WHEN AN EDITOR VANISHED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23997, 21 June 1941, Page 16

WHEN AN EDITOR VANISHED

Englishman's Amazing Tales of Journalism in America

EMIGRATING from England to Canada at the age of 16, Mr. Basil Woon, noted British writer, took any job he could find. His amazing experiences as a young journalist in the United States are recorded in "Eyes West" (Peter Davies). It makes an absorbing book, a tale of adventure told with gusto.

DrniXC! his earlier and more colourful days Mr. W'oon had Been a tramp reporter. At one point he found himself in Key "West, Florida, the southernmost town in the I'nited States. Seeing a newspaper office, he walked in and asked its only visible occupant for a joB : A peculiar look, as of loiui-deterred hope fulfilled, came_ into the man's fact 1 . He glanced at his vv risi-watch and jiodded thoughtfully. I hen lie rose and picked up a panama hat. "Sit down." he invited, courteously. "You have n fob." lie gestured toward the chair he had vacated He went to the door . . . He Vanished Operator This was the editor of the Key West Morning Journal, and he never came back. Instead, Mr. W'oon found himself oditiug a paper which, ho says, must have been-tuiique in the history of dai> y journalism. Sometimes it came out in the afternoon or evening, and frequently missed days altogether. I his was because of Winds l'eters.. the lino type operator. Not merely was he the only linotype operator on the island, but he was the only one who had ever been able to get this particular lino type, hoary with age. to work. And Windy was liahie to go oil ou drinking bouts —once for a week at a time. The owner of the pa per could not give him the sack because it was impossible to replace him in such a remote spot. Another odd member of the staff was ■Jonah,' a young negro who cleaned out the office. He had a habit of tidying

awav type into wrong hoses, and in fact" "did everything wrong except swim." One day, sa.vs Mr. Woon: He arrived at the oilice very late, when I demanded to know why lie said, "jioss. Ah jes" bin doin' a li I swimmin'." I threatened to lire hint, and it was only later that a grateful group of citizens eauie to the office to tell me that Jonah had plunged into shark water off the naval base and rescued from drowning the small daughter of a petty-officer. He was afterwards recommended tor tile Carnegie .Medal. While he was iu Kansas City, in lil.ll. Mr. Woon was sent to interview a man named lugersoll, who was building an aeroplane. It appeared to be "a flimsy contraption of bamboo and doped silk," with two poles sticking out in I rout on which strips of canvas were nailed." Behind, there was a small engine, lugersoll invited Mr. Woon to join him on a flight. I hey seated themselves on the canvas strips, then: - lugersoll jerked hack on the wheel he held ahead of him; we slid oil' the end of the licld, sloped upwards, crossed a ditch and a row ot trees, and landed two hundred yards farther on in a potato Held First Passenger Flight Ingersoli jumped out. and leaped about exultantly. "Boys, .she works! She flies!" - ... . The machine had never been off the ('round be I ore, ami this was. savs Mi. Woon, "what I believe to he the first passenger aeroplane flight in lustoi.\. But Mr. W ooii did more spectacular flying during the last war, when he joined the American Air Service as an observer and had some remarkable escapes from death in the air. Once during a practice flight his pilot, Dolan,

THIEVES KEEP SECRET

UNKNOWN FRIEND

"Whila he was on bail, accused of Btealitig a £6O camera from a car John Melburne, aged 71, was arrested in London, carrying a £6OO mink coat •which had been taken from a locked cai in Charing Cross Road. Wlieii he was charged with the tliel l sit. liow Street, the magistrate asked how the coat had been taken if the car doors were hfeked. "He won't tell,"' said a detective. ■''These people have ways and means of unloe.king car doors." Melburne, ■who had convictions in Airiea, Alts tralia and England, was sentenced to six months' hard labour.

Vera Hruba, the Czech skater who received many offers of _ marriage, when United States authorities ruled that she must marry or be deported, revealed at Vancouver that she has inherited £SOOO from Mrs. Nan Foley, of Lafayette. Indiana, whom slio had never met.

Immediately the United States Consul at Vancouver told her she would bo given a (juota number, and could return to the States. Miss Hruba said that Mrs. I'oley, who died recently, had seen her skate and sympathised with her plight which obliged her to marry a stranger or be deported to her Nazilied homeland.

lost consciousness when tliev V CI( J ;ihout 2000 feet ii]). The 'plane dived toward the ground with the engine al.

out — , I looked down. Tho ground was approaching at a terrific rate. How that old bundle of firewood stood up under the strain I shall never know in those davs few 'planes had achieved much more than one hundred miles an hour. A I'iat Breguet was good tor perhaps seventv miles—-with a tall wind. Hut we were now travelling at about two hundred miles —annost straight down. \ tall ehimtiev ol the Muhelin works, which was on the fringe of the airlield, loomed directly ahead. In another second we would hit it. What a ..mash! I crossed my arms over my face, crouched in the cockpit, and waited. But the crash did not come. Dolan regained consciousness and managed to make a forced landing in a cabbage ' |u pl.'M). twenty-six years after he had left it. -Mr. W'oon returned to Kngland. and so to the present war. "To the last war I went gaily," he savs, "in a spirit of high adventure, without much thought of why or for what I was lighting. I go to this one grimly, knowing that I must fight lor my right to love, to work, and to live."