Rare as Turtle Fangs

The great Wallace Tripp says illustrators are just word people who to happen to also draw:  “We work with one foot in a book, the other stuck in a paint pot; our shoes are a disgrace." I think of him here on National Columnists Day, so chosen because April 18th, 1945  was when legendary war correspondent Ernie Pyle was caught in some crossfire on an island off  Okinawa. He was a word person if ever the was one, his dispatches going out to over 300 newspapers on the home front. They buried him in his helmet.Tripp also says "genius is as rare as turtle fangs, but talent is common enough" and I get that completely. For sure I’m no genius and even if I have talent it’s no more than the kind all humans have,  born story-tellers that we are - though I will say my pals on the board of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists are the wittiest people I know. I keep wanting to stop and copy down all the funny things that come across my screen during our online board meetings. I’ve been doing a weekly column for 30 years and sometimes boast about how I’ve never missed a deadline. The real pros though? They write three or four or five times a week. Like San Francisco’s Herb Caen did,  or Chicago’s Mike Royko. Did Molly Ivins write that often? Even if she wrote only  once a week you were glad you were there to see what she said: “The first rule of holes: when you're in one, stop digging" is one of hers. Also, “As they say around the Texas Legislature, if you can't drink their whiskey, screw their women, take their money, and vote against  'em anyway, you don't belong in office.”All I ever did was stay the same person I was at age two when I set out alone in the big city to find my sister at kindergarten. I still go out each day wide-eyed, eager to see whatever I can see so I can come back and tell you all about it. This blog I’ll keep up for as long as I can but the column I will never stop writing so bury me in my helmet too and say I died in the line of duty.

Tonight I'll lift a glass to fellow Smithie Molly, gone from us too soon