dream ranch

Jack Germond/ Washington Post file

Maybe you have to be a newspaper person to understand why it’s sad to see people like this go, but this morning I’m thinking about Jack Germond.

I didn’t know him but I read his stuff, saw him on TV and always liked his style.

I suspect he was like some of the others — my first editor, for one,  John R. Bott, he of the New York Post and later The New Mexican — who would work long hours to do their trade right and brush off inevitable criticism with a, “Whadda they want for 25 cents?” (Probably a nickel when Bott started).

You’d be a fool if you thought these guys didn’t know their business and how to do it well. Bott set me straight more than once.

“If this was a real newspaper, you’d be fired,” the old New York newspaperman, who started as a copy boy on the Post’s Lindbergh kidnapping desk, told me in a New Mexican episode that still makes me shake in my boots.

Bott, who chomped on cigars and was fond of martinis, died at 70 in 1984. Germond made it to 85, despite reported bad habits, and finished a novel before he departed Aug. 14.

There’s a pro for you.

Here’s a little of what the AP said: “WASHINGTON — Jack W. Germond, the portly, cantankerous columnist and pundit who covered 10 presidential elections and sparred with colleagues on TV’s “The McLaughlin Group,” has died  . . . He had recently finished his first novel, “A Small Story for Page Three,” about a reporter investigating political intrigue, being published Friday.”

Here’s the rest: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/08/14/us/politics/ap-us-obit-germond.html?hp

Here’s a commentary from Germond’s friend Walter Mears.

And here’s a video interview with his friend Dan Balz.

   It’s hard to write anything approaching an essay on a workday morning. I  can bang out a column for work — during the Legislature, for instance — but that’s with a  newspaper deadline looming. Nearing 64, though, I am still sharp on other scores and  against some of them I measure my races with age. Knocking one of my heart pill bottles from the top shelf of a kitchen cupboard, I can still catch it with the other hand before it hits the counter. By heft only at the kitchen water tap, I unerringly fill the coffee pot to the 10-cup mark. Pumping iron never has been my cup of tea. Meanwhile, my Aussie buddy and I must be two of the laziest and happiest guys in Placitas.  He’s content to nap while I slake my brain with French roast before our morning walkabout.  (141)                                          

Bear takeout

Longmire

Plus, an Arizona ash joined the desert olives at my place in leafing out in August after recent rain.

Desert olive had no leaves until a few days ago. Drought shut it down. Protectively. Rains revived it. Same with several others around the house. Buffalo grass also returned.

  Cool, clear morning after night-long rain. White blossoms on Apache Plume, drought-dormant desert olive showing new, green leaves. Co-pilot happy, encouraged that he can live in his heavy coat. He knows it’s the weekend, too. And I know the days are easing – light and temperature – downhill toward fall.