There are obituary writers who seem to also revel in giving short story send-offs to the ordinary Joe or Jane who, while not ever having accepted an Emmy or flew to Stockholm or Oslo to accept a prize, did nonetheless distinguish themselves in some way worth taking note of. This kind of obituary reporter seems to have some secret source of finding these people and getting to know more about them than someone else ordinarily might.
Marilyn's Johnson's seminal book on obituaries, 'The Dead Beat', tells us who these reporters are and where they write from. Being New York based, my own favorite, and perhaps the best of his kind, was Robert McG. Thomas Jr. who plied his trade with the NYT until his own early demise at 60 in 2000.
If being assigned to the obituary page was some kind of punishment inflicted on Mr. Thomas as part of his "career turbulence," then the jailed turned the tables on the prosecutor. He easily became a pre-eminent obituary writer and the one I miss the most. It's like not having Mickey Mantle in your All-Star lineup.
There are anthologies of his work that even include the NYT obituary of him, where the writer, Michael T. Kaufman, takes the reader on a journey of Mr. Thomas's life, pointing out that Mr. Thomas could be counted on to be the center of a good time.
His byline name seemed heavily freighted, but would have even been even heavier if the full name could fit: Robert McGill Thomas Jr. In any fashion, it was always a good thing to see in the morning.
Recently, the person I loaned Joseph Mitchell's 'McSorley's Wonderful Saloon' to returned the book. To the unfamiliar, Mr. Mitchell was a newspaper reporter who also wrote distinctive, highly-regarded, entertaining short stories about people he encountered in New York City. Mr. Michell's attention was generally applied to the 30s and 40s. He himself passed away in 1996.
It is impossible not to believe that McG. and Joe didn't bend an elbow somewhere where spirits were being served. Mr. Thomas's obituary notes that Robert dropped out of Yale by his own admission to, "major in New York rather than anything academic."
They were in the same kind of work, and seemed to have the same eye for the unsung. Thus, reading and re-reading Mr. Mitchell's collection of short stories takes one into a New York City populace that if they were to have passed away on McG's beat, we would have heard about these people twice. Thus, if you need a shot of McG. Thomas, read some Joseph Mitchell and imagine the people in the past tense.
Take 'Santa Claus Smith', written in 1940. If research is ever undertaken to trace the origin of the sometimes ubiquitous smiley face that gets stenciled onto all kinds of messages, then it would have to conclude that the drawing started with Mr. Smith, or at least pre-dated his use of it.
Turns out Mr. Smith was someone who resembled Santa Claus in appearance who would be known in his era as a 'hobo.' But a hobo who left behind good wishes to those who fed him as well as a blank check scrawled out on brown paper, drawn on the Irving National Bank of New York (predecessor to Irving Trust Company) for outlandish sums of money, $52,000, $12,000, $600,000 as graditude and gratuity.
The checks of course didn't have any money behind them, but were sent to the Irving National Bank by their receipients in hopes that perhaps they did. It may sound unbelievable, but I remember even in the 1960s there was such a thing as a "blank check." In fact, you could buy a booklet of blank checks at the right stationery store (today this would be Staples). You filled the check out with payee, date, amount, signature, as well as the bank you supposedly had an account in, along with the account number. Merchants supplied the blank check and did sometimes accept the completed check if they knew you and believed that you really did leave your check book at home. But even then, most business was conducted with cash.
Mr. Mitchell describes being allowed to review the brown paper presented to the Irving National Bank. No legal action was ever taken against Mr. Smith because he never presented the checks as payment for anything, or ever received funds from them. Mr. Mitchell could trace Mr. Smith's travels from the dates on the checks and where the recipients sent them from. It sounds like a early version of FBI Agent Carl Hanratty trying to locate Frank Abagnale Jr. in the movie 'Catch Me If You Can.'
Mr. Smith was passsing out these slips of paper as early as 1934, and on each one he drew what today we would call a 'Smiley Face.' As described by Mr. Mitchell in 1940 these resembled a "crude face with a smile on it. There are two pencil dots for eyes, a dot for a nose, and a line tuned up at both ends for a mouth."
Write your own headline for Mr. Smith's obituary.
If one character is good, then two are better.
Take Mr. A. S. Colborne, 'The Don't Swear Man,' who is the self-appointed president of the one person Anti-Profanity League. Mr. Mitchell describes meeting Mr. Colborne in a bar and being upbraided a bit for saying "hell."
The story is written in 1941, and Mr. Colborne has been handing out business cards trying to promote the elimination of profanity since 1901. There is no year given for Mr. Colborne's birth, but he's quoted as telling Mr. Mitchel he opened a store in Brooklyn in 1890.
This probably makes it unlikely that the cause of Mr. Colborne sure demise was listening to a 1970s George Carlin record. But with enough longevity, it's completely possible he succumbed to a 1950s Lenny Bruce recording.
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