Weather Gagman

One warm day last summer a New York World-Telegram rewrite man became slightly silly while reading a weather report, stuck a piece of paper in his typewriter and wrote: "Today is a nice day." This got into the paper, and next thing the Telegram's city room knew, people were calling up to offer congratulations. Since then the World-Telegram has run a gag story on the weather every two or three days, and they have become the big town's richest newspaper chuckle. Sample:

"Don't be deceived by the mild weather. You shouldn't plant your sweet corn until the leaf of the oak tree is as big as a mouse's ear. Enough corn for an average family can be planted by digging up a section of Fifth Avenue about fifty feet long and seven feet wide and planting two rows of hills about three feet apart."

Author of most of the Telegram's weather stories is a thin, sharp-featured little man named Harry Allen Smith.* Raised in Huntington, Ind., he quit school after the eighth grade to work as a proofreader on the local paper, rose to write funeral notices, sports, a column. Smith saw the U. S. as an itinerant reporter, worked five years for United Press as a feature writer, landed on the Telegram three years ago. He once began an interview with Cinemactress Simone Simon thus: "Your reporter walked straight up to her, without so much as a hello, and tickled her vigorously." When she failed to squeal Reporter Smith quoted a Hollywood report that she was ticklish. Replied Actress Simon: "It depends on who the tickling does." Five years ago, when President Roosevelt reviewed the fleet in New York Harbor, he hired a kayak, reviewed Roosevelt and the fleet.

Reporter Smith writes weather stories only when he feels like it. Other staff members write them occasionally. But an authentic Smith can generally be recognized by its cockeyed quality and an underlying mood of ennui, as in this example :

THROUGH THE YEARS TO THE WEATHER

One fine, springy day in 1850 a gentleman named James Liddy, of Watertown, N. Y., went to a county fair in his surrey. It was a lousy fair and Mr. Liddy curled himself up on the seat of his surrey and went to sleep. When he awoke he felt remarkably refreshed, and he was smitten with an idea. He went home and forthwith invented the first bedsprings known to man.

Today is a nice but cloudy day--nice to go to a county fair and sleep on a surrey seat. Tomorrow it will likely rain--a good day to stay home and commune with Mr. Liddy's invention.

Or this:

WORKERS, ARISE!

This would be a nice day to have off.

* Last week the Chicago Daily Times sent Reporter Dan Smyth (no kin) and a photographer out from murky Chicago to look for spring. Two days later they reported finding it at Bald Knob, Ark.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.