The Waterbury Democrat., 1943-04-22
TALES or TIE TOWN

The editors and publishers are in town for their annual convention, .. Several Of them were talking shop again last night one re- called the time when Heywood Broun was a cub and he was in- structed to come In very early one Christmas morn When Broun arrived-the empty city room de- pressed him. The desks were lit- tered with remnants of the prevl- oLs nights stale clippings, bare spikes, curled up cheese sandwiches and beer containers Suddenly, eff in corner, telegraph instru- ment started to click Tobacco tins were jammed against the tele- graph bugs" to make them louder .. One after the other joined in the nlonotonous chorus all chirp- ing the same message .s. He could tell he said later, that they were trying to report something import ant happening somewhere, but he couldn't understand a word they were tapping Finally, in came 8 sleepy telegrapller !. Broun said: Please tell me what is happening. They are all clicking madly. Maybe a liner has been sunk or a king aS- sassinated or an earthQuakel I'm sure it's big story, and our paper Is being scoopedl"
 The veteran listened - to one af- ter the other--and then smiled {, This is Christmas, son." said the old-timer, they are all saying the same thing. A Child is born-a Child Is born--a Child is born!"
 In the days when most of the papers were on Park Row, a certain editor was nicknamed simon Legree because of the way he kicked around some of his staff one night, and this is journalistic history, a staffer couldn't stand the abuse any longer .. He threw the editor down flight of stairs .. The next night when he came in--the staff pre- sented the reporter with a gold watch inscribed: For the Best Journalism in l928."
 Last night some of were priv lleged to meet Sgt. Al Schmid, the Philadelphia boy who was decorated at Guadalcanal for erasing over 200 Japs until one of their grenades blinded him Al, who is Dutch- Irish, has a different slant on the war He talked lot about two of his buddies, one Rivers, Prot estant, who died there, and one lad named Diamond from Brooklyn, Jewish chap They say" said Al, that I killed POO Japs. don't know how true that is. I never said that, was told so by people who read 1t in the papers" And he kept talking about the others or wishing hard that he could do something about waking up the people back honlel"
 In another corner of the Stork Club was Cecil Brown, the war cor respondent, who survived two tor- pedoings and was expelled by the authoritie- because he tried to wake up the people back home.
 He is doing a life term in the Trenton prison He's already served l6 years A prolific chap .. Has written several plays, over a dozen songs, but every time one of the men asks h'~l why he doesn't try his hand at writing short stories, he WinceS The fact iS--he had several short stories published when his budding literary career was inc terTupted by his arrest .. It seems that he was accused of being the cause of the sudden demise of sev- eral Jersey citizens The chief clue to the assassin was hat that was left behind at the scene of the crimes When the prosecutor asked him to try on hat, he mere ly smiled confidently He had tried the same hat on several times for the arresting detectives, and he knew it was two sizes too large :. !. He laughed with the jury every time