LEON HALE has retired from the column-writing bidness, and he's only . . .
. . . 92.
The urban cowboys who came to Houston from Michigan and California may never have gotten Mr. Hale, but he spoke about, and like, the old folks back home for those of us who migrated from the farms and little towns around Texas. Through these things, he spoke to us about life itself -- growing up and growing old, getting along with some people and not getting along with others -- with intelligence, honesty, and humor.
He is a Houston institution, like the old Fat Stock Show before it got itself industrialized -- a place where the city and country come together.
(The modern livestock show and rodeo has its own charms, but they tell more about what Houston has become than what it once was or where it came from.)
I wish I could write well enough to tell Mr. Hale's story in a way that you would remember, but I can't. The Chronicle gave him a good sendoff Sunday, however, so I'll just feed you a few lines from the sweet profile by Claudia Feldman to give you a taste.
"I have a horror of being bad and not knowing it because I'm old," Hale said. "I'd rather just die than be bad."
["Then] the dean [at Texas Tech] called me in. He said I had to major in something, that was the way they did things. But I had no idea. So the dean got out a file on me and he looked and said, 'You're weak in math and pretty good in English and writing a sentence. How about journalism? That's an easy major.'"
[In World War II he] served as a radio operator and top turret gunner on B-24s and flew combat missions ouf of Italy.
"I made a deal [with the Houston Post] to live in Bryan and write a column seven days a week. In those days, I traveled at lot and interviewed people and that was the column . . . .
"When I got to the Chronicle I wrote personal essays, and that was harder, 10 times harder. Like now, I feel like I can't think of any ideas I haven't already done."
"Sure, I have a ton of [regrets]. I feel that with the stage I had at the Post and the Chronicle, I should have done more good in the world."
"I just say I write personal essays, anything I think people might be interested in, from rattlesnakes to Baptist prayer meetings. But I don't write about politics or I'll make half my readers mad."
"[Being 92] is frustrating. That is, there are positives. People are far more kind to you. I get old women helping me with my groceries, old women! And when I get on an airplane, some broad shouldered young man grabs my bag and puts it in the overhead compartment. But that's hard because that's the kind of thing that I used to do for others."
"By requirement, I'm obligated to be an optimist. It was bred into me during all those hard times. You had to be optimistic or jump off a cliff."
And from his last column:
[In 1984, Jack Loftis, an editor at the Chronicle,] said if I came over to the Chronicle I could write only three columns a week, and they'd give me a nice new car to drive and expense money to go anywhere I wanted to go. / I'm pretty sure I said yes, I'd take the job, even before I heard what the salary was."
The only doubt I had about taking a job at the Chronicle, I wasn't sure the management there understood how old I was. [He was 63.]
Also, I'm not one of your celebrity columnists. I don't make speeches. I don't play golf in charity tournaments. I don't like to have my picture taken. I don't judge chili cook-offs.
And so the Houston Chronicle and I just kept on keeping on. I remember waking up one Sunday and discovering I was 80 years old and still a columnist on the Chronicle payroll.
It's been fun, working here at the morning newspaper, and I'm fortunate that I've been able to spend most of my life working at a job I've loved. Don't worry, I know who made this possible. It was the customers, the readers who hung with me through the years, encouraged me on my good days and put up with me on my bad ones, and for them I'm grateful.
This is my own decision. I've stayed at the party long enough. Maybe a little too long.
Meanwhile, maybe I'll see you on down the road.
The Chronicle has done a lot wrong, but hiring Leon Hale away from the ever-badly-managed Houston Post was brilliant. Keeping him at work all these years as the Chronicle itself generally lost touch with its Texas roots was also a great kindness to mere readers, at least to those of a certain age.
A regret from my own days at the Post is that I never got to know Mr. Hale. It just never happened. He rotated in a different orbit, and when mine intersected with his, I never found the words to express my admiration and appreciation. Looking back, I don't think that's what he wanted to hear anyway, but I still wish I had said it.
To read the column and profile, plus a rerun of one of his legendary columns about the Chamber of Commerce bull, click these links. You'll hit a paywall. Good luck on getting through.
Claudia Feldman, "Columnist Leon Hale recalls storied career and long life," Houston Chronicle, March 9, 2014.
Leon Hale, "Sixty-five years is a long time," Houston Chronicle, March 9, 2014.
Leon Hale, "Bovine passion scarred columnist for life," Houston Chronicle, March 9, 2014, from which, this:
[My father, a traveling salesman] had been gone a couple of days when my mother said to me, "The cow is bawling." That was her way of saying that the creature was in heat and needed to be taken to the bull. My Methodist mother did not speak to me of delicate matters, like animals being in heat. "The cow is bawling." That said it all.
And so it came to pass, there beside the highway[, that the Chamber of Commerce bull attended to the Hale family cow]. And I wish I may never again hear music or see wildflowers or eat pie if half the cars in the county didn't pick that time to file by, while I seemed to be conducting a public cattle breeding demonstration.
. . . . I really didn't look. I went back to the bridge and sat on the rail anad faced downstream and pretended I didn't have anything to do what what was going on. I sat there and I made a promise, that if I survived the mortification of that day, I would never again have any close association with bovine creatures. And I have not.
The circumstances may have been different, but many, many old-timers in Houston -- Unca D included -- made that same solemn vow back in their yoot.
Mine came on a freezing, wet day in East Texas. As the cows filed into the dairy barn, I had to plunge my cold, numb hand into a steaming hot bath of heavily chlorinated water, then apply a hot wash cloth seriatum to each cow's four freezing cold udders. The purpose: to wash away the mud and sterilize the bovine work area.
Said cows expressed their opinion of this painful undertaking with flailing hooves and mighty swings of mud-caked tails against the skin of my miserably cold face. Except that the frozen ball of mud on each tail was not really mud, if you know what I mean. Getting slapped up beside the head with a chunk of frozen cow manure clarifies things.
Thanks, Mr. Hale, for reminding us who we are, as Texans and as human beings.
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