Five Pages a Day (3 page)

This was not a common goal for a girl growing up in the Midwest in the 1950s. I had never met an author. Since we had no TV, I'd never seen author interviews. Writing instruction in school consisted of lessons in grammar and sentence construction, not creative writing.

Girls were expected to marry and raise families. After my button article was published, I wondered if it might be possible to do both. Could I be a wife and mother
and
an author? I wasn't sure. My mother had never worked outside our home; only one of my friends had a mother with a job.

Besides writing for the
Sentinel
, I volunteered to help with the school yearbook, the
Austinian
. There wasn't much artistic writing involved, but I often stayed after school to do extra work—helping with layouts or writing photo captions. I even sold advertising to local businesses.

Toward the end of my junior year, I had to choose whether to be on the staff of the
Sentinel
or the
Austinian
during my senior year. I chose the
Austinian
because I thought I had a good chance of being named editor. What an honor that would be! Because of my hard work and dedication, I felt I deserved the position, and I looked forward to the day when the announcement would be made.

I rushed into the room that day and read the posted announcement.
Editor: Gary Eppen. Associate Editor: Peg Schulze
.

After I congratulated my friend Gary, I tried to figure out why he was selected. I decided that he must be more competent and smarter than I was, as well as a better writer.

Many years later, when I returned to my high school as a guest speaker, I confided my long-ago disappointment to a former teacher who had come to hear my talk. She told me, “But you could never have been the yearbook editor. Back then they always chose a boy.”

Indignation streaked through me like a shooting star.

Perhaps Gary would have been picked anyway—certainly he did a fine job as editor—but it was so unfair. No matter how hard I worked or how good my work was, I could never have been chosen as the editor just because I was a girl.

The sting of not being selected was soothed when I landed my first summer job. Except for a few evenings spent baby-sitting, I had never earned any money, but I was determined to collect my own pay that summer.

All my classmates, plus the graduating seniors and the college students who were home for the summer, were also looking for summer work, so the competition was fierce. Who would hire a girl with no experience and no skills?

Instead of reading the Help Wanted ads, as my friends were doing, I thought about where I would most like to work. I decided that since I wanted to be a writer, the logical job for me would be at the local newspaper.

Gathering up my courage, I walked into the offices of the
Austin Daily Herald
and said I was seeking summer employment. To my amazement, one of the newspaper's owners, Geraldine Rasmussen, agreed to interview me. Mrs. Rasmussen asked why I thought I was qualified to work at the
Herald
.

“I'm not,” I admitted, “but I wrote for the school newspaper, and I'm on the staff of the yearbook. I like to read and write.”

She asked for some personal references. I gulped. Except for my parents, I couldn't think of a single person who would recommend me for a job of any kind.

“What about your English teacher,” Mrs. Rasmussen suggested, “or the teacher who supervises the
Sentinel?
”

I gave both names.

“Wait here,” she said. She went to the next room, and I knew she was making a phone call. When she returned she asked, “Have you ever done any proof-reading?”

“Yes,” I replied. “We always proofread the
Sentinel
before it gets printed, and I helped proof-read the
Austinian.
”

She nodded. “I need someone to proofread the
Herald,
” she said. “When can you start?”

“Me?” I asked. “You want to hire
me
?”

She managed not to laugh at my astonishment. “Your teachers recommend you highly.”

She told me what hours I would work, and what my pay would be. Elated, I agreed.

I had a job! And not just any old job; I was working at the
Austin Daily Herald
. A newspaper! My feet skimmed the sidewalk as I raced home with the news.

I never found out which of my teachers Mrs. Rasmussen called or what they told her. I can only marvel that she trusted an inexperienced sixteen-year-old to do a job that many adults couldn't handle.

My duty as proofreader was to read the entire newspaper before it went to press and make sure there weren't any mistakes. I read every word of the news stories, the feature stories, the garden club announcements, the classified ads, the sports page, and the obituaries.

I read carefully, with a dictionary close by. I learned a lot about my town that summer, and I also learned the importance of accuracy.

For the first three weeks of the summer, I spotted every error in time to have it corrected. Then one day I missed a mistake, and it got published.

When I arrived at work the next day, Mrs. Rasmussen was waiting for me. She handed me seven telephone messages—all pointing out that in yesterday's paper the word
accused
was spelled wrong. A copy of the paper lay open on my desk, with the error circled in red.
Accussed
, it said, right there on page six

I knew there was only one
s
in
accused
, even without using the dictionary. How could I have missed something so obvious?

Humiliated, I apologized for my carelessness and promised to do better. Then I held my breath and stared at my shoes, expecting to be fired.

To my vast relief, Mrs. Rasmussen smiled. “Only one mistake in over three weeks is extraordinary,” she told me. “Keep up the good work.”

I gaped at her. “I get to stay?”

“You're the best proofreader I've had in years,” she replied. “I'll be sorry when school starts and you have to leave. I hope you'll want to come back next summer.”

Praise is a far better motivator than shame. Because I wanted Geraldine Rasmussen's high opinion of my work, I diligently read and reread every word of the
Austin Daily Herald
each day, frequently checking my dictionary. I was determined never, ever to let another mistake slip past my watchful eyes.

The paper was perfect for the rest of the summer.

{ 4 }

Commercials, Cats, and Carl

M
y senior year blew past like dry leaves on a windy day. Gary and I worked well together, laughed a lot, and were both proud of the 1954
Austinian
.

By April, with graduation fast approaching, my classmates and I began looking for jobs again. For some, it would now be permanent work. For me, it was another summer job, until I started college.

I planned to call Mrs. Rasmussen and ask for the proofreading job back, but a teacher told me that the local radio station, KAUS, needed someone to write commercials. The station manager had called the school to ask about potential writers, and the teacher thought I would be a good candidate for the job.

I made an appointment for Saturday morning. I ironed my white blouse and dark green skirt, polished my saddle shoes, curled my hair, and tried to look more confident than I felt.

The only thing I remember about the job interview is my excitement at being inside a radio station. This was even better than a newspaper office!

The manager must have asked me questions and I must have answered them, but our conversation has fled my memory. I do remember that before I left KAUS that day, I had agreed to work for two hours after school and three hours every Saturday morning until I graduated. Then I would work full-time all summer until I left in September for the University of Minnesota.

My friends were bowled over by the news. Most of them had jobs scooping ice cream or lifeguarding at the community pool or taking tickets at the Paramount Theater. I loved telling people that I worked as a writer at the radio station. It sounded so sophisticated.

At KAUS, I acquired skills that would serve me well for the rest of my life. I learned to write quickly. The station used a lot of commercials every day, so there was a constant demand for new material.

I also learned to make something out of nothing. The salesmen who sold radio ads to local businesses often didn't tell me much about what was being advertised. It was common for them to hand me a scrap of paper on which a few words were scrawled.

One note, written on the back of a paper napkin, said, “Sale shoes Wall Sat.”

This meant that Wallace's Department Store would have a sale on shoes, starting Saturday. It also meant that I was expected to write words so clever and compelling about shoes that everyone in the KAUS listening audience would rush to be at Wallace's Saturday morning, cash in hand.

I needed a constant stream of fresh ideas, and I invented a technique to help generate them. I called this trick “Five Minutes of Nonstop Writing.” I still use it and recommend it to students.

I discovered that if I wrote as quickly as possible, without stopping, for at least five minutes, I always thought of an idea that could become a commercial. I bought a kitchen timer and took it to work. I would set the timer for five minutes, and as soon as it began ticking, my fingers flew across the typewriter keys. Sometimes I began by typing, “I don't know what to say; I don't know what to say,” but no matter how desperate I was for words, I would not let myself quit typing until that timer rang.

It worked every time. When the five minutes ended, I'd have the germ of an idea that could be worked into a thirty-second or sixty-second commercial.

I wrote about cars, mattresses, clothing, and appliances. I wrote about mortgages and pet food. I made up jingles and invented dialogue.

One ad for a sale on shampoo began like this: “Here is an important warning from the Poetry Association of KAUS.

The thick white flakes are falling

though there is no storm alert;

those drifts are quite appalling:

they're dandruff on your shirt!”

I found the station's supply of taped sound effects and began adding instructions for background noises of thunder, slamming doors, and howling winds. These sound effects often gave me ideas for new commercials.

One ad opened with the sound of barking dogs. The barking faded into the background as the announcer said, “There are bargains to bark about this week at Cleveland Hardware. You'll howl with happiness when you see the prices on new refrigerators, and best of all, you don't need a license to take advantage of this sale. Be the first in your pack to sniff out the low prices.” The commercial ended with more barking.

My simple word plays and silly ideas made people chuckle, and the commercials got rerun many times.

The more I wrote, the more confident I became, and the more I loved the work. It was great to get a paycheck every Friday, but I was having so much fun that the money quickly became secondary to the writing.

While I felt like a beginner, the salesmen, the announcers, the secretary, and the one full-time writer all treated me as if I belonged in their elite group. They expected me to do well, and I tried my best to deserve their confidence.

I began the job as an inexperienced high school senior. When I left for the University of Minnesota that fall, I was a competent and prolific writer.

During my high school years, I began a friendship with a boy named Carl Kehret (pronounced
carrot)
. I met Carl when I agreed to sell barbecued hamburgers, called lushburgers, at my church's stand at the county fair. He had signed up to work at the same time. We liked each other immediately, and when our shift ended we strolled the fair-grounds together, picking up discarded glass pop bottles to be recycled.

We began to date. He had an old Plymouth car with a horn that went “Oooga-oooga.” He often cruised past my house and tooted that horn. He sometimes arrived in one of the milk delivery trucks from his dad's dairy, and occasionally he showed up on horseback. Once he clattered down the street perched on a large yellow tractor. I never knew what to expect, and that was one of the reasons I liked him.

He attended college one hundred miles from home while I was still in high school, but our friendship continued in letters and weekend visits. Although I dated a few other boys, they never measured up to Carl. I asked him to come home from college to take me to the junior prom, and again for my senior prom.

Each summer, and during his winter and spring breaks, we spent more time with each other. We played golf, took long drives, had picnics, and went to movies.

One afternoon he drove me to his family's dairy farm and parked beside the cow pasture.

“It's time you learned about cows,” he told me.

We walked to the center of the pasture and sat down in the grass. “Hold still and don't say any thing,” Carl whispered.

We sat silently. Soon the curious cows approached, swishing their tails and watching us with big brown eyes. Before long, we were completely circled by beautiful Golden Guernseys who munched the grass, stared at us, and mooed softly.

I was enchanted, both by the cows and by the young man who had given me such a unique experience.

We never ran out of things to talk about, and because we had the same sense of humor, we laughed a lot, too.

Late one night I heard music outside my bedroom window. When I looked out, I saw Carl in my front yard with an old wind-up phonograph. As he cranked the handle, it played a recording of the song “Peg O' My Heart.” What girl wouldn't fall in love?

By the time I finished high school, we knew we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together, and at the end of my freshman year in college, we got married. I was eighteen years old; he was twenty-one.

Once married, it seemed vital for me to cook and keep house, but unnecessary to earn a college degree. Girls at that time were expected to be homemakers, and that's what I decided to be. When I thought about writing, it seemed an impossible fantasy.