across the top, exposing his socks beneath, shabby soles.

I kidded him about it, saying something like, “A United States senator can't afford decent shoes?”

Wellstone wasn't a bit abashed. He muttered something about not having time to worry about shoes–too much to do and too little time to do it in. I later wrote a column about the senator's shabby shoes, but I never heard from him about it. Still too busy.

We had another editorial board meeting scheduled with Wellstone, this one Friday afternoon, to talk about the newspaper's endorsement in the Senate race this year. An airplane crash intervened. He was dead, along with his wife and daughter and others on the plane.

As the gray day wore on Friday, and details kept pouring in, for some reason my mind kept going back to those tattered shoes. Who will fill them?

No one quite like Paul Wellstone, whose unlikely life journey took him to the place where his death could affect the balance of the U.S. Senate at a time when the nation appears to be poised for a war he opposed, and when so many other issues remain unresolved that need a committed liberal voice.

Life goes on, but for the time being we'd better put it on hold for a truly good man who was more concerned about providing shoes for those who couldn't afford them than what he wore himself.

Click HERE for today's MPR story by Dan Kraker.

The Times They Are A Changin' for sure...

Yes, as Bob Dylan sings (YouTube) in 1964, The Times They Are A-Changin'. They certainly have changed for Bob from the time in 1959 when he witnessed Buddy Holly and other performers (along with me and hundreds of area youth) before "the music died" to today as a Nobel Prize winner of literature. His prophetic song, about change hits home today....

...from Dylan's music web site (link HERE):
Come senators, congressmen/Please heed the call/Don't stand in the doorway/Don't block up the hall/For he that gets hurt/Will be he who has stalled/There's the battle outside raging/It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls/For the times they are a-changing

Funny thing about time, it does change. And yet some things never seem to change.

Originally published on Zenith City Online , June 2014

I'm not receiving any Nobel prizes and my changes are pretty tame. But change is ahead here on my blog too. I'll be writing the same type of stories, recollections and political commentary here as the spirit hits me... but I also will be including the archives of my posts from Zenith City Online beginning in May.

ZCO's creator is Tony Dierckins who is also the original publisher of my book, Cooler Near the Lake. Tony has been a creative force here in the Duluth and surrounding area as he traverses the changing publishing field. We're lucky also to have him preserve our area history on his site and enjoy his books that do the same.  He's a good friend and we share the love of local history.

Tony is changing things up a bit on his web site, Zenith City Online, and will no longer be including posts such as mine on that site. He's encouraging me to include my posts from the ZCO archives here on my blog to preserve their online access.

Published on Zenith City Online in March, 2014

So... beginning sometime in May, I'll be working on incorporating those archived posts and, of course, adding more to my recollections about growing up in the Duluth area, especially Duluth's West End.

Right now, I'm working on a piece about WWI as I recall my father's part one hundred years ago. That's coming up soon right here on my blog. But also stay tuned as I utilize many stories about growing up in Duluth from my writings on ZCO.

Back to hockey after years of hooky...

I’ve been drawn back into the world of ice hockey after a hiatus of 25 years or so. I have three young grandsons now playing the game at the early-stage levels, starting with “squirt” and moving on up the line.

It means I have been attending a few kid hockey games again, bringing back memories of when I went to a lot of kid hockey games when my son, the father of these three up-and-coming Gretzkys, was playing at these same levels.

I’m pleased to say I’m better schooled in the fundamentals of the game now than I was when my education in hockey began as the father of young player. Before that, while I went to a lot of hockey games for social reasons when I was in college, I never paid much attention to the rules of the game, choosing instead to pretend to be interested while scanning the crowd or seriously discussing our frivolous plans after the game.

I wrote a column on my youth hockey experiences, my magnum opus on hockey, in the Duluth News Tribune in 1989 that got picked up in the book of my various columns, Cooler Near the Lake, that was published in 2008. I repeat that column here today. In a fit of shameless self-promotion, I’ll point out that the book, while not as ubiquitous in book stores any more, is still available locally at a couple of local shops, The Bookstore at Fitgers, Duluth Barnes and Noble store and online at: Zenith City Press, Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

You'll find the column below, unabridged, and in my book. And again, stay tuned as I intend to write pretty regularly here once again.

---Jim

The Game of Hockey Is a Lot Like Life–Stupid   

By Jim Heffernan

      

Heaven knows I try to keep up with what’s going on when I watch hockey, but it’s a fast game, and most of the time I don’t know why the referee or linesman or other guy in striped shirt blows the whistle, so I ask somebody and when they tell me I feel stupid.

I didn’t grow up playing or watching hockey and never paid that much attention to the rules of the game, so with hockey it’s like I’m from China or Mars or somewhere. I don’t know things other men seem to know about the game and when I ask and they have to tell me I feel stupid.

Oh, it’s pretty easy to follow hockey in a surface way–bunch of skaters in dark jerseys try to maneuver the puck past a bunch of skaters in light jerseys and put it in a mesh net protected by a “goaltender.” But a lot can happen along the way, and when they blow the whistle to stop the action I don’t know why so I have to ask somebody and when they tell me I feel stupid.

Or if they don’t stop the game, but the other people in the crowd begin to holler at the ref that he missed something I missed but I don’t know what he missed, I feel stupid.

It’s easy for guys who have been patrons of the game of hockey all their lives to recognize infractions of the rules, but how’s somebody like me who doesn’t know cross checking from butt ending supposed to know when they’re doing it? Then, if I ask somebody, I feel stupid.

I’m getting better. I used to wonder about things like “off side” and “icing” and when I’d ask someone what happened (“Why’d they blow the whistle?”), they’d explain what an off side is or what icing is and when I didn’t really catch on they’d think I’m stupid. 

But I’ve got those down good now–so good that, when I see the puck go all the way from one end of the ice to the other and the official blows his whistle, I mutter “icing” to the person next to me who gives me a look that has “so what else is new?” written all over it, and I feel stupid.

Same thing with “off sides.” After years of inquiring, I finally learned that they’re off side when the skater crosses the “blue” line ahead of the puck, so I’m pretty quick to show off my knowledge by hollering “off side” when it happens, but nobody else does because it’s so obvious and then I feel stupid.

After years of watching hockey games, I still have trouble figuring out which penalties are which. The referee has certain hand signals that other people recognize as signals for such offenses as high sticking, hooking or slashing, but I don’t know which signal is which, and when I have to ask somebody what the penalty was, I feel stupid.

I don’t think I’ll ever really understand what they mean by “forechecking” but sometimes when I watch the game on TV and they interview a sweaty, breathless player at the end and ask him, “What was it that turned the game around for you guys?” and the player says, “We forechecked well,” I always wonder how I could have watched a whole game and not noticed, and right there in my living room I feel stupid.

Hockey announcers are always making me feel stupid. When they describe the action on audio they see things I’m not seeing on video, like where the puck is going on the ice–places like “the slot” and “the point,” which are not marked on the ice, although “the crease” is, and they’re not talking about pressed breezers, which I thought for a long time, and when I found out the hard way–by asking–what it really was, I felt stupid.

There are certain things I understand about hockey, but then everybody understands them because how could you miss them? Like “charging.” Your kid (your kid is why you see all this hockey in the first place) goes on the road for a weekend series and you have to stay in a hotel for two nights and you pull out your Master Card and put the weekend on it, that’s charging, and when I do it I feel stupid.

Sometimes as I watch the frustration the hockey players experience in chasing that little black puck around a slippery surface while being knocked around by other people just for trying to achieve a goal, I think of hockey as a metaphor for life, because the same things happen to you when you try to accomplish anything–there’s always somebody in your way to knock you off balance and stop you from reaching your goal–­and when my mind wanders down those philosophical pathways I miss something on the ice like “hooking” or “slashing” and I ask somebody what happened and when they tell me I feel stupid.

Originally appeared in the Duluth News Tribune on Sunday, Feb. 26, 1989

Day of JFK assassination still a vivid memory...

By Jim Heffernan

Someone said on National Public Radio this week that very few journalists who were working when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated are still active today, the 50^th anniversary of the tragedy.

I’m not as active as I used to be, but I’m still doing some writing, including for this blog. When Kennedy was murdered, I had been a working journalist for just over a month, which I recounted in a column for the Duluth News Tribune back on the 30^th anniversary of the assassination. That column, which was included in my book Cooler Near the Lake, is reprinted here (see below).

I can add a couple of experiences I had on that momentous day that are not included in that column. When I arrived for my afternoon shift at the Duluth Herald & News Tribune, a “cub” reporter if there ever was one, the newsroom was chaotic. Assigning editors were frantic to “localize” the story, since Kennedy had visited Duluth just two months before.

I was given two assignments: Check WDSM-TV and Radio, sponsors of the annual Christmas City of the North Parade, to determine if that night’s parade would be canceled, and then call mayors of Northeastern Minnesota cities and towns for a reaction to the news of the president’s death.

Taking first things first, I contacted WDSM, which, at the time was owned by the same company that owned the newspapers. The parade would go on as scheduled, I was told. I was flabbergasted.

But WDSM and its TV Channel 6 came to its senses within a short time, calling back to announce that the parade would be canceled after all. Thus they missed their chance at the national spotlight: “As nation mourns, Duluth holds festive holiday parade,” the headline might have been.

So much for that. My second assignment, calling as many area mayors as I could reach, wasn’t much more successful. The reason? They all said pretty much the same thing, summarized here:

Question: Mr. Mayor, what is your reaction to the assassination of President Kennedy?

Universal answer: This is a terrible tragedy. I’m shocked.

Years later I looked up the News Tribune of Nov. 23, 1963, to see what I had written. Buried deep inside the paper is a short article about the reaction of area mayors, naming several expressing their shock at the terrible tragedy.

Now here’s what I wrote 30 years later about another aspect of my role as a working journalist on that fateful day.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~                           

JFK: Four Presidential Assassinations in Three Generations

By Jim Heffernan

Originally appeared in the Duluth News Tribune on Sunday, November 21, 1993 
and reprinted in the book, Cooler Near the Lake, by Jim Heffernan in November, 2008

My paternal grandfather, whose life overlapped mine by just two years, was 10 years old when Lincoln was assassinated. In my grandfather’s lifetime, two other presidents also were murdered–James Garfield in 1881 and William McKinley in 1901. My father was born 29 years after the Lincoln assassination–a year short of the time that has now elapsed since President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed 30 years ago tomorrow.

In my father’s lifetime, two presidents were assassinated: McKinley near the beginning of his life, and Kennedy near the end. He was too young to remember much about McKinley, and I broke the news to him about Kennedy.

Why all this ancient history now? Aside from this being the anniversary of the JFK assassination, it shows that such acts are not quite as rare as we tend to think. Four murdered American presidents in three generations of one family is taking them out at quite a rate.

The day Kennedy was shot, I had been a working journalist for 35 days, counting weekends. Call it a month’s experience. Labeling me a journalist at that stage of my career is extravagant. But my title was reporter, and proud of it.

Everyone over five or six years of age on Nov. 22, 1963, remembers what they were doing when they heard Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. A few of us get to share those memories publicly. I share mine to recall my failure to do what I should have done as a newspaper reporter on what was arguably the biggest breaking news story of the century.

I was asleep when the assassination occurred. Working nights on the morning Duluth News Tribune, I had already slipped into the out late, sleep late lifestyle of my fellow nightside journalists. So I was still in bed, sound asleep, about 35 minutes past noon that Friday when the ringing of the telephone jolted me awake. It was my aunt, Elsa, who had been watching “As the World Turns” when the soap opera was interrupted with a bulletin that shots had been fired at the president. I clicked on our TV, and CBS had returned to “As the World Turns,” but not for long. Within a moment of my tuning in, Walker Cronkite was there in his shirtsleeves confirming that shots had been fired from a grassy knoll and the president’s limousine had sped away.

Here are some of my thoughts: “Wow! Big story. Wonder if they know about it down at the paper. You’re a reporter, check and see. Don’t be silly–of course the newspaper knows. They’d think I was stupid to call and be mad I interrupted them.”

My father was at work as a photo engraver at the newspaper, so I decided to call him. By then it must have been about 12:50 p.m. When my father answered, I said something like, ‘Boy, big story about Kennedy getting shot, huh?” I phrased it so that, if he already knew, it wouldn’t seem like I thought I was breaking the news. But I breaking the news. Busy working on the evening Duluth Herald, he said he’d heard nothing about it in the third-floor engraving department.

That made me wonder if I really should call the second-floor newsroom. If they didn’t know about it in other parts of the building, maybe the news editors didn’t know either. But I didn’t call.

I should have called the first time. The Herald used to go to press about noon. A normal Friday edition was humming off the press when the assassination occurred. The Associated Press was on top of the story, but they couldn’t get printed information out on the wire as quickly as TV networks could interrupt with bulletins.

By the time the Herald editors finally received a written bulletin on the wire and literally stopped the presses (the only time in 30 years I’ve seen that happen), it was about 1 p.m. or shortly after. An hour later, when I arrived for my work shift, I was told that if I had called at, say, 12:40, it would have saved thousands of papers and precious minutes preparing a new Herald for that day. “I wish you had called,” lamented the news editor. The papers already run off were scrapped and the edition started over with the assassination dominating the front page.

That’s my story of the day Kennedy was shot.  I’d been in the newspaper business a month and in my own way I had already blown the assassination of a president. Some reporter. Some future.