Master of the gentle quip
By BILL MILLER
For the Mail Tribune
“Spring hereabouts continues to be
just around the corner of a snow flurry.”
No one would ever say that Arthur
Gordon Perry didn’t have a sense of humor. For nearly 36 years, Mail Tribune readers
snickered and giggled their way though his column, “Ye Smudge Pot.”
There, Arthur aimed his well-worn
typewriter keys at everyone in sight, from the hotel
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| Arthur Gordon Perry - Ye Olde Smudge Pot |
“One of the familiar obituary
clichés of newspaperdom,” said Mail Tribune
owner and Arthur’s oldest friend, Robert Ruhl, “is the statement that the
deceased’s place will be hard to fill. In the case of Arthur Perry that phrase
would be not only trite, but inaccurate, for ‘Smudge Pot’s’ place will be
impossible to fill. … Perry WAS the smudge pot.”
Arthur was born in Kansas,
September 28, 1884. Orphaned when young, he was raised by relatives, possibly
in Washington State, where, in 1910, we find him living in a Spokane Hotel and
working as a reporter for the Spokesman-Review newspaper. Living in that same
hotel was Robert Ruhl.
In 1911, Ruhl bought a controlling
interest in the Mail Tribune and moved to Medford. He brought Arthur Perry with
him and put him to work—writing and sweating away in the linotype department.
In April 1917, the Navy called Arthur
for duty as a yeoman, working in the Bremerton, Washington Navy Yard offices.
Soon he was in Europe, occasionally filing news stories and writing letters to
his friends. After 22-months, he came home, and, on April 15, 1919, happily returned
to his column.
“From wandering afar in distant
lands and on strange seas,” he wrote, “this column has returned to the valley,
full of seaweed and joy. … To return from travels that skirted at times where
Hell had passed and into spots full of the troubled news of the day, to the
peace and quiet hereabouts is a pleasant experience. Last January, we walked
over a deserted battlefield, where in a short and bloody afternoon, history
will state 17,000 men died. And yesterday, we saw a man with flowing whiskers
slacking his thirst at the Main and Central fountain.”
He continued with descriptions of
the serious and sad sights he had seen in war, and then closed with a wink and
a smile.
“It’s good to be back among old
friends and old scenes. As to foreign lands? Your humble servant is like the
careless cat that seated himself on a hot stove lid.—Never again!”
“He was the master of the gentle
quip,” said Salem Journal reporter, Don Upjohn. “No feature in any Oregon
newspaper could be missed more than the column he created and carried on in an
endless stream of barbless wit—the column which never scarred nor maimed.—It
was humor superb in execution.”
Although editors from around the
state put their sadness at Arthur’s passing into print, his Mail Tribune colleagues
remembered him best.
“Arthur liked most to write of the
little everyday things and about the people he knew,” said
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| Medford Mail Tribune Newspaper Building, ca. 1912 |
“He had a disdain for money. Much
he gave away. A fact he never revealed. Friends know that many a ragged urchin
has been taken into the nearest store and outfitted with shoes or clothing. He
had a feeling for the unfortunate, even bringing hungry and miserable alley
cats into the news room for a saucer of warm milk.”
“He will be greatly missed,” Robert
Ruhl said. “In a sense, he was a lonely soul and had few intimate friends. Those
he had were devoted to him—and he to them.”
Writer
Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,”a collection of his previous
history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com or
WilliamMMiller.com.
