Curtis Wells by Bud Maloney: Prologue

My dad was a journalist. Actually no, he wasn’t. My dad was a newspaper man.

What's the difference? If I have to explain it to you it will only give me a headache. So if you don't know the difference please trust me. There's a big difference.

As a sports writer he watched thousands of games and conducted hundreds of interviews with athletes and coaches from the preps to the pros. Rarely did he need a notepad. He always remembered what happened, what questions he wanted to ask and what the answers were. If there were unusual spellings he'd verify. But for he most part he just watched, talked, and wrote.

Dad loved a good game, well matched and well played, and was okay with a loss if the other team played better that night. He also didn't believe in crushing an opponent.

There was a horribly mismatched baseball game he covered. He recounted to me a final score of something like 21-0, this with all the bench warmers playing for the winning team. I don't remember what level these teams were playing at or where. Dad was assigned to report on this game and so that what he did. Only thing is he changed the final score. With permission from both coaches he lowered the spread from 21-0 to something more dignified like 9-0. Now I'm making these numbers up, but not the story. No one involved saw the point in demoralizing the losing team.

There were other things Dad loved besides sports. He felt fortunate to make his living being paid to watch sporting events but one of his other passions was the Western. John Wayne movies? Check. Louis L'Amore novels? Check. Clint Eastwood. Cattle drives. Rifles. Cowboys. Indians. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. For a man who would not go camping to save his life he loved a tale of the old west, unfurling a bedroll, sleeping under the stars.

So what's a writer to do when he loves something he can't have and, in reality, probably doesn't even want? That's right. You live it on the page.

As far as I know Curtis Wells is Dad's first attempt at fiction. It's certainly the earliest surviving work. While his reporting voice was informed by Grantland Rice, the guy who gave Dad's beloved Notre Dame quartet from the 1920's the moniker, The Four Horsemen, this didn't seep properly into his fiction. He romanticized the gridiron and the court and the diamond but he didn't quite know how to capture a world he'd never seen or experienced. I find this so interesting because I'm sort of the opposite. Give me a seed of truth and I'll run the story wild in my mind. A reporter I am not.

At least as far as I've read, Dad wasn't going to write the next great American novel. He didn't have those skills and techniques. It wasn't his strength. Other projects, brilliant. Not these Westerns. There are two of them.

The first, the one I'm going to start publishing here, is called Curtis Wells. It was hammered out on his faithful Smith Corona in the basement at 1553 S Locust Street in Denver where we lived in the 1970's. I've scanned his typed and hand edited pages for all to see. I find the process as interesting as the story. I've retyped his edits to make it easier to read, should you be so inclined. I've not changed any of his words or altered his style. This is all dear old Dad.

The second he never finished. It was written throughout the 1990's and 2000's. He'd asked for my help with this story, finishing this work. It's fascinating. The idea of it is wonderful following generations from the old west into the 20th century. This will come later. It is, as yet, untitled.

Just for giggles, here is Grantland Rice's most famous lead, published in the New York Herald Tribune on October 18, 1925, reporting on Notre Dame's upset of Army at the Polo Grounds:

Outlined against a blue-gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below.

Love you, Daddio!