MORE LASH LARUE ADVENTURES

FEATURED POSTS

September 29, 2018

JAMES FOGARTY

I received a lot of feedback about my remembrance of pal, Larry “Lash” LaRue, getting robbed as a young man working at Taco Bell, but none funnier than the following from Jim Fogarty, who worked with Lash at the Omaha World-Herald, back in the early ’70s.

Fogarty writes:

As far as I’m concerned every day with him was just like the Taco Bell robbery.

I recall once when he walked back from the police station (where I remained) to the newspaper office. He sat down at the re-write desk and immediately pitched face-first into the typewriter keys. Two things had happened. First, he got stung by a bee and didn’t know it. Second, he was allergic to bee stings and didn’t know that, either. He was back in the office by four p.m. writing the story of his bee-sting near miss.

Lash also was a rebel … When he was given crappy assignments he would make masterpieces out of them – and then complain about how crappy they were.

One day the desk got a call about children on their bicycles being attacked by a bird on 92^nd Street in Omaha. He drove out, watched what happened each time a kid passed under a certain tree (instant attack and pecks on the head).

Then Lash borrowed a bike and put himself in harm’s way, again. And the newspaper photographer got a perfect photo of the bird – frozen-in-time – as it took its first peck on Lash’s dome. LaRue took the photo to experts who immediately pronounced the attacker to be a “King Bird,” known to be overly protective of nests occupied by baby King Birds. Front page, that was.

Then one Saturday they sent Lash to cover the circus parade – from the train to the downtown auditorium. As any good journalist would do, Lash covered a six-year-old boy watching the parade instead of the parade itself. But to demonstrate his disdain for the assignment, he wrote this lead: ‘A six-year-old boy will love a circus parade as surely as a mongoose will suck a duck egg.’

He turned it in to fellow-rebel Al Pagel who was manning the city desk that day and who let the lead go through, all the way to the next edition. Senior editors were so horrified that they said nothing – to Pagel or LaRue.

###

Lash wasn’t the only legend at the Omaha World Herald. In a May 9, 2013 column for the Tacoma News-Tribune, Lash wrote about his pal Fogarty getting back at a radio reporter who would steal his copy, put it on the air as his own, and basically scoop Fogarty on his own story. You can read that story HERE.

– George Lee Cunningham

Jim Fogarty, still lives in Omaha, Nebraska, where he is a co-owner of Legacy Preservation, a company that publishes limited-edition personal biographies. You can phone him at (402) 305-7180, email him at Jim@legacypreservation.com or find out more about Legacy Preservation at www.legacypreservation.com

News

April 17, 2024

Minor Character

Sometimes I feel like a minor character in one of those really long James Michener historic novels. I’m one of the guys they check in on a couple of times during the course of the book and one more time when he finally kicks the bucket. In truth, that suits me just fine. I don’t want to be one of the major players – those guys who lie, cheat, sleep around, make a lot of money, kill a lot of people, and then then suffer a tragic death on Christmas Eve. I just want to be me – plugging along, having some fun, loving the same woman for years, and then quietly passing away.

March 25, 2024

Cereal Killer

I have almost given up on cereal. As a younger man, I loved a sugary treat. As an old man, who has to watch his diet, I find myself checking labels on everything. Sugar is the enemy. For instance, Cap’n Crunch – a former favorite of my wife – contains: Corn Flour, Sugar, Oat Flour, Brown Sugar, Palm and/or Coconut Oil, Salt, Reduced Iron, Yellow 5, Niacinamide, Yellow 6, BHT, Thiamin, Mononitrate, Pridoxined Hydrochloride, Rioflavin, and Folic Acid. My choice: plain old Shredded Wheat. Ingredients: wheat and BHT (a harmless preservative). Not a taste treat, but at least I’ll live to tell about it

Highway Memorials

Driving across country nowadays, we notice a growing number of roadside displays – flowers, crosses, and ribbons – marking the sites where people apparently died in traffic accidents. I do understand mourning the passing of somebody you love, but I’m not sure I see the point of putting a display at the place along the road where they died. Even sadder is the fact that flowers wilt and highway trash piles up around the displays, making them just another sad reminder of life cut short.

December 5, 2023

Love Motives

I often tell my wife I love and adore her, mainly because I do and also because women like to hear the man in their life actually say the words. But during one conversation I had to confess that some times when I say it – especially when she is irked and giving me the deadly silent treatment – I am also reminding myself of that fact so I don’t start yelling and slamming doors. Is that so wrong?

Being Mortal

I am officially an old man. Sometimes I forget, then I look in the mirror and there it is. The truth is that life has its limits, and that is how it should be. There are new generations coming up, ready to step up and take our place. They are welcome to it. If you have reached old age, you have made some blunders in you life. If you think otherwise, then you are indeed a fool. You can warn the new generations about the mistakes you made, but they are oblivious. This too is as it should be. It’s their world, and it’s on them to screw it up for the generations to follow, just as we did for them.

Good Deeds

There is a saying that no good deed goes unpunished. It’s mostly – but not always – true. The problem with good deeds is that most people who do them expect to be appreciated. In actuality, good-deed recipients are more often resentful about it, rather than grateful. Nobody likes being the person who has to rely on the good will of others. So do good deeds for your own sake – because it makes you feel better, not because you want to be feel appreciated.

Recreational Bitching

Did you ever notice that some people – maybe more people than not – like to complain about everything? In the summertime, it’s too hot. In the wintertime it’s too cold. Health care is too expensive. Young people are too rude. Old people move too slowly. There ought to be a law against anything and everything that might make one unhappy. It’s recreational bitching, and we all do it to greater or lesser extent. Maybe once in a while, it might make sense to listen to how we talk and how we think. Most of us are just doing the best that we can.