It was while watching the magnificent Lawrence of Arabia the other day that I began thinking about desert land and the world’s extraordinary abundance of it. Reasonably observant but not entirely sure of my facts, it would appear there is more sand in Lawrence than snow in Dr. Zhivago. Maybe that’s one for trivia buffs?
Interestingly, while many of us tend to think of our country becoming increasingly crowded, the truth is there is an enormous amount of land that, while habitable, has little or no present value. Take Bent County, Colorado, a four-hour drive southeast of Denver. The most recent census figures show 6,000 people living in Bent County--half of them in Las Animas, hard by the Arkansas River and just west of where the Purgatory River flows into the Arkansas. It’s easy to imagine developers, wishing to push east, expressing chagrin over the river’s name and finding it difficult to envision intrinsic curb appeal for realtors to extol as in: “Just think. You can live on the edge of Purgatory.” A realtor hawking property without curb appeal is like a pitcher lacking a curve ball.
Each year I receive a tax notice from Alta Mae Brown, Bent County Treasurer. The annual assessment for what I understand are 80 arid acres in Tax District 25 amounts to $10.69 and each year I send a check to Alta Mae. I even have the option of making payments every six months but I resist on the basis of wanting to appear magnanimous about it. Although I’ve never visited my inherited property, I find there’s something reassuring about paying 10 bucks and change each of every 20 years to retain my legal possession of 80 acres. In addition, paying my Bent County taxes enables me to vent even greater anger over politicians, bankers and CEOs who forget to pay theirs.
The land became mine when Mickey, my second wife, died. A couple of years later, I called Alta Mae wondering if I should do something about placing the land in my possession. The Bent County Treasurer was casually agreeable and my tax notices began coming to Mary Jarrell Sheridan c/o Robert H. Sanders. I guess that’s progress.
Things haven’t been as one-sided as they might appear, Bent County-wise. I’ve twice been the beneficiary of what turned out to be failed attempts to find oil beneath the land. The rental has added up to something approaching four times the 20-year total of my annual chump change payments. It’s also good to get reminders each year that my money is being distributed to such worthy causes as School District RE-2, the Hasty McClave Fire Department and the Bent Prowers Cemetery. The cemetery is getting 32 cents from me this year and it seems reasonable. Getting up there in years, I may investigate more serious aspects of the big sleep opportunities there whose confines, to make W.C. Fieldsian jest, might very well pale by comparison to Philadelphia.
My land was originally purchased by Mickey’s father Arch Jarrell. A rather well-known mid-western editor, Arch was press secretary to Alf Landon during one of those Republican failures achieved running against Franklyn D. Roosevelt. Being beaten in 1936 by Roosevelt (FDR won all but Maine and Vermont) was the political equivalent of being a member of heavyweight champ Joe Louis’s Bum of the Month Club.
Arch was one of three brothers--all of them journalists. Jack Jarrell, a long-time Washington bureau chief of the Omaha World-Herald, spent 50 years in the business, then eased into something of a second career: acting in movies, TV series and commercials.
Then there was Sanford, the reportorial reprobate of the family who gained more fame of sorts than the others. Employed by the New York Herald Tribune, Sanford Jarrell titillated readers in August, 1924 with a series of front page reports about a fabulous gambling ship off Fire Island beyond the 12-mile limit. The ship, the Friedrich der Grosse, came complete with ladies of the evening who danced on tables amid Niagaras of liquor. Sanford’s only clue concerning the veracity of the series came from a red-headed flapper who reportedly shouted an unlikely line: “This is an epic lark.”
The story was a series of falsehoods originating in Jarrell’s fervid imagination. He had phoned all of it in--mostly from a bar not far from the paper. He lost his job, became an itinerant newsman, and died in a fire caused by his cigarette. Time magazine’s obituary included a picture of the Herald Tribune’s play of Sanford’s entertaining deceit. His call-in coverage had produced a headline reading: “Wine, Women, Jazz and Revelry Turn Night to Day on Mystery Ship.” Those were Prohibition days when thirsts were parched by illegal booze.
One of the strangest things about Sanford’s post-Herald Tribune life involved an approach by William Randolph Hearst, an early practitioner of “yellow journalism” whose current approximation would be that of Rupert Murdoch. Impressed by Sanford’s front-page fiction, Hearst offered the writer a job cranking out scripts at Cosmopolitan Pictures for great good actress friend Marion Davies. Sanford turned him down, according to family lore.
One evening in 1978 while employed by Field Enterprises, I was having dinner with Stuart Loory and his wife. Field owned the Chicago Sun-Times and Loory was its managing editor. A particularly tenacious newspaperman, Loory had a resume that included a gig with Sanford Jarrell’s late and decidedly lamented paper. Mickey was with me, the conversation turned to great newspaper hoaxes and I made passing reference to his old paper’s deception of the 20’s.
“That was the magnificent hoax of all newspaper hoaxes,” declared Loory who today is a Professor of Magazine Journalism at the Missouri School of Journalism. “It was pulled off in remarkable fashion by a reporter named Sanford Jarrell.”
Warming to Loory’s chortling enthusiasm, I said: “Stuart, my friend, you are sitting next to the niece of Sanford, the black sheep of the Jarrell family.” Loory was impressed. Mickey beamed and we hoisted one to Sanford. In toasting the juiced journalist, we concluded he had upheld at least half of a once popular publishing dictum: “Liquor is the curse of the Herald Tribune and sex is the bane of the Times.”
# # # #
Bob, we must have less than 6 degrees of separation. I recently was reminded I'd like to watch Lawrence of Arabia again, and as for Dr. Zhivago, my wife made me re-watch it back in the early 90s before I was headed to Siberia (after the Soviet breakup) in a December.
It was just as cold as the silver screen, and the culture had not progressed much since the flick's era. Oh, there were more 'cars' like Ladas, and the majority of them in Krasnoyarsk and Tomsk had cracked windshields. I was told they don't bother to replace them until Spring, because they would surely crack again from the cold and potholed roads. And as a decades-long journalist, I was over there creating and training journalists in the newly-hatched independent TV stations. They came from all backgrounds--former sub commanders to biologists to whatever. From time to time, Vladimir Posner would join me in leading seminars in Moscow.
I spent much of that decade back and forth in Russia and a half dozen former Soviet republics doing the same thing, while Yeltsin let it happen (he was sauced much of the time anyway), until a little guy named Putin came in and reversed every achievement my 'students' and their stations had made for their people. Now, a lot of bodies are left behind until who knows when in the future Spring will bloom in truth there again. And so it goes...
Posted by: Reliable Robert | February 28, 2009 at 11:06 AM
Good to hear from you, Reliable Robert. A fan of "Guys & Dolls," I recall good old reliable Nathan, Nathan, Nathan Nathan Detroit. I'm not sure I qualify as reliable but relevant, perhaps.
Then, again, maybe I'm Blessay Bob. Blessayists are bloggers who write essays, a subject I penetrated in the prior posting during which I invented the word.
Google Stuart Loory who comes in at the end of my current piece. Stu was a long-time CNN Moscow correspondent as was Mike McGuire who toiled for the Chicago Tribune. Jim Yuenger, also of the Trib,
reported from Moscow after Loory but before McGuire.
Posted by: Bob Sanders | February 28, 2009 at 11:59 AM