Before there was PhotoShop

The summer of 1949 found me working again, on a resort newspaper, the Chain ‘O Lakes Guide, near Waupaca, Wisconsin. I happened to ride the train north sitting beside Mike Dibiase, a graduated Nebraska football player turned pro wrestler. Although Nebraska in the late 40s was not what it was to become later under Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne, it was still a major league program and I was quite impressed at being able to say I knew one of the players.

The owner of the newspaper met me at the train and I asked him how he recognized me. He said, “I just looked for the first wide-eyed Westerner getting off.” I didn’t know Nebraska was that far west or Wisconsin that far east, but apparently I looked the part he described.

The time was late May so no vacationers had arrived for the resort season. Consequently the staff of the newspaper, there were just three of us, got to live in a home owned by our boss on one of the lakes. The place was rented out during the summer to city folks paying the fabulous sum of $60 week. In that year of 1949 I could not believe anyone could afford $60 a week just for a vacation spot. We had to move to a rooming house in mid-June but I lived the “idle rich” life for a little while.

The job was mostly doing feature stories on visiting summer folks but it also included actually delivering the weekly papers to the resort homes. The boss said that would help us get acquainted and find some stories but it also saved him the expense of hiring delivery boys.

The paper ran a weekly fishing contest and that gave us at least one feature story. One of the staff was from the southern states and he did most of the photography. His drawl described his motion, slow and deliberate.

One day a lady called to enter the contest with a 30 pound Tiger Muskie. This was a cross between a Pike as a game fish and a Mukskellunge for size. The lady was a permanent resident of the lakes and apparently was just out to get a few pan fish for supper when she snagged the Muskie. At well over 60 years of age and a small lady at that, it was all she could do to drag the fish up to the side of the boat and row in to shore.

By the time our southern photographer arrived, she was already exhausted but he insisted she hold the fish while he painstakingly posed her a dozen different ways. I don’t remember the prize in the contest but I don’t think she thought it was worth it.

We had competition for our resort newspaper. It was called The Picture Post because it carried lots of pictures. Nearly every paper today is printed by the offset method but it was a relatively new process then. Since photo reproduction is better, The Picture Post took advantage of the abundance of bathing beauties around the lakes and printed a lot of “cheesecake.”

One week, however, offset printing proved to be a disadvantage. In trying to shoot a bathing beauty at the lake, with the subject in the foreground and the lake in the background, the entire picture would not come in focus at the same time. The compositor thought he could solve the problem by having the girl and the lake shot separately and then pasting them up together. This could never have been done with hot metal printing, the standard at that time. It was a good idea except that when the paper came out the next day, the girl had slipped and she appeared to be standing in the middle of the lake. Our southern staffer drawled, “That’s the first time since Jesus Christ anyone has tried to walk on water!”

It was a wonderful summer and I learned some practical journalism lessons but just barely made expenses. I did try one interview that failed. The widow of the late Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska lived on the lake and I thought it would be a nice thing to take home with me if I could do a story. She declined, however.

The swimmer, Esther Williams, a well known movie star, had a home on our lake but she, as well as other celebrities, came to this area to get some privacy. I did not have the instincts of a National Inquirer reporter so most of the well known vacationers were left to their seclusion.