Ernie Pyle in the American Southwest

Richard Melzer

• Publisher: Sunstone Press
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9781611399745
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Journalist Biographies

1

EARLY YEARS TO 1935

New Mexico was far different from Ernie Pyle's native state of Indiana. Born on August 3, 1900, Ernest Taylor Pyle was raised as an only child on a family farm outside Dana, Indiana. Although Dana (population 850) was small by any measure, Pyle claimed that he "never felt completely at ease [there].... [f]or I was a farm boy, and town kids can make you feel awfully backward when you're young and a farm boy."¹ Uncomfortable in Dana and hardly fond of farming (an aunt claimed that he squirted more milk on his sleeve than in the bucket while milking), Pyle sought to broaden his horizons by enrolling at Indiana University in 1919. Four years later he was just shy of completing a Bachelor's degree in journalism when he left school to take his first job as a cub reporter on the La Porte (Indiana) Herald. Pyle only worked on the Herald for a short while before moving on to a series of newspaper jobs farther east, in Washington, D.C., and New York City.²

Pyle's professional duties ranged from copy editor to managing editor. Although successful at every task he attempted from 1923 to 1935, he was not content with the direction his newspaper career had taken by the mid 1930s. Showing clear signs of what is now called professional burnout, he wrote to a friend that his indoor office jobs had become "hard and fatiguing," leaving no time to pursue the work that gave him his "greatest satisfaction": writing.³

Relief arrived in an unusual manner. Prone to catching colds, Pyle was suffering from a particularly bad case of the flu in late 1934. A Washington physician advised him to convalesce in warmer weather. Following thousands of health seekers who had gone before them, Ernie and Jerry Pyle dutifully packed a few bags in their Ford coupe and journeyed southwest in search of a cure. This was not their first such extended car trip. After marrying in July 1925, they had impulsively quit their respective jobs to drive "around the rim" of the United States in a Model T roadster the following year. Ten weeks, 9,000 miles, and thirteen tire changes later, they returned east penniless, but with good memories of life on the road and an especially good impression of the American Southwest.⁴

The Pyles' trip of early 1935 was quite different from their adventure of 1926. Although they found more rain than warmth on the highways and side roads from Texas to California, the Pyles encountered many interesting subjects and sites. The couple also found great comfort in a warm new friendship they established as they passed through New Mexico. Stopping at an Albuquerque hotel, Pyle had placed a courtesy call to the editor of the city's evening newspaper, the Albuquerque Tribune. Amicably know as "Shafe," editor Edward H. Shaffer and his wife Liz dined with the Pyles that same evening, beginning an enduring friendship that would change both families' lives forever.⁵

Ernie Pyle returned east to write a series of eleven columns on his travel experiences of 1935. Using an appealing, conversational style, Pyle wrote four columns on fascinating places he and Jerry discovered, ranging from the casinos of Las Vegas to the ancient cathedral in church-banned Juarez, Mexico. Two articles dealt with unique individuals, including an Arizona rancher who specialized in doing "absolutely nothing" and a world traveler who seemed "more nearly what I would like to be... than anyone I have ever known." A seventh column described Southwestern public opinion of the New Deal, a curious choice of topics given Pyle's general aversion to politics.⁶

Pyle's four remaining columns addressed miscellaneous topics of particular appeal in his travels. Several had to do with New Mexico. Writing about the books he read recently, Pyle recalled a "wave of enthusiasm ... on books about the Southwest," including Harvey Fergusson's Rio Grande, Ross Calvin's Sky Determines, and Mary Austin's Land of Little Rain. While reporting on the best and the worst of everything on his trip, Pyle unfortunately found one of his least favorite hotels in New Mexico. "Dirty, cold and bleak" with torn wallpaper, no curtains, and an unshaded light bulb "hanging miserably" from the ceiling, his room in this hotel was declared "an abominable place in such an otherwise perfect state."⁷

Back on the road, the Pyles ran out of gas only once in their 8,000-mile journey. As luck would have it, the couple had just passed a ranch house "far off the main highway some place in New Mexico" when their motor stopped for lack of fuel. Undaunted, they simply "coasted back 100 yards to the ranch house, got some gas from the rancher, and drove away, having [barely] escaped a twenty-mile walk." Pleased by his good fortune and amazed by the "spaceless, free ... land of humility and good taste," Pyle concluded that "I love the Southwest."⁸

In the most philosophical of his eleven original columns, Pyle quoted a woman from Washington, D.C., who had written him that

My roommate and I feel that one of the paradoxes of modern civilization is the fact that so large a part of humanity is condemned to the treadmill of toil, and is deprived of life's joys and beauty. Most of one's waking hours are spent in a struggle for mere existence, for the bare necessities of life. All else must be put aside until that far off and all too distant day when one can realize the fruit of his life's labors, if he is fortunate. Having worked thru [sic] the seven years of the depression it had been impressed upon me the futility of striving to get more than one jump ahead of the wolf. Today one may be working and thinking that he is well on the way to success and security. Tomorrow brings the awakening, and all too soon the hope and peace that one nurtured within the heart is gone forever and a substitute of bitterness and despair is left to console.

Pyle said that he felt free to quote so much of this woman's letter because "she practically took the words right out of [not only] my mouth ....,but out of thousands and maybe millions of other people's," as he had discovered in his recent travels. He had learned that Americans felt the futility of "thrift and self-sacrifice for some nebulous and sort of holy 'rainy day'" "when maybe we'll have a revolution and it'll all be taken away from us." Or "why waste the good years preparing for the far-off years of old age, when maybe things will be so different by then we won't need money or it wouldn't do us any good if we had it? And anyhow, we'll have old-age pensions by then." Pyle doubted that this was "the same 'what the hell' feeling that led us dancing and shouting into night clubs after the war. That was a release. This one is more thoughtful, more resigned, more somber. We don't know what's coming, so why count on a plan of life which may never unfold?"⁹

Pyle ended his column by answering a question that his letter writer from Washington had posed regarding whether she and her roommate should "strike out to see the world" or "be content to grow old and dreary and forfeit our desire to travel?" Pyle replied that, given the nation's economic condition and drastically changing attitudes, he could only suggest "to any one with the gypsy foot and the gleam in his eye...., [s]ure, why not?"¹⁰ As he put it years later, "if in your soul you've got to do a certain thing, then it's right for you to do it."¹¹

Ernie Pyle's eleven columns were judged an "instant hit" when they appeared in the Washington Daily News from April 2 to 13, 1935. Encouraged by this early success, Pyle grew determined to abandon his "man-killing" desk job and take his own advise to "strike out and see the world" before he grew too "old and dreary" in his life and career. Pyle boldly proposed to the Scripps-Howard Newspaper Alliance (which owned the News and 23 other papers) that he be allowed to "go where I please and write what I please" in a syndicated human-interest column to run six days a week.¹² George B. Parker, editor-in-chief of all Scripps-Howard newspapers, agreed to a trial run. Calling his new assignment "just the kind of job I always wanted," Pyle enthusiastically entered the second major phase of his professional life in mid 1935.¹³

Ernie Pyle launched this new phase of his career a day short of his 35th birthday. Joined by Jerry, he traveled extensively and truly enjoyed his new-found freedom. "That girl who travels with me" (as he referred to Jerry in his increasingly popular columns) proved an ideal traveling companion. Although they often went hours without speaking and she never drove (Pyle described her as more "poetic than mechanical"), their mutual silence was far from awkward and her moods usually matched his, at least in these early years.¹⁴ A perennial non-conformist, Jerry seemed as delighted with her husband's new job and her role in it as he was. According to a newspaper friend, Jerry was "of major help with the column, sometimes retyping it for him, always ready with advice and, when Ernie was down in the mouth about the quality of his stuff, [ready] with reassurance."¹⁵

Traveling also appealed to Jerry. After growing up in a traditional Minnesota home where she'd learned the piano, sang in the church choir, graduated from high school, and gone to business school, Jerry had traveled far from home in 1918. Answering the government's call for more wartime clerks in Washington, D.C., she and a friend had journeyed from Stillwater, Minnesota, to take Civil Service jobs in the nation's capital when only 18. Jerry Siebolds met Ernie through a mutual friend; they married on July 7, 1925. Despite her lack of higher education, Jerry was described as well-read, well-spoken, and intellectually curious.¹⁶ Her talents and interests would prove ideal in Pyle's new venture, although, given her private nature, she seemed most comfortable in her anonymous role as "That Girl." When inquisitive readers asked for information about her, Pyle responded in "a masterly piece of spoofing":

She's a Russian princess who escaped with a pack of wolves in 1917. I met her while working as a drug-store cowboy on a dude ranch in Wyoming. She is six feet eight and weighs 43 pounds. She writes books under the nom de plume of Ernest Hemingway. She sits and stares at spiders on the wall.¹⁷

Kidding aside, Pyle privately praised his wife, calling her "the original Pyle fan." Friends remembered Jerry as her husband's "most ardent" supporter.¹⁸

With "That Girl" at his side and the entire nation to explore, Pyle set off across the country. His newly syndicated column appeared for the first time in August 1935. When Scripps-Howard decided that his trial run was a success, the newspaper chain made Pyle's column a regular feature and raised his salary by five dollars, bringing it to exactly a hundred dollars a week.

Pyle soon developed a great ability to track down unusual subjects by scouring local newspapers, talking to local acquaintances, and keeping small black pocket books with valuable leads indexed by states.¹⁹ Tips listed in one such black book ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime. In his notes on tips in Virginia, for example, Pyle reminded himself to visit Jasper Davis, known for his super human ability to spit 12’ 9” "in high wind." Elsewhere in his book, Pyle jotted down that Charles D. Raymer would be an interesting subject because he ran a "post office" for a thousand homel...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Early Years To 1935
• 2 Traveling New Mexico 1935-42
• 3 Why New Mexico?
• 4 Building In New Mexico, 1940-41
• 5 Dark Clouds Gather, 1941-42
• 6 New Mexicans Overseas, 1942-45
• 7 Homecomings, 1943 & 1944
• 8 Dark Clouds Reappear, 1943-45
• 9 Death In The Pacific, 1945
• 10 New Mexico's Ernie Pyle & Ernie Pyle's New Mexico
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index