Off to work he goes

Lewis went right to work. The folks back home in Cottonwood had to make do without the family car for a few days, because the new boss, Rufus Higgs, not only made the offer late in the afternoon, but he told Lewis that he needed to go to work—right that minute.

Today, it's the home of an art gallery;
in  1933, and for many years after, it was
home to the Empire-Tribune, where on
Tuesday, June 13, Lewis rolled up his
sleeves and went to work.

Not a problem for Lewis. He rolled up his sleeves and got started. He did, no surprise, find a few minutes to type a quick note to Dottie—ever on his mind.

            I went to work this afternoon, editing copy and writing heads. Gee, my vacation is going to be rather short. A more accurate way to say it is that my vacation consisted of three days hitch-hiking from Missouri and a day and a half at home, for my job has already started. How’s that for moving into action?

  

He goes on to tell her how the job makes him a correspondent for the Associated Press, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Dallas News. This was great. It would mean exposure in the state-wide press—important, because he knew from the get-go that this job was only for the year Higgs was president of the press association—and because this paid extra by the word. Not much, a cent or sometimes half a cent, but those cents add up to dollars for a man who wrote, wrote, wrote and wrote. (That’s what Lewis did.)

The Erath County, Texas Courthouse

His quick message sounded a note of triumph—

Sent you a couple of our papers this afternoon.

But almost 80 years after he wrote it, his last paragraph makes me pause:

Dottie, all this I’m telling you is, of course, just between the two of us. I’d not think of telling any other person so much of my business. I think you understand.

I’m sure she did. But what about that trust and intention now? Dottie didn’t destroy the letters, and like the letters, I began “just between the two of them.” It seems to me I have a right to read them, but am I betraying their trust when I share. Or am I preserving history?

“If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten,” wrote Rudyard Kipling. Lewis’s letters capture not only a young love but America entering the New Deal, the world of FDR, the sad world of the Great Depression all in a little town on the edge of west Texas. His details are graphic and excruciating—the need to be known. I think the two journalists understand.