1.3.13

The Daily Blah, II

Presenting another installment of selections from the newspaper that my father Nelson Bentley produced during high school in the village of Elm, Michigan - now Livonia, west of Detroit.

The Blah not only served to recap of school events (primarily sports) but to highlight local news items and perhaps most importantly to provide an outlet for Nelson's developing raconteurship. I've blown these pages up for better reading, and you may need to scroll right for the whole text.


Nelson produced the following issue just before his 16th birthday. Both stories feature several of his friends and neighbors.  I love the notion of collecting people's first memories. 


Here's a striking retelling of (a) Redford Union High basketball game, not to be outweighed by a conflagration at Nelson's Uncle Clyde's store.  Nelson's dream was to become a radio sports announcer.


The Blah featured many great character studies of the eccentrics who frequented Uncle Clyde's store, where Nelson worked, essentially unpaid, for many years.


And here, inapropos to anything in surrounding pages, Nelson preserved, as a Daily Blah "rotogravure" section,  a doodle made during his chemistry class.  This shows his interest from an early age in classical poetry - Beowulf, in this case - an interest that wound up triumphing over sportscasting, as he eventually became an English professor.


7 comments:

  1. I like those first memories too - a fitting Sepia category, I think, whether they are supported by images or not.

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  2. Interesting Grendel! (I doodled heavily in chemistry class, too.)

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  3. The Daily Blah would have had an interesting readership. Signs of good journalism here - I wonder what took him on to be an English professor.

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  4. There is a wonderful flare for design in all his work, and in the drawing as well.

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  5. I am enjoying The Daily Blah! Those first memories were interesting. Some of the boys seemed to have caused havoc.

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  6. I am impressed with both the lettering and writing. I wonder whether there are banana eating contests nowadays.

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