The Unforgettable John Carroll

Florida is a place where people go to find sand, sunshine and surf. I went there to find a job on a newspaper.

Hey, I was divorced with no obligations!

I had a car with good tires, a bankroll, and the carefree attitude of a journalist who thought he knew how to write. That was all I thought I needed to find success in the Sunshine State.

After driving past cypress trees, swamps, an occasional alligator on the road, and reptile farms where you could watch people wrestle alligators and pythons to entertain the public I ended up in Lake Worth, FL., just across a body of water from Palm Springs.

That was where I met Byron Lutz. He was a young publisher who put out a monthly magazine called Get Rich News. Byron described his publication as a 'poor man's Money Magazine' and said he published stories on successful entrepreneurs who developed companies like Popeye's Fried Chicken and Mary Kay Cosmetics.

Byron gave me a couple of assignments and paid me for my work. The money wasn't enough to cover all my expenses so he told me about a newspaper publisher named John Carroll.

"He publishes a weekly newspaper called Weekday in Lake Park," Lutz said. "He's a gambler like you and he's always looking for help."

I thanked Byron for the information and called Weekday. Carroll had a pleasant voice and after I made my pitch he invited me to have lunch with him the following day.

Carroll was a tall rangy man with a smile and a powerful grip. We went to a restaurant near his newspaper and we talked about the publishing business. He said he could use me to write advertorials as well as feature stories and told me how much he could pay.

I began writing a weekly column called 'Sand In My Shoes,' borrowing the title from a line in a Johnny Cash song, 'Orange Blossom Special.' Carroll liked the column and from time to time would give me a suggested topic that he thought would generate letters to the editor.

One topic dealt with the feminist movement. Carroll loved women and suggested I write a column about women walking behind their men.

"Back in the old days, the Indians required their women to walk a few paces behind them," he said. "Figure out how to justify that and write a column about it."

I wrote the column. I justified it by saying the Indians did it to protect their women from enemy arrows and not because they felt they were superior to females. That didn't work. I failed to fool my female readers.

After the column was published, our office was swamped with over 100 letters and dozens of phone calls from irate women!

They demanded that I be fired and half a dozen women even invaded our office, demanding to meet the person who dared write the column. John pointed me out to them and stood back, smiling, as they approached my desk holding copies of the offending issue.

He even offered a suggestion as he picked up a camera.

"Why don't you hit him over the head with the newspaper?" he said. "It would make a great photo for page one."

I ducked and the women gleefully smacked me with the newspapers. True to his word, Carroll published the picture of me cowering beneath my desk.

One of John's neighbors owned a dog named Fritzi. I don't remember the small dog's breed but it was the ugliest dog I had ever seen. I wrote a feature article headlined 'The Ugliest Dog In Lake Worth.'

Carroll read the story, liked it and said he would hold an ugly dog contest for our readers. He offered three cash prizes to the winners, $100, $50 and $25. The contest was successful and we were swamped with entries and pictures of ugly dogs.

The Rolling Stones were scheduled to perform in West Palm Beach and Carroll managed to get me a backstage pass to cover their concert. I interviewed Mick Jaggers, who laced the interview with profanity as was his style. That night the Stones sang six songs before leaving the stage.

I was offended and wrote a page one review that began, "The rude Rolling Stones ruined the evening for 6,500 fans last night at West Palm Beach Auditorium by singing six songs and then leaving town with their money."

Wow!

Again the office was inundated by fans of the rock group who demanded my scalp. Carroll loved it and even gave me a cash bonus for the article.

John was a dice player and he loved to spend weekends at Paradise Island in Nassau. We flew down to the Caribbean Island on Chalk Airlines, which operated seaplanes out of Ft. Lauderdale. Carroll would shoot dice and I would play poker.

The women were beautiful, there was an abundance of them in the lounge at the Paradise Island Casino, and the management always provided us with a lovely cottage about 100 yards from the ocean.

I played in a poker tournament down there one weekend, met the host actor Telly Savalas, and came in third, winning around $3,000!

After leaving Florida, I lost track of John Carroll. I checked around recently and discovered Weekday is no longer publishing. Too bad. John was the kind of publisher a reporter enjoyed working for. I miss him and I am sure his readers do as well.