Spilled Bourbon and the Hidden Secret to Colorful Writing

Green grass, a yellow hat and Tennessee Ernie Ford

I learned a lot about the craft of writing during my years in newsrooms. My teachers were newspaper editors who deluded themselves with a dream that someday they might teach me how to write a simple news story that was not a mishmash of gibberish.

As a former journalist, I suffered through a great number of editors in my career. My all-time favorite was a fellow who taught me the secret to colorful writing. I’ve put his instruction to good use over the years, and I often share his tips with aspiring young writers.

This particular editor fashioned himself a “writing coach.” He was a sought-after instructor with a decent reputation, invited to lecture students at university journalism programs and to work with young reporters in newsrooms across the country. The Monterey County Herald, a newspaper that once circulated in the region, was lucky to have him on staff; the writing at The Herald got much more colorful during his tenure.

The writing coach was a proponent of colorful prose for the benefit of newspaper readers weary of the standard black-and-white approach to news stories. He was a proponent of thoughtful metaphors and clever similes. He taught us to breathe life into our tedious nonfiction narratives, to finesse our sentences like a master blacksmith would use a bellows.

In me, he saw an empty vessel with the potential to add razzle-dazzle to my daily output of baloney and blather. If only I would employ more of his colorful writing techniques.

I finally learned his technique one memorable February day in the early 1980s, when he counseled me to improve a particular feature story I had submitted for the next day’s edition. The editor/coach sat me down at his terminal and together we combed through my colorless story. He pointed out how each sentence might be improved with his proven techniques for colorful writing. I was as a postulant at the knee of the Omniscient Master.

The story in question was a summary of a day of slap-happy hyjinks I observed among the professional and amateur golfers at a sports function known as the Bing Crosby Pro-Am Tournament, aka the Crosby Clambake, at Pebble Beach.

“This story is fine, as far as it goes,” the wise editor told me, “but it lacks color. If you’re going to write absorbing news features that excite readers and win Pulitzers, you ought to infuse more color into your writing. Colorful writing helps build a scene in the mind's eye for the average reader. Colorful writing makes average stories come alive."

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The story I submitted that day described a curious gathering behind the 18th green at Pebble Beach involving several celebrity entertainers that my parents had enjoyed when they were young. Sadly, Bing Crosby had died a few years earlier and there was some question as to whether it would remain a Crosby family event.

Golf insiders speculated that a corporate sponsor would step in to elevate the tournament. This was considered a "good thing" because a new sponsor would naturally eliminate much of the amateur field of "crowd pleasers" — movie stars, athletes, television personalities, A-List celebrities — and replace them with America's favorite corporate CEOs, their cronies, other titans of industry and a sniveling moron named Trump.

Until then, in the early 1980s a lot of Bing Crosby’s old pals still roamed Pebble Beach. Everyone was expected to carry on the raucous traditions of the "Clambake" even after Bing was gone. It was all a bit awkward: Kathryn Crosby, the grieving widow, tried to hold things together while a bunch of her husband's old friends showed up with the expectation of another sprawling week of drunken excess.

Back then I was a greenhorn journalist, the sort of low-level newsroom chump the editors assigned to cover useless “news” events like golf tournaments. I was expected to write obligatory golf features from a casual fan’s perspective; those stories would occupy valuable front-page real estate in the daily newspaper. Let’s face it, golf features are not the sort of journalism any serious reader would bother to waste their time with, but editors at The Herald assigned them anyway because the stories were the sort of harmless drivel that appeased advertisers and local chambers of commerce.

On the first day of this particular Pebble Beach pro-am, I found myself somehow standing in a circle behind the 18th hole with a bunch of Bing's old pals. The drunken excess bunch. Guys like Tennessee Ernie Ford. And Phil Harris.

And it was my description of that moment with Bing’s old pals that my editor/writing coach thought needed improvement.

“More color,” he said. “The story needs more color.”

“But I don’t understand,” I said, pointing to the section in my story in question. “It says right here that Tennessee Ernie Ford was wearing an old mesh ball cap that read ‘Party Til You Puke.’ Isn’t that colorful enough?”

“What color was the hat?” the editor asked.

“Huh?”

“The hat,” he repeated. “What color was Tennessee Ernie Ford’s hat?”

Yellow, I answered.

“Well, there you go,” said the wise editor. “You should say the hat was yellow.”

I still didn’t get it.

So I pointed out another section of my story on his computer terminal. “How about this part in the story where I describe how Phil Harris appeared out of nowhere and immediately interrupted my Tennessee Ernie Ford interview with a loud and extended slander of Kathryn Crosby, because apparently Phil Harris thought she was a nag and a wench? Except he used much stronger terminology, with language I skillfully wrote around but which still conveyed his vigorous feelings about the Widow Crosby. All the while Phil Harris drunkenly spilled full tumblers of bourbon all over the grass. Isn’t that colorful enough?"

“What color was the grass?” my editor wanted to know.

“The grass was green, of course,” I answered.

“Well, you should add that to the story. Right there where it says Phil Harris spilled his drink on the grass? You should say he spilled his drink on the green grass. You see the difference?"

“Okay, sure,” I said. “But how about this part of the story, when suddenly Pat Boone showed up, and I describe how embarrassed he was to be hearing Phil Harris’s string of profanity? And how Pat Boone winced and kicked at the grass awkwardly with the toe of his shoes? And how about this part in the story where suddenly out of nowhere the Gatlin Brothers joined the circle and they too were visibly embarrassed by Phil Harris?”

I took a deep breath. I had thought the events of the day were colorful enough, and especially Phil Harris’s colorful tirade. So I was flummoxed that the wise editor thought it needed yet more color.

I continued: “And this part here, where I describe how one of the Gatlin brothers noticed Kathryn Crosby approaching the group to deliver boxes of commemorative Waterford crystal vases to tournament participants? And how everyone started faux-coughing loudly and saying ‘here she comes’ under their breath until finally Tennessee Ernie Ford jabbed Phil Harris in the ribs and told him to shut the **** up? And then how Phil Harris kissed Kathryn Crosby on the cheek and gushed about how wonderful it was to see her?

“Do you mean to tell me that’s not colorful enough?”

The editor/writing coach glared at me as if I hadn’t learned a thing. Like he had been talking to a red brick wall. Like I was as dense as a black bowling ball. Like I hadn’t been able to see the emerald forest for the green trees.

“What color were Pat Boone’s shoes?” he asked.

And that’s how I learned to write with more color.

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A few notes about the characters mentioned in this mostly true account.

• If you dig around in your grandparents' LP collection, you’ll likely find Christmas albums recorded by all the people in the circle behind the 18th green. Don't feel obligated to listen to those records.

• Bing Crosby was a popular crooner and actor who is one of the first-ever multimedia American icons. He put together a little golf tournament that matched show-biz amateurs with professional players in 1937, in Rancho Santa Fe, near San Diego, and the tournament was moved to Pebble Beach several years later. A corporation eventually took over and replaced most of the fun celebrities with CEOs and their cronies.

• Tennessee Ernie Ford was a country singer regarded as the ‘master of good-natured corn.’” Tthe guy was so cornball, in fact, that he was known in the trades as “the old pea picker.” Whatever that means.

• Phil Harris was a bandleader and a comic, perhaps best known for his devotion to bourbon and for supplying the voices to several great Disney film characters. His shtick implied a lifetime of admiration for the Confederacy.

• Pat Boone was a popular pop singer in the late 1950s and early 60s, known for recording saccharine covers of iconic rhythm & blues songs. Whether he appropriated these songs and cheated the original writers and performers out of millions of dollars or whether he was instrumental in exposing the great R&B acts to a larger audience is a debate that rages to this day.

• The Gatlin Brothers are a country act that still tours, the sort of guys you’d expect to see headlining the California Rodeo concert series.

• Kathryn Crosby was an actress and singer who remarried in 2000. She was seriously injured in an automobile accident that killed her second husband, Maurice Sullivan. Despite what Mr. Harris had to say that day, I found Kathryn Crosby genuinely pleasant.

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