Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [4]
And were there any baseball stars but the White Sox? Those were the days of Red Faber, Eddie Collins, Ray Schalk, Hollis (“Sloppy”) Thurston, Bib Falk, and Johnny Mostil. The White Sox pennant hanging in our flat was almost a shrine, at least until we were old enough to venture to the North Side and discover Wrigley Field and the Cubs. The North Side was another world to us – the home of the rich and the aristocratic.
The West Side was rough. Stories of beatings and slayings were not uncommon, although none ever occurred on our block. I saw my first gun fight when I was twelve. I had attended the Central Park Theater with a group of boys. As we were leaving the theater, we heard a series of gunshots from the rear of the building. We raced outside. There, sprawled in the filth and rot of the alleyway, lay a gunman, killed by a bullet that had pierced his head. The blood gushing from the wound and the grotesque position of the legs left an impression on me that is as vivid today as it was then.
Brutal though it was, Chicago was still a wonderful place in which to be young. I remember the days when I would arise with my father at three in the morning – now my bedtime – to help him on his bakery route, just as my brother Joe had done before me. I would help my father hitch up the team of horses, load the wagon with bakery goods, and then clip-clop off on his route with him. We wouldn’t get home until three in the afternoon. One of our proudest moments came when the bakery finally retired the horses and we began traveling in style in a truck.
My father was not one for preaching, but the simple, hard life he led bespoke far more eloquently the lessons in living we had to learn. His long and unusual working hours did not allow him to spend as much time with his children as he would have liked. His influence on us was indirect rather than direct, yet none of us suffered.
“How did you become a columnist?” I am often asked.
The trail began on my first day at Harrison High School. The get-acquainted tour for freshmen led us to the student printing shop, next to Mrs. Theresa Josi’s journalism class. Here the editorial staff and printers were putting the weekly Harrison Herald to bed. I was fascinated. The idea that students could write, edit, and print a newspaper touched a responsive chord in me. I determined there and then that I would study journalism and become a newspaperman. At the age of thirteen my course was set. My enthusiasm caught Mrs. Josi’s attention and I became the first freshman accepted in the journalism class.
I learned the rudiments of journalism from Mrs. Josi, but another teacher, Wilfrid Smith, at Harrison High was to help me further toward my career. He was then teaching a civics course, serving as head basketball coach, and helping Bob Daugherty coach football. Since he was also working on the Tribune sports desk and playing professional basketball and football, “Smitty” was the idol of almost every athlete at Harrison. He took pains to give me tips on sportswriting, and he taught me a great deal about football. He is now one of the most powerful figures in the athletic world as sports editor of the Tribune.
On graduation from Harrison High in February 1930, I went to Northwestern University on a football scholarship – but not before I spent six months working as a car cleaner for the Pullman Company in the Illinois Central Railroad Yards, at a wage rate of forty cents per hour. Those were the Depression days and jobs were