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Authors: Bryan Woolley

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Hector loved American movies. About once a month I gave him my passes to the Plaza, the big downtown picture palace. He could simply have bought tickets, of course, but entering the Plaza on a free pass was special to him. In return, he gave me shady-side tickets to the bullfights. He used his connections to get me membership in the rooftop swim club at Hotel Monte Carlo, near the big new
bullring, Plaza Monumental. My friends and I would go there and have a drink after the bullfights, waiting for the traffic to thin.

Through a cousin who worked somewhere in the Mexican government bureaucracy, Hector even got me a Chihuahua fishing license.

Giving me this gift made him especially happy. But I never went fishing.

SECTION   I
ROSA

 

T
he union
at the copper smelter down by the river went on an illegal strike. Union leaders called the walkout because of some internal political rivalry, and the rank-and-file workers had nothing to gain by its outcome. They were just out of work.

Many workers lived in the adobe slum between the smelter and the river, called Smeltertown. They were poor. They had wives and children. When some workers defied the union leaders and tried to go to work, picketers attacked their cars with rocks and clubs.

The following Sunday, a heavy rain was falling, a rare sight in El Paso. When I arrived for work, Engledow was standing at an open window, watching the rain, smelling it. He said, “Come here, son.”

I joined him at the window.

“Grab your camera and go see what‧s happening on the picket line,” he said.

“In this?” I whined. “I‧ll get soaked! Nobody‧s going to picket in this!”

Engledow said, “Get your ass out there and don‧t come back till you‧ve got the story.”

I had my own car now, a two-tone-green 1955 Ford Fairlane with white-sidewall tires. I loved it. I wasn‧t about to risk it among a mob of club-swinging strikers. I called a taxi.

The driver stopped in front of the smelter gate. A single picketer stood there, holding a sign. He wore a soggy serape and a big straw sombrero like the ones that tourists bought in Juárez. The rain
had destroyed its shape, and its wide brim drooped around the man‧s thin face.

On the other side of the road, a dozen cars were parked in a row, facing the gate. Each car held three or four strikers.

“Wait for me,” I told the cabdriver.

“No,” he said. “Pay me.”

He made a quick U-turn and was gone. I was in the middle of the road, holding my Speed Graphic, my notebook and an Army-surplus bag of flashbulbs and film holders. Quickly, I was wet as the picketer.

I shot a picture of him. “What‧s this strike about?” I asked him, trying to sound casual.

He said nothing. He stared past my face.

“How long have you been standing in this rain?

No reply.

I had no way to get back to the
Times
, no way to call Engledow. So I stood in the road, trying to protect my camera with my drenched sports coat.

The driver in one of the cars across the road opened his door, got halfway out and waved. He was motioning me toward him. He was burly and had a big mustache and wore a brown felt hat. He looked like Pancho Villa. Tree men were in the car with him. I was scared, but I went to the car.

“Get out of the rain,” the man said. He told the man in the front passenger seat to move to the back. I climbed in beside the driver. “What you doing out here?” he asked.

“I‧m a reporter. From the
Times.

“Yeah, I figured. Because of the camera.”

“My name is Bryan Woolley.” I stuck out my hand. The driver shook it. “Rudy Gonzales,” he said. He introduced the other three men. I shook hands with them all.

They started talking about the strike. They didn‧t like it. They couldn‧t feed their families. Their union bosses were no good. Slowly, I relaxed. These weren‧t thugs. No clubs were hidden under their seats. They were getting a raw deal, and it was hurting them. I wanted to take notes, but was afraid they would stop talking if I opened my notebook. I just listened. We had been sitting maybe half an hour, quietly talking, gazing through the rain-streaked windshield at the miserable picketer across the road, when Rudy told me about Rosa.

She was his daughter. She was 9 years old, a beautiful girl. She was a victim of polio and wore steel braces on her legs. She had outgrown the braces and needed new ones, but Rudy didn‧t have the money to buy them. If the strike didn‧t end soon, who knew when he could save enough? His voice was full of love and sorrow.

I cleared my throat. “Rudy,” I said quietly, “may I take a picture of Rosa?”

Rudy didn‧t answer. He started the car and steered it through the rain to Smeltertown, to one of the adobe shacks. We all got out. A face, Rudy‧s wife‧s, appeared behind the screen door. She opened it and invited us in.

Rosa was sitting in the sparsely furnished living room. She smiled big when she saw her father. She
seemed to light up the room and the whole gloomy afternoon. Rudy lifted her from the chair, sat down and set her on his lap. Rudy‧s wife made us coffee. We talked.

Finally I asked, “May I take the picture?”

Rudy told his wife what I wanted. She didn‧t want to be in a picture, she said. She didn‧t like the way she was dressed.

I shot a picture of Rudy kneeling, buckling the braces on Rosa‧s legs. Rosa was smiling shyly into my lens.

Rudy and his companions gave me a ride to the
Times.
I wrote the story and developed the picture. Engledow put them in the middle of Page One.

Next afternoon, an anonymous caller told Engledow that if I returned to the picket line, something bad would happen to me. It didn‧t matter. Two days after the story ran, the smelter workers refused to picket anymore. In defiance of the union politicos, they went to work.

I end this little collection of memories with Rudy and Rosa because theirs was the best story I ever did for the
Times.
And it taught me the power of the word. It taught me that telling the truth in a newspaper can do more good than you expect.

Meanwhile, I was engaged to my high school sweetheart. She told me that a reporter wasn‧t a respectable thing to be and she wouldn‧t marry me unless I entered another vocation. This, I later learned, was really her mother speaking, but I agreed to it. In August 1958 I turned 21, she turned 18, I
graduated from Texas Western College, I quit my job and we married.

Engledow was deeply hurt, I think. He had given me the big break that I was throwing away. I was full of grief.

Over nine years, I taught high school English, worked as a bank teller, did manual labor on a seismograph crew, spent six years in two graduate schools and edited a church magazine for teenagers.

Then the marriage ended and I got a job as night correspondent in the Tulsa Bureau of The Associated Press. At last I was back where I had always belonged. For nearly half a century, the wonderful room has been my home.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

B
ryan Woolley‧s
wonderful room wasn‧t always in Texas. During the 1960s, after several unsatisfying non-newspaper jobs and six years of graduate school at Texas Christian University and Harvard, he served a short time as an Associated Press correspondent in Tulsa, Oklahoma, then as city editor of
The Anniston Star
in Alabama. In 1969 he joined
The Courier-Journal
in Louisville, Kentucky, and wrote there for seven years. In 1976 he moved to
The Dallas Times Herald,
and in 1989 to
The Dallas Morning News,
where he worked until his retirement in 2006. In addition to several collections of his best newspaper work, he has published four novels and two children‧s books.

Woolley is the recipient of numerous honors for his writing, including the PEN West Literary Journalism Award; three Stanley Walker Newspaper Journalism Awards and one O. Henry Magazine Journalism Award (from the Texas Institute of Letters); four Texas Headliner Journalism Awards; and the Spur Award for Best Historical Novel from the Western Writers of America.

He lives in Dallas with his wife, the poet Isabel Nathaniel. He has two grown, married sons and two granddaughters. Over the years, he has written about them all.

W
ings Press
was founded in 1975 by Joanie Whitebird and Joseph F. Lomax, both deceased, as “an informal association of artists and cultural mythologists dedicated to the preservation of the literature of the nation of Texas.” Publisher, editor and designer since 1995, Bryce Milligan is honored to carry on and expand that mission to include the finest in American writing—meaning
all
of the Americas, without commercial considerations clouding the choice to publish or not to publish.

Wings Press attempts to produce multicultural books, chapbooks, CDs and ebooks that, we hope, enlighten the human spirit and enliven the mind. We believe that writing is a transformational art form capable of changing the world, primarily by allowing us to glimpse something of each other‧s souls. Good writing is innovative, insightful, and interesting. But most of all it is honest.

Likewise, Wings Press is committed to treating the planet itself as a partner. Tus the press uses as much recycled material as possible, from the paper on which the books are printed to the boxes in which they are shipped.

As Robert Dana wrote in
Against the Grain,
“Small press publishing is personal publishing. In essence, it‧s a matter of personal vision, personal taste and courage, and personal friendships.” Welcome to our world.

WINGS PRESS

Colophon

This first edition of
The Wonderful Room,
by Bryan Woolley has been printed on 55 pound Edwards Brothers Natural Paper containing a high percentage of recycled fiber. Book and section titles have been set in “PaintPeel” type, the text in Adobe Caslon type. All Wings Press books are designed and produced by Bryce Milligan.

On-line catalogue and ordering available at
www.wingspress.com

Wings Press titles are distributed to the trade by the Independent Publishers Group
www.ipgbook.com
and in Europe by
www.gazellebookservices.co.uk

Bryan Woolley‧s “wonderful room” wasn‧t always in Texas. After stints in graduate school at Texas Christian University and Harvard, he served as an Associated Press correspondent in Tulsa, Oklahoma, then as city editor of
The Anniston Star
in Alabama. In 1969 he joined
The Courier-Journal
in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1976 he moved to
The Dallas Times Herald,
and in 1989 to
The Dallas Morning News,
where he worked until his retirement in 2006.

Besides four novels and two children‧s books, he has published several collections of his newspaper work. Laura Furman wrote that “Woolley has long been one of the state‧s best writers, and his modest eloquence suits his stories perfectly. Bryan Woolley is the troubadour of Texas journeys, large and small.”

BOOK: Wonderful Room
8.73Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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