The bartender who served Tom said he had never seen anyone drink so much and remain polite.
Fine clothes: You remember Willis & Geiger? My uncle, who was a naval officer in WWII, told me that when the Navy was loading cargo ships for the invasion of Leyte, it deliberately stacked crates and crates of W&G sheepskin clothes for high-altitude bomber crews on the dock, and let it be known they were headed for Alaska. When the ships arrived in the Philippines, the sheepskins were offloaded and, rather than deadhead them back to the United States, the Navy burned them.
Jack O’Connor: At an editorial meeting in New York in the 1960s, the late, great Jack introduced himself by saying, “I’m Jack O’Connor, and I tell a hunting story better than anyone else in the world.” The staff of Outdoor Life, by the way, was frightened absolutely piss-less of him.
Jim Carmichel and his first wife, Clarice, did an absolutely hysterical imitation of Jack and Eleanor, including the famous scene at a table in a Japanese restaurant where Eleanor, drunk, fell backward while sitting cross-legged on a cushion and exposed her nasty bits to a horrified audience. “GOD DAMN IT, ELEANOR” bellowed Jack/Jim, “YOU SHOWED YOURSELF!”
And that barely scratches the surface of Dave Petzal’s repository of tales. Never trust a writer with anything you don’t want to see in print. Dave’s account of the evolution of outdoor magazines since 1945 is included in our 50th anniversary issue, May, 2024.
