Milo Sorghum: A long way from Brawley

The saga of milo sorghum: Part 1

Milo Sorghum was born in a sugar beet field south of Brawley in 1961. In the shadow of the white, steamy smoke of the Holly Sugar mill, he took shape when a fledgling farm reporter sought him out.

The newsman's boss, eager for a photograph to illustrate the coming harvest had called the reporter over and suggested he go out and take a picture of milo.

"Milo who?'' the reporter asked.

"Milo Sorghum,'' the editor replied, careful not to break a smile.

"Where can I find him?" the reporter countered.

"Probably in a field near the Holly Sugar plant,'' his boss answered.

Armed with that information and a 120-millimeter Japanese copy of a Rolleiflex camera, the reporter set out in search of Milo Sorghum.

He drove his little blue French sedan up and down the roads south of town until he spotted it -- a weathered trailer on blocks in the middle of a field of green cornlike plants. He trudged across the field, knocked on the trailer's door and was greeted by a grizzled old man holding a coffee cup.

"Is this where Milo lives?'' the newsman inquired.

"What?" the old man asked.

"Well, my boss told me to get a picture of Milo and that he lived in a field out here by Holly Sugar," the reporter explained.

A grin spread across the old man's face and he said:

"Well, in a manner of speaking, I guess Milo does live here."

"Then are you Milo?'' the perplexed reporter asked.

"Naw, but you found him,'' the old man replied with a chuckle. "Milo's all around you right now. That's what this here grain plant is called milo sorghum. It's a hybrid feed grain."

So the reporter talked the old man into standing beside the trailer door, backed up a ways and shot a photograph of the man and milo sorghum.

A second crop of Milo

Years passed and the razzing the reporter had taken in the newsroom was forgotten. During his time in the Valley, the reporter learned a bit about farming and its ins and outs. He spent time with braceros, the contract workers from Mexico; the migrating farmworkers who moved up the coast harvesting crop after crop; the foremen; farm owners and farm scientists from the universities and state and federal government.

So it was natural some years later when he had moved along to a big daily newspaper on the coast that he be tapped to put together the paper's weekly farm page.

At the time, his main job involved four days on the road, digging up features for the paper's county pages and filling in when reporters went on vacation. One day a week he worked on the paper's county desk and for part of that day, he assumed the de facto farm editor's mantle.

It was a snap of a job. The main farm writer was a man who had been hired by the paper after selling a small chain of weeklies. Most of the week he served as a publisher's representative at one of the county offices. But one day a week, he used the expertise he had gained through a career of writing about farming. There were pictures taken by the staff photographers and stories and photos from various news and feature services.

The editor's job was to put it all together in the two or three pages that were provided for farm news.

The only problem was that the advertising dummies -- miniature page layouts showing where advertisements were to be run, thereby indicating what space the editor had for his news and features -- were always coming in late.

Since the farm page duties were among the editor's last of the day, this put him in a crunch for time and cut into the time he could spend at the Press Room bar with his fellow newsies.

Knowing the dummie came from the advertising department, the editor decided he should call someone and ask if the layouts of the farm pages could be provided a bit earlier each week.

So without counsel of his superiors, the editor took it upon himself to call the advertising department and see if he could straighten things out.

Figuring his best chance of success was to employ the brusque, imperious tone of someone used to getting his way, our hero started out:

"I'm calling about the ad dummies for the farm pages. They're late again and this is just not acceptable. Can't someone do something about this? We're really tired of them being late every week."

His approach and the technique of leaving almost no time for response seemed to be working as he received a series of "uhs" and "ers."

Then the person asked the editor to wait a moment; that someone who could help would be with him in a moment.

The second person, a deep-voiced man of some apparent authority, was understanding and said he was sure something could be done. Then the man asked who was calling.

Caught in the headlights, the editor managed not to stammer before replying: "The farm editor."

The ad man explained that he was the advertising manager for the newspaper and that he would see that the dummies were there on time every week.

"That's great,'' the editor said. "I'll send a copy clerk over to get them.''

"Not necessary," the advertising manager said. "I'll send them up with an advertising salesman."

The editor, bubbling with victory, said that would be great.

That is when things went dark for him.

"Who should I tell him to ask for?" the ad man asked.

There was a pause as the editor tried to regain his composure; caught in his own trap he couldn't give his real name, lowly peon he was. Then in a moment of inspired idiocy, he blurted:

"Milo. Milo Sorghum."

When the big day came the following week, our hero had arranged to work in the office so he could see if the farm page dummies truly arrived on time. Sure enough, shortly after lunch, several hours before they were due, an advertising salesman in a natty suit arrived and handed them to someone on the copy desk.

Smug in victory, the editor relaxed and began working on a story he was writing.

That's when someone on the copy desk stood up, holding a hand over the telephone receiver and shouted:

"Anyone here named Milo? Milo Sorghum?"

Deciding he could not fit under the desk, our hero shouted out that although Milo was out, he would be glad to take the call.

It was the ad manager.

"Just wanted to touch base with you, Milo, and make sure everything worked out well," he said.
"If you have any trouble in the future, just give me a call.''

But Milo never had to call again.

(Next: Milo returns to the Valley.)

Bleu Pierre: A Mid-life Surge, The Final Days

Life in Ontario for Bleu Pierre started with the realization that it was not nearly as hot for a car built in France as his previous domaine in the Imperial Valley. There was also an absence of sand storms, which made the heart of his little 36-horsepower engine purr with delight.

It was shortly after the family arrived in Ontario that Pierre made a new friend. Al the Dutchman was the husband of the bookkeeper at pere's new place of business, The DailyReport. In addition, Al ran a service station and specialized in keeping all the cars driven by his wife's co-workers running.

Pierre liked the way Al treated him, particularly since his new friend was the first person who seemed to know what made him tick and why he had so much trouble with his engines.

"Turns out the reason you've been wearing out so many engines so quickly can be blamed on that accident you had when you first got this little fellow,'' Al told pere, taking time out for a puff on his ever-present pipe."Knocked him out of whack, putting an angle in the drive line...Kinda like pulling it to one side all the time. No wonder he had so much trouble. He was running down the road like a dog.''

Pere was pleased; perhaps he could drive Pierre for more than 15,000 miles before changing another engine.

"One more thing,'' Al said after another puff from the pipe. "That's a 1959 model, last of the line. Renault kinda cheaped out on it. pointing to a cap atop Pierre's engine. "That has a few holes around the edges and is the only place the engine can vent from its crankcase...Earlier models had a second vent, a pipe, on the side kinda like a Chevy or Ford.

"That added to your problem. All that pressure the poor little guy had to suffer through.''

After a few hours of work, Pierre was almost a new car; he drove down the road straight as he had when he rolled off the French assembly line and his bad case of auto asthma had cleared up, too.

Everything went well for several months, but then his latest engine which had suffered damage earlier from his two now-cured maladies died.

Al suggested that instead of replacing the latest blown engine with a new one from the Renault factory, he look around and see what he could find. What he came up with was a step up from the original, a Dauphine engine rated at 53 horsepower.

It took a little tinkering to fit the bigger engine into the rear compartment, but when it was done, Pierre was transformed from a mild-mannered little family car that putt-putted around town to a snarling tiger capable of sailing along with the best of the sports cars.

About this time, Pere was asked to be editor of the company's newspaper in Victorville. After the family had moved to nearby Hesperia, Bleu Pierre became a regular sight on the back road between home and the office.

His favorite trip, however, involved the back road from Hesperia to the bottom of the Cajon Pass. Pere would push the little blue car and its beefed up engine to new speeds around the tight curves of the two-lane road. For a time Pierre was convinced his driver was training for a grand prix.

During this period, Pierre made frequent trips down the Cajon Pass and across the vineyards back to Ontario when his owner needed to return to the headquarters. His most important trip down the hill, and perhaps his fastest, was on a Tuesday morning in 1962 when he carried the family down the hill to a hospital in Upland in record time -- 70 miles in 70 minutes.

He was racing the stork and almost did not make it. The youngest member of the family, a jeune fille, arrived while pere was parking the car after dropping maman off at the emergency room.

After that, Pierre found himself a work-a-day commuter, carrying pere to the office and home. But most weekends and evenings, he was left in the garage while the family drove about in a much larger, and in Pierre's opinion much more common, American built stationwagon.

Sadly, the family had outgrown him.

It wasn't long before Pierre's travels with the family dwindled in number. Finally, when Pere decided to return to the Ontario paper and move the family back down the hill, Pierre found himself relegated to a rented trailer for the trip. The insult was added to as some friends of pere's managed to drop him as he was being loaded. It was his first ding.

A few months later, depressed and seldom driven, Pierre was somewhat encouraged when pere decided he should be sold to another, smaller family.

His Gallic reasoning kicked in: Perhaps he would run into someone like Jamie who would run along side him in the early morning mists in a city.

A much more civilized existence, n'est-ce pas?

Bleu Pierre: The Desert Years

Bleu Pierre made his way to the desert wastelands in a hot summer day in 1960, carrying Pere Tisserant and the rest of the Weaver family from the chill of the coast into the oven of a Valley.

His first adventure involved driving from his spot at the curb in front of the four-cabin court the family called home to the Brawley News. Although a relatively uneventful trip, early in his time in the Valley Pierre encountered the crickets. Millions of them covered the streets, sidewalks and circled the streetlights at night.

It wasn't long until, his outings lengthened. Regular visits to El Centro, Westmoreland, Calipatria and Niland gave way to an occasional dash to the coast to escape the summer heat and up to Julian and Ramona to visit the family's relatives.

Toward the end of that first summer, Pierre and the family made their first visit to Mexico. It was no weekend pleasure trip but rather part of a complicated program that involved most of the newsies who worked and lived in Brawley. The drive was known as "The Booze Run.''

Each newsie involved in the run would volunteer every month or six weeks to drive to Mexicali and load up and drive to San Luis and up to the Arizona checkpoint, where the legal limit of liquor was one gallon for each U.S. citizen. (In California in those days, no liquor could be brought into California.) Since there was no differentiation betwen adults and children, the family was allowed to bring four gallons across the border.

Pierre got used to being packed with an assortment of Mexican booze -- tequila, Kahlua, various liquors and half-gallon jugs of Oso Negro vodka and gin (complete with the little black bear key chain on each bottle). As the runs continued and Pere became friends with the liquor store owner, extra items including miniature bottles of various liquors, fancy shot glasses and sacks of tiny limes were added to the cargo.

Everything went well for Pierre until the following summer when he was headed back to Brawley from El Centro. He felt hot and then everything just seized up. His aluminum engine had melted into a useless block of metal. In short order a new engine was installed and he felt much better.

Since Pierre was running so well, Pere decided to improve the appearance of his Renault. Pierre was driven to a small upholstery shop in Mexicali, near the state capitol building of Baja California. There with the mastery of Spanish he had developed in three years of classes at Grossmont High School, Pere launched into a conversation with the shop owner.

It was evident shortly that Pere's Spanish was about as sufficient as was the English of the upholsterer. Attempting to suggest the job be taken on the following week, Pere said: "Otra semana.'' This comment of "other week'' did little to help. Finally, after several minutes of talk that would have sent a United Nations translator out for a beer, Pere noticed a calendar on the wall. Taking down the calendar and gesturing to the time he wanted the work done, Pere was able to get through to the upholsterer.

Although Pierre's work was not done on the date promised by the shop, it turned out to be quite an improvement -- a two-tone blue naugahyde -- over the stock gray.

So proud of the new interior were Pere and the family they decided to take Pierre on a run to the coast to show it off at the relatives'.

About 10 miles west of Seeley on Highway 80, in a stinging sand storm Pierre coughed and sputtered and coasted to a stop. He felt awful. Pere raised the hood, took a beer from the ice chest, closed the hood and went around the car to the engine compartment.

"Obviously something to do with the fuel system,'' he intoned with knowing emphasis. "I remember something like this happening to my '34 Ford on Grossmont Hill,'' he added. ''Nothing to it, just a vapor lock. Fixed it by putting wooden clothes pins on the gas line.''

Maman reminded Pere the family had left its clothes pins on the line back in Brawley.

Pere took another sip of beer and shielding his eyes from the sand, decided it was time for some serious action. Using the official Renault tool kit that came with Pierre, Pere loosened the bolts holding the carburetor to the intake manifold and lifted it out.

Inside the car, he took the carburetor apart, trying to appear he knew what he was doing. Fortunately for him, the carburetor of the 4CV was relatively simple. He continued fumbling with it until a needle shaped piece fell into his had. Behind it, there was a mesh screen.

He pulled that out, too, and blew through the needle valve and the screen, hoping this might have something to do with the problem. After the carburetor was reassembled and back in place, Pierre seemed to want to start, but didn't. The battery was dead.

"Aha,'' Pere exclaimed, closing the engine cover and returning to the front compartment where he got another beer and the handy, dandy combination wheel wrench-crank.

He took another sip of beer, extended the wheel wrench-crank into crank position, fed it through the handy hold in the grille and into the engine. After one twist which ended with a solid jolt and back bounce that bruised Pere's arm and sent a series of expletives flying, Pere counted to dix and cranked it again, starting Pierre.

From that time on Pere was difficult to live with since he was always boasting about his skills as a sand storm mechanic without equal.

Finally, after a series of other adventures in the Valley, which included carrying Pere, Maman and the deux fils to the hospital and bringing back Pere, Maman and trois fils, the family decided it was time to move on.

Pere, who had landed a job at a newspaper in Ontario, Calif., drove off with all the family belongings in a truck borrowed from the local Ford dealer, a fact that put Pierre's nose out of joint for a time. The family rode with Pere while a Mexican friend of Pere's drove followed in Pierre. Pierre hated being put in such a subservient position, but amused himself by learning more about the driver.

Al Villalobos was the circulation manager of the Brawley News. He and Pere were close friends. So close, in fact, that Pere and Maman had places of honor at the Villalobos family table after Al's wedding. Al was most famous for two comments: "Me and my dog are friends together,'' and "I am seek and deezy. I thin I go home and take a Bofferin.''

When Al and Pierre arrived at the family's new home in Ontario, the dwelling was dark. The power company folks had not been out to turn on the lights. Al proved his worth by walked to the rear of the house, finding the power company box, popping it open and turning on the lights.

Next: A powerful surge in mid-life and the final days.

Lord Jim

He was easy to spot, strolling along at that ambling gait, somewhere between the rolling walk of a sailor and the swagger of an Irish lord.

There he would be, his hands stuffed into the pockets of the disreputable, rumpled corduroy jacket, the end of one leg of his wrinkled gabardine slacks half-stuffed into the top of one of his scuffed Justin cowboy boots.

His hair, always about two weeks overdue for a trim would hang down over his collar, framing the face strangers would tell him reminded them of Marlon Brando.

I got my first look at him in the waning days of the 1950s in Brawley. I was moving on to greener and hopefully cooler fields after a year or so as the city editor-then managing editor of the Brawley News, a struggling 4,000-copy daily that was being sapped of its income and spirit by the owner of a string of desert dailies.

In those days the Brawley News was published in the plant of at a sister paper in El Centro.
I had a week or so to show Jim around and train him in the intricacies of editing the paper, a chore that had to be done by 10:30 each morning. If that deadline was ever missed, it would not only mean the Brawley News papers would not be ready for its circulation manager to load into the Army surplus Jeep trailer for transport to its readers, but the sister paper in El Centro would be put into a bind.

For several days I had Jim shadow me as I went through the process of ripping the wire stories from the teletype machines, hastily reading them, the sports stories and copy for the society page, laying out pages, writing headlines and sending it all out for the early pages. That was followed by somewhat the same process for the front and jump pages, last the go to the printer.

Most of the time, Jim was engaging me in pleasant conversation, but it seemed he had no clue as to what he was to be doing. I feared that my departure from the paper would trigger the first incident in Brawley News history when the readers not only received their papers late, but mght get no paper at all.

Two days before I was to leave, I decided to give Jim a test run. I went through a hurried review of his duties early that morning and sent him on down to El Centro, where he would do the editor’s job. I stuck around the newsroom in Brawley for a few hours, worrying about the problems that would be created by this guy who didn’t seem to be paying attention to me.

Finally, about 9:30 a.m. or so I couldn’t stand it and drove down to El Centro. When I walked in the newsroom at a little after 10, I was shocked to see the Brawley News editor’s desk was unmanned. I was stewing over ways I could salvage the day’s edition in less than half an hour, when the door to the newsroom opened and in walked Jim.

I was about ready to rake him over the coals when one of the El Centro editors walked over and complimented Jim for his work. He had finished everything almost half an hour early, apparently with no problems at all.

That was the way he was, a calm, cool, efficient newsman.
Although we had only worked together a week or so in Brawley, I stayed in touch with Jim, who married a Brawley widow who was the Brawley News’ office manager.

***



Up the hill in Victorville


A few years later, when I was editing a twice-weekly in Victorville and found myself in need of a No. 2 newsie to help with the job, I thought of Jim.

I tried to call him in Brawley, but his wife told me he had just taken a job at a grubby little weekly in Compton, one of the 15 or so papers within the McGiffin chain, which published most of the community papers on the south side of the Los Angeles area. It didn’t take much arm twisting on the phone to get him to agree to join me at Victorville, particularly when he found out the pay was much better.

It was in Victorville I discovered another side of Jim; his sparkling wit even when things would be going poorly. Putting out a twice weekly with two newsies, a part-time photographer and a handful of correspondents was hard work.

It was always a challenge to produce enough stories and photos for the growing paper. Toward the deadline period, it was my habit to tell Jim it was time to ``get out the copy crank’‘ and start cranking.

One morning I came back to my desk and found that Jim had fashioned a crank from cardboard and hooked it on the lever end of my Underwood typewriter, adding a similar one to his mill. Another time, when he was handling the darkroom chores, he tossed a pile of pictures on my desk for editing. I was about halfway through the stack when I was frozen by one: Jim Jeffress in triplicate in the ``hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil’‘ pose. Sometime during his work when I was not in, he had managed to put the camera on a tripod and shoot a triple exposure to produce it.

He was such a wag, that when he suffered a back seizure on deadline day and was bent over his desk in pain, saying he couldn’t move, I thought he was putting me on – something we took turns doing quite frequently.

Finally, when he convinced me of his plight, we had to get help several people from the shop and office to help pick up his chair, with him in it, and carrying him half a block to a chiropractor’s office.

A few months later, when my relations with the general manager soured and I left, Jim stayed as my replacement. We stayed in touch.

My path led back to Ontario and the sister paper from which I had been lured to Victorville. From there, I made my way to the San Diego Union, north to Alaska and the Fairbanks News-Miner and then to the Wrangell Sentinel and Petersburg Press.

Economic bad times forced another move, this one to a press secretary’s job for U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens in Washington, D.C. Carrying the distinction of being the only press secretary ever fired by a senator, I found myself jobless in Ramona.

After several months of fruitless job search, I found myself with several job offers – as a reporter for a startup paper in Beverly Hills, a future editor of a twice-weekly in Auburn, a city editor for a three-times-a-week in the Puget Sound area and a reporter-desk combo job in Bakersfield.. It was at that point that I heard from Jim Jeffress again.

He was a copy editor at the San Jose Mercury and told me they were looking for someone on the desk there.

I landed the job and Jim and I become best buddies for the next six years.


Next: Adventures in the city at the end of the Bay

The Saga of Richard Porter Nall

First meeting with the mountain of a man

It was early one Saturday morning in a startlingly modern ranch house clinging to the hillside that divides this country from Mexico. Giant north-facing picture windows were filled with views of the Pacific Ocean to the left, Imperial Beach and Otay straight ahead and the rest of the South Bay area sprawling north to San Diego.

Mainly my thoughts were focused on the white wall-to-wall rugs that covered the floors in the huge front room-dining room area. More correctly my worries were what my two young sons might do to those white rugs, particularly since our hostess was plying them with a variety of food and drinks. I suppose it was the grape juice that concerned me most.
I had come to the exceptional home of my boss, Robert Eskew, and his wife, Beth, who was spoiling my kids with the skills she had learned as a United Airlines stewardess.

But I had not brought my wife and kids here to watch the youngsters be spoiled.

I had come at my boss’ request to meet a friend of his from Los Angeles newspaper days – Richard Porter Nall. It seems Nall, the editor of the Brawley News, an Imperial Valley daily, was looking for a city editor and Eskew thought I was the right person for that job.
I had worked with Eskew at the National City Star-News. It was one of those formula newspapers when it came to staffing. It had one editor, one reporter-photographer, one society editor and one sports editor. I was the reporter-photographer.

After a time there, I moved up in the organ ization to the mother ship, the Chula Vista Star-News. The formula there was more extensive: An editor, two reporter-phortographers, a sports editor, a society editor and a full-time photographer.

For a time, while waiting for Nall to arrive, I picked my way around the kitchen of the designer home, its table and counters littered with the remains of a party Eskew had hosted for Nall the night before. A mystery writer might describe the assorted bottles, hors d’oeuvre and cold cut platters, assorted bags of chips and dibs and dabs of everything from from cheese spread to caviar as the leavings of the rich and famous.

Finally, after I had returned to a perch on the nine-foot white couch to cringe at the potential for one of my boys slipping or stumbling into a mishap that would forever turn a large part of that white rug purple, Nall arrived.

Eskew was a pretty big guy, maybe 6-foot plus, and well-built. He was good-looking enough to show up on TV or in a movie, his well-kept moustache and dimples adding to the impact.
2. But when Richard Porter Nall walked into the room, Eskew was dwarfed, along with the rest of us.

Nall was not as tall as Eskew, perhaps a tad under 6 feet. But he was a mountain of a man. He was in a league with Alfred Hitchcock or Peter Ustinov.
He had piercing blue eyes and more hair on his arms and peeking out of his shirt than I had ever seen.

We shook hands as we were introduced and what impressed me most was the size of his hands. They were small in comparison to the rest of him.

I do not remember the conversation we had that morning, the talk that changed my life by sending me to the Imperial Valley and the Dick Nall School of Journalism in Brawley.

But in retrospect, I believe it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I learned more from Nall about newspapering and life than most any other person I have known.

Next: The Valley Days: Wild times and a wild man

La Vie de Bleu Pierre

Blue Pierre wasn't born Blue. He was a sort of dove gray for the first few days after leaving the tiny Renault dealership in the cosmopolitan village of National City.

Blue Pierre had been adopted by a family of four, un papa, une maman et deux garcons. He loved dashing through the streets of the village and into the country to the family estates in a farming region known as Ramona.

All went well for a time, but then Pierre's life changed. He was carrying the family a few blocks from the Renault dealership when ``Crunch'' someone in one of those uncivilized American vehicles smashed into his back. Pierre suffered injuries to his back and until the doctors at the Renault hospital operated, all his strength was lost in his power train.

After hours on the table, he was almost as good as new. Still his shiny dove gray coat was ruined. Papa Weaver picked a very special color of blue, one not seen since the 1948 Desoto, to replace his damaged coat. Although it was to be a year or so before he was to be dubbed Blue Pierre, he knew the new shade had changed his life.

It was a friend of papa's, Jamie Bryson, who dubbed him Blue Pierre. In fact, it was with Bryson that Blue Pierre had some of his most exciting adventures. During that period Bryson had a paper route, delivering the Los Angeles newspapers in the early morning hours, to augment his less-than-adequate salary as a Star-News reporter.

As it turned out, Bryson's main vehicle, a trusty Ford stationwagon, took ill and Weaver offered Blue Pierre to help deliver the newspapers. Blue Pierre and Jamie hit it off well from the start. One of his attributes was a low-geared differential that allowed him to be driving at an idle. Taking advantage of this, Bryson would drive Blue Pierre along a street at the slow pace, step out and run a paper up the sidewalk and toss it onto the porch. Because of the slow, chugging pace of Blue Pierre, he was able to do this and return to Pierre.

But alas on one occasion, the plan went awry. Jamie bounded out of Pierre, leaping over the curb and running up the sidewalk, tossing the paper dead-center onto the porch. That went well. It was the return where things went wrong.

Jamie had forgotten the hill that was ahead when he darted out of Pierre. Before he could return to the cockpit, Pierre arrived at the top of the hill and started down, his speed increasing.

``Blue Pierre, Blue Pierre,'' Bryson shouted in the chilly, gray darkness of 3:30 a.m. San Diego, as he ran after the Renault 4CV as it picked up speed.

Fortunately for Bryson the clever French engineers had designed Pierre with excellent hearing.

When he heard his name being called, Blue Pierre was near the bottom of the hill. He used the uphill section of the road ahead to slow enough to allow Bryson to catch him.

From that day on, the two were the greatest of friends. Had they both been humans, there is little doubt that they would have sit together at a table under an umbrella, sharing a good Bordeaux, some fine cheese and a loaf of crusty bread.

Next: Blue Pierre faces the challege of the desert life.