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The job of the Windsor Star's editorial columnist
was to be a bit of a rabble rouser, to say inflammatory things, and
generally be a bee under the bonnet of city council. When I was a columnist
for the Toronto Sun, my editor's one gripe was I never really came
out and said I hated something. I always tried to offer a balanced,
reasoned view. Balance does not sell papers or generate buzz, however. But
I don't care. I was only being paid $60 per column. I could afford to take
the high road.
In some ads the Windsor Star once tried to depict
Henderson as a pitbull.
However, Henderson tended to
come off as a loud mouth who rarely said anything wise. He struck you as
one of those guys at a bar who will loudly give everyone within earshot his
opinions on everything, and meanwhile you're quietly trying to enjoy your
drink and thinking simultaneously "this guy knows jack all" and
"I remember now why I don't like coming to this bar."
Henderson
was obviously trying to cop this two-fisted, hard-drinking style that was
the hallmark of the newspaper business in big cities like New
York and Chicago
in the '50s.
This article, written by Terry, exposes Henderson's
style. "They were fighting a tenacious rear-guard battle in defense of
a doomed way of life." I believe this over-the-top gem was an actual
sentence from a Henderson
column (I think about free trade).
Corn detasseling was the Windsor
equivalent of tree planting. If you couldn't get a summer job anywhere
else, you could work for the huge agri-corporations in Essex
county detasseling corn. You would spend all day out in a mosquito
infested, hot, humid corn field, pulling tassels off of corn stalks in an
effort to increase cross pollination and develop corn hybrids. Pay was low
and you were generally yelled at a lot by shift bosses (marginal types that
were forced to take this job because they couldn't get their dream job as
Conklin Carnival ride operators).
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