News to Me

There used to be a strange, wonderful shop on Superior Street in Duluth called "World Book" (it might have been "Book World"-it was hard to tell from the front of the building). They didn't sell very many books, but sold old souvenirs that looked as though they'd been in storage for 50 years. Coffee mugs, trinkets, and wonderful postcards, which is where I got this one of the lake, the Aerial Bridge and the harbor. For a while, we would issue a line of commemorative Duluth News- Tribune coffee mugs when we did impressive things, such as changing our name or I did not steal this ashtray! But a friend of mine did, for me, because I was chicken. It IVERSAR POLICE DEPT CITY OF DULUT Newspaper idontification Card Pickwick beginning to print in color. Mine was commemorated the 1914 75th anniversary of the Pickwick, which was one of our fa- vorite watering holes back in the day. always full of hot coffee, No. 100 News toMe heavy on the cream. My first press tound p Name pass was issued to me in the 1980s, signed by the chief of police, and stamped with PRESS in serious Adventures of an Accidental Journalist We didn't have much in the Lqurie Hertzel PORTAGE way of supplies- pens, pencils, and a steady stream of Portage reporters' notebooks, with long, skinny pages and a distinctive blue-and- red letters across the front. My second press pass was a little more spiffy, laminated, and with my photo on the front. It also bore AVAILABLE SEPTEMBER 2010 $22.95 hardcover white cardboard my social security number, which is why you don't see it here. ISBN 978-0-8166-6558-7 www.upress.umn.edu cover. I learned pretty early on in my days as a reporter not to use a ballpoint pen when I went on assignment in the winter-the ink would freeze. So I had a big supply of pencils and Flair pens, which worked in any temperature. This clipping is of a story I wrote in the 4. early 1990s, about a trucker who was headed down Highway 61 when the hillside, loosened by days of heavy rain, gave way and swept him and his semi truck off the road. His truck broke in half but he was not hurt, and when I interviewed him he was about as blase as he could be. Semi waslics a e reoper Vednes Arucke barely escapes PRESS