Confessions of a Copy Boy page 1

I met all kinds in the Colonist editorial office–even in my ever so humble role as copy boy, a position once defined for me by an unsympathetic editor (as if I needed to be told) as the ‘lowest of the low.’

To that cluttered arena of editors and reporters, amidst the blue of cigarette smoke and the chatter of typewriter and teletype (I’m writing of the early 1960s), the great and the not-so-great, the famous and the infamous came to call. Some came by request, others came seeking publicity, from the athletic club secretary with the latest scores, to the man with the squirming canvas bag who, upon being asked what it contained, bluntly replied, "Rattlesnakes."

He wasn’t kidding!

There was the handsome old gentleman in army greatcoat, shopping bag in hand, who would drop by to chat with a reporter friend, have a cup of coffee, then be on his way. And so it went, every few weeks and probably after my release from servitude, for a couple of more years.

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