The Adolescents II

We also visited with the publisher, Palmer Hoyt, in his lofty, top floor office which had walls paneled in a beautiful matching veneer of rare Oregon Myrtlewood. (The use of the threatened Myrtlewood species for such paneling today is illegal.)

At the close of our meeting, with nothing to lose, I came out and asked Palmer Hoyt for a job in his newsroom. Sitting casually on the edge of his desk, he was somewhat taken aback. Then he asked me my name.

“Byron Mayo, sir.”

“Well, Byron, I’ll tell you. If you go on to the School of Journalism at the University of Oregon and graduate with a good GPA and come back and see me, I promise I’ll give you a job.”

For a long time, I remembered that promise. But seven years were to pass before I was graduated from the University of Oregon Journalism School. By that time, Palmer Hoyt had moved on to become the celebrated publisher of The Denver Post.

***

Sometime late in ’38, Emma Lindquist gave up on Portland. Reeling from the breakup of her latest love affair, the statuesque Emma decided she would move to San Francisco and begin life anew. She had a place to stay—sharing an apartment with a dancer friend who was living in San Francisco’s North Beach. And she had a good chance of getting a job, she said, with the city’s nearby Arthur Murray Studios. Meanwhile, she was staying in Portland with Agnes until the end of the year. Eddie was back out to sea.

During the Christmas holidays, Emma and I agreed on a goodbye “date” at the movies. “For old times sake,” she said, as we laughingly recalled those nights over the years in which she had taken me out to the movies.

“Only this time, I’m buying the tickets,” I told her emphatically. She went along with the game.

Myrna Loy was still Emma’s favorite film star. And my favorite movies at the time seemed to be daredevil aviation films. So we put our heads together and easily agreed on going downtown to the Broadway theater, where they were showing Test Pilot, a fast-moving new film that heralded three winners, Clark Gable, Myrna Loy and Spencer Tracy.

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