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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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