(Editor’s Note: Jim Beam has a tendon problem on his right hand and will publish some columns from the past until it heals).
Sept. 18, 1994
Anytime people get an overblown sense of their importance in the overall scheme of things, there is usually someone around to bring them back down to earth.
Rex Miller Jr., a former colleague and classmate of mine, was the resident wit in our newsroom for a number of years. He helped us keep things on an even keel. Miller lost a lifelong battle against multiple sclerosis (MS) recently, and I remembered the man for his courage and clever way with words.
We attended McNeese State University after LaGrange High School graduation, where Miller became editor of the college newspaper. I served two years with the U.S. Army after graduating from McNeese and then taught school.
Eventually, Miller and I ended up in the American Press newsroom.
Whenever Miller saw the humor in a news event, he put it down on paper. It wasn’t for public consumption, but it made great in-house reading.
I collected much of what Miller wrote and filed it away. After attending his funeral services, I pulled out a folder with his name on it and laughed all over again.
Here’s part of a story he wrote after I appeared on local television and radio news shows.
“Jim Beam, American Press city editor, is reportedly considering a career in show business after what he termed ‘smash successes’ on local television and radio programs.”
“Beam neglected to say that his TV appearance lost out in the ratings to a Leo Gorcey (‘Our Gang’) film festival, and that his radio guest spot ran third to one station’s live coverage of a Home Demonstration Club meeting and another station’s broadcast of the 109th anniversary celebrations of the Zulu uprising in the Congo.”
“ ‘What the h—, chickie baby,’ said Beam, who has taken up the language of show business ‘You can’t win ‘em all. But that star image is there. That’s what counts, baby’”
“Beam has reportedly been going to a man’s hair stylist and buying expensive tailored suits.”
Miller had a field day poking good-natured fun at Gene Dolan’s efforts to build local birdhouses for Purple Martins. He typed up a fictitious flyer proclaiming Purple Martin Day, which touted the following:
“See a bearded Gene Dolan dive from a speeding plane at 5,000 feet —without a parachute — and be carried gently to earth by a flock of Purple Martins. Celebrations are void if Martins don’t show up.”
Miller wrote a speech for me that was the culmination of a hoax played on members of the Louisiana Tarpon Fishing Club.
Russell Tritico Sr. and Red Kohnke were members of that club and they cooked up the scheme. Bill McMahon, another colleague of mine, and I showed up in Baton Rouge at the club’s state convention posing as marine biologists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Falmouth, Maine.
Our wives went along on the day-long masquerade, and club members swallowed it hook, line and sinker.
The speech Miller put together was titled, “The Migration, Feeding and Breeding Habits of Tarpon.”
There was mention of our laboratory imitating the breeding call of tarpon which “sent whole schools of tarpon into — if you will pardon the expression —into sexual rages.”
“We intend to employ this method on the Louisiana Gulf Coast this summer, and the result will be thousands of baby tarpon next year.”
I told the group that tarpon actually lived off sand crabs, which they caught by crawling up on the beach at night.
The hoax ended abruptly when I mentioned that tarpon had been caught in 1907 as far north as Alexandria in the Red River. An elderly gentleman who had been a longtime weighmaster at fishing rodeos had heard all he could take.
“That’s a lie,” he said as he jumped out of his chair.
I never got to say that Jonah’s whale in the Bible might have been an oversized tarpon. However, Miller’s superb writing effort had carried me a long way. No one seemed offended by the deception.
Anytime I get too wrapped up in the news business and stressed out by the nature of the work, I try to remember people like Rex Miller who always had a little humor at the right time, a great leveling influence.