Introducing retired newspaper reporter, Wahoo, Nebraska historian, and not my real uncle: Uncle Bob Copperstone.

You know Bob is fun to listen to, so are my other friends. You’ll want to subscribe.

Today’s guest is retired journalist,

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Wahoo,

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Nebraska historian,

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and not my real uncle,

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Uncle Bob Copperstone.

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All right, you ready for this?

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Ready as I’ll ever be.

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Okay, so the idea behind this podcast is to convince people that they’re interesting.

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Do you need to be convinced that you’re interesting?

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I feel like you probably already know that.

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What makes you interesting?

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Oh, hell, I earned it.

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How’d you earn it?

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By being interesting for so long.

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Okay.

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When did you first start being interesting?

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I never stopped.

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You were born that way?

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I was born that way.

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All right.

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So you’re born in Wahoo, right?

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Isn’t everybody?

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Oh, I guess I was wrong.

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Everybody that matters, huh?

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That’s true.

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All right.

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So here’s the list.

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I made a list of things that I knew about you.

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So you’re born in Wahoo.

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You helped run the family-owned Wigwam Cafe as a kid.

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At some point, you moved to California, and you became a newspaper reporter.

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You’re married at some point, I think.

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You don’t really talk about it to me.

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And then at some point you drove a truck cross-country picking up antiques.

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You told me that once.

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And then you moved back to Wahoo to retire.

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Was that about right?

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That’s about right.

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Okay.

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Why did you decide to become a reporter then?

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Ever since I was in high school, I was a bad student.

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Mediocre Ds and Cs.

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And I thought,

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well,

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at one of the classes,

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a civics class,

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the teacher asked us what we want to do when we get elderly.

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And I thought, well, I want to be a reporter.

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Well, that goes back quite a way.

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Did you know any reporters?

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Why did you tell her you wanted to be one?

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Well, wasn’t Clark Kent a reporter?

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So you saw a little Superman in yourself?

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Probably.

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At least a close friend.

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Anyhow,

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I started,

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when I went to California,

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or before I went to California,

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I worked at the Bellevue Press.

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right after graduation and I had that in front of me and I worked in a print shop,

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a newspaper print shop here in Wahoo and in Bellevue.

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And in Bellevue they let me work,

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they let me interview a guy who lived in a trailer court and had a thousand

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Tropical Fish in it and then their name was Trout.

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And so I made a little story out of that and they printed it on the front page.

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Since I was working on the press,

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the big cylinder press that printed the paper,

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I was able to print my own first,

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my first byline.

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I both wrote it and printed it.

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And I still have that.

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Anyhow,

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I started with the newspapers there,

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then I went to California after a year in Bellevue.

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I had gotten a Triumph TR3 sports car, an English sports car, and I drove that to California.

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I mailed the passenger seat ahead of time and put all my belongings on that spot.

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I drove to California.

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Got a job at a print shop there.

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While I was looking for work, I didn’t know how to type.

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And I asked the managing editor of the paper that I wanted to work at.

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He says, fill this out.

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And I said, can I use, can I write?

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Can I fill it out with a written one?

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And he says, yeah.

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But, of course, I didn’t get that job.

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What made you want to go to California?

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Why didn’t you just get a job closer to Nebraska?

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Well,

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I did work as a printer’s devil at the Wahoo newspaper in the print shop when I was

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still in high school.

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When I worked in Bellevue, I lived in a flop house on 13th Street in Omaha.

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And I had my time off tier 3 then.

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And I spent one winter in Omaha driving through that little sports car,

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trying to drive that through the snow.

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This ain’t for me.

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California calls.

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Took off between snowstorms.

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I drove as far south as I could to get out of that blizzard and carried it all the

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way to California.

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In your sports car?

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Yeah.

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Did you have a job then or you just decided to get out of the winter?

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I stayed with my aunt and uncle.

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They lived there since the 40s and that was my shelter.

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Did you get a job after you moved or did you have a job lined up already?

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No, I went job searching.

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I ended up at a print shop in San Gabriel that printed wedding invitations and so

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forth and that carried me through for about a year.

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And I decided to, I wasn’t making it at that print shop.

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I wasn’t making enough money.

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So I quit there and decided, my cousins were fuller brushmen.

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And I became a fuller brushman.

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Of the door-to-door salesman?

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Selling brushes?

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Selling brushes.

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Were you good at it?

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Well, I went from door to door.

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I didn’t, I was too shy to meet people.

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I’d go door to door.

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I’d say, nobody home, I hope, I hope.

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You’d mutter that to yourself?

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I’d mutter that and then plow it on through.

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And if I got somebody’s attention,

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I just held them there with,

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practically grabbed them by the collar and told them to listen to what I have to

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say.

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And I didn’t do well at all.

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I drove back to Wahoo.

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What was your pitch to sell fuller brushes?

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They last for a good long time.

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Did they?

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Whatever they’re looking at, that’ll last for a good long time.

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Somehow I thought that would be magic, but it didn’t work.

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It’s, uh...

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So I went back to Wahoo.

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So you went to, you’re a fuller brush salesman in California, you went back to Wahoo after that?

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Mm-hmm.

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Okay.

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Yeah, I was kind of discouraged.

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Oh, I was going to go to school.

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Okay.

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And I did.

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Okay.

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I went to the University of Nebraska.

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Back to Lincoln, went to school.

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Oh, when I came back from California, oh, I took, taking classes by mail.

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From California?

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No, from Wahoo.

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Did you ever actually go to class in Lincoln?

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Or was it all by mail?

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Yeah, I did.

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I took French class about a semester.

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There was a print shop course.

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Okay.

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It was in the basement of one of the buildings there.

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And I really took to the print shop work, type of work.

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I did that real well.

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So I thought well I’ll quit my job here but my grades were falling real bad at the university.

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That’s when I went to Bellevue.

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I was doing real well at the print shop there at the university that I thought I’d

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get a job doing the same thing and get paid for it.

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So I worked for the Bellevue Press for about a year and decided I’d go back to

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California and look for a job.

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All right.

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So you grew up in Wahoo.

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You went to California, became a fuller brush salesman, came back.

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Went to school,

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got a job,

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took a bunch of classes and got a job in Bellevue,

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and then you decided to go back to California in order to get a reporting job,

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a newspaper job.

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And I did.

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I told the editor there, I’ll work for a dollar an hour.

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Yeah.

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And they hired me and liked it.

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As a reporter?

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As a reporter, yeah.

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I had my own paper, a little weekly paper.

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I went to a city council meeting, my first one.

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That was part of the job.

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You keep track of what the city is doing.

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And Covina is a town of about $50,000, something like that.

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That’s small in Los Angeles County.

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I went there and listened to the little discussions.

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Went back the next day.

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Wednesday was press day.

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And I sat at my desk and Jim, the managing editor, he said, well, Bob, let’s have your story.

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I sat there and I sat there.

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Dune came and went.

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Jim finally says, Bob, where’s your story?

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I said, Jim, I don’t know what happened.

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I thought, well, that’s the end of Bob.

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Jim laughed.

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Didn’t know what happened with your story?

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No, I didn’t know what happened so I could write about it.

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I didn’t know how to write it.

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Nothing happened of note at the city council meeting.

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Apparently.

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I knew what happened.

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I didn’t know how to put it to words.

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Jim kind of chuckled.

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And he got on the phone to the city administrator and said, hey, Joe, what happened last night?

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And Jim wrote the story for me.

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Did he give you credit?

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Did he say it was written by you?

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No, no, no.

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Okay.

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But that was the last time Jim had to write my story.

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I went to the next one.

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I went to the library where there were three papers covering it.

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And I read what they wrote and got this hang of it and was able to write my own

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stories after that.

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So you went and you read what other people wrote about the thing that you were

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supposed to cover?

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Yes, I read Jim’s story and Farewell is the House Done and I learned from that.

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All the time learning how to type.

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Yeah.

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But it worked.

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On a manual typewriter?

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What was that process?

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You had a manual typewriter and then you... You turn the copy into the back shop.

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They read it.

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They put it on a line of type.

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Cast the lead type.

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And put that lead type on a...

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Printing Press and Print Your Paper.

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Is it just one at a time, every letter at a time, or how do they cast it?

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No, no, no.

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They read my copy and type it out on the linotype.

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There’s a separate machine that you type it into?

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No, the linotype does.

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Yeah, yeah.

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A different person does?

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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I turn in the paper to the back shop.

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I turn in my paper to the back shop.

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and story to the back shop and they put it down to type and print it.

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So a linotype machine,

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that was what you learned how to use and what you did in Bellevue or is that

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something else?

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No, my work stopped there.

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The reporters don’t do the linotype.

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But you did when you were in Bellevue, so you did your own?

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No, I typed my own.

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Okay.

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No, I typed

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When you were a typesetter, didn’t you say you did that before too?

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Before it?

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Oh, I see what you’re getting at.

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No, I never did that.

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I never had to work the back shot.

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I never had to print the paper myself as a reporter.

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Okay.

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Well,

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it gets a little more complicated because I ran a Ludlow,

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which Ludlow Press,

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Ludlow typesetter,

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which printed the fancy type.

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Okay.

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A larger type that wouldn’t fit on a line of type.

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So what was your next big story?

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So were you still covering city council meetings after that?

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Yeah, you do everything that you expect a little weekly paper to use, yeah.

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And sometimes it’s interesting, sometimes it’s not.

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How long ago were you at that newspaper?

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Actually,

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the Monrovia Daily News,

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or Monrovia was another paper in that San Gabriel Valley area,

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and they hired me as a reporter after that,

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the one that I had to learn on.

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And from there, that was a small daily report.

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And eventually the San Gibe Valley Daily Tribune,

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which was nearing 100,000 circulation daily,

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that was a big paper.

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And they lifted me out of Monrovia and the next step up was the Tribune.

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And I rose to the assistant city editor of that paper before I retired.

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And that was the last paper you were at?

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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So what was your duties like as the assistant city editor?

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They had a staff of about 20.

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And five photographers.

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And I was responsible for looking first at the copy that came through those

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reporters and pass it on to the next editor.

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Do you have any stories you remember that you had

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Were some of your favorites?

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Oh, excuse me, yes.

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I worked as a reporter for about five years.

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Then I was an editor.

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Yeah, I had some good stories when I was a reporter.

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I had a humorous vein sometimes.

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And I had my own political...

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Political writer, editor, writer for a couple of years.

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Any stick out?

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What was one that you remember that you thought was good?

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I was supposed to go to the hotel where Bobby Kennedy was murdered.

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I was supposed to go to that lay in Los Angeles when I was editor of the political

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editor,

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but I couldn’t make it and missed it,

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so I missed it.

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Writing an obituary for that.

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Really?

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Do you remember why you missed it?

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I didn’t want to go.

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Okay.

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I didn’t want to drive to Los Angeles.

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So you found an excuse to get out of it, huh?

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Get out of it.

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Foolish man.

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So what made you want to go back to Oahu?

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Why didn’t you stay in California?

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My mother was not well, and I was about ready to retire.

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And you’ve been living in Oahu ever since then?

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Yeah.

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California never was home to me.

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Now my sister Rochelle

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And my little sister Janie both moved to California too.

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Janie died pretty much early in life, bless her heart.

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But Rochelle is still there to this day and that’s home to her.

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She got married and raised a family.

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I got married and got a divorce.

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And so I never set any roots at that point.

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I should probably clarify you’re not actually my uncle.

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So whose uncle are you?

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Everybody calls you Uncle Bob.

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Rochelle and Janie, my sisters.

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My niece and my two nieces, Kathy and Tina, are Janie’s children.

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Actually, to my neighbors, I’m Uncle Bob.

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Yeah?

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Everybody, even your neighbors call you Uncle Bob?

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Some do, yeah.

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Yeah?

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Yep.

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Kind of trips off the tongue.

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Yeah?

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Yeah.

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And I’m so damn lovable.

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Yeah.

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You might as well be everyone’s uncle.

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That’s true.

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Why not?

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It doesn’t cost anything.

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Yeah.

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My kids are always,

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they call you Uncle Bob and they try to figure out how you’re related to them too.

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Oh, is that right?

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Yes, it hurts.

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Yeah, that could be kind of, that could be kind of

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So why do you why do you write so much about the wigwam cafe and your childhood

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what is It’s for some reason I can’t remember what I had for breakfast But I can

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remember when I was five years old.

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I was first day in kindergarten And it just comes to be natural.

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Yeah

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It’s just,

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I mean,

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down to the,

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what I was smelling when I first walked outdoors kind of remembrance.

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It just comes back.

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And if I’m not exactly on cue, I’m absolutely correct.

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There’s nobody who’s gonna correct me.

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I can be Superman’s uncle

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Nobody would doubt it.

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Nobody would doubt if you’re Superman’s uncle?

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That’s true.

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I won’t challenge you on it.

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You could bring up figures and dates, but it wouldn’t help me.

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How much has Wahoo changed since those times?

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Has it changed a lot or not by much?

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Just about what you’d expect.

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Missing some of the good stuff, God knows.

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But it weren’t all that good.

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Everybody lives a life that looks better from a distance.

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Yeah.

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I’m one of them.

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Your life looks better from a distance?

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It’s, well, I’m different from what I was, so so am I.

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So you would say Wahoo’s changed a little bit,

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but at the end of the day,

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it’s still got a lot of the same things or a lot different?

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I mean,

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you chose to retire and live here the rest of your life,

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even after seeing the glamour of Hollywood and California.

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Well,

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I tell you,

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I miss more than that,

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because I can entertain myself just about anywhere,

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but more than that,

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I miss the people.

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Of Wahoo?

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Yeah.

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What do you like about the people of Wahoo?

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Not much.

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You want to change your answer then?

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I wonder about that.

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Actually, life is the further away from it, the better and the milder it becomes.

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Well, you have anything else you want to... We’ve been going for about a half hour.

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That’s pretty good.

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Anything else you feel like... Any wisdom you want to impart to the world?

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Any thoughts about... Oh, God, don’t follow me.

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Don’t follow you?

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You can do better.

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No, I... Wahoo people have a sense of humor.

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And I was born with it and I kept it.

(00:22:41):

I think I owe it to a lot of the people I grew up with who treated me mildly and decently.

(00:22:48):

Bless their hearts.

(00:22:59):

I hope to have a worthwhile

(00:23:10):

lifetime.

(00:23:13):

Sometimes when I wasn’t as human as I thought I should be, I forgive myself.

(00:23:24):

I did the best I could.

(00:23:25):

We all do the best we can.

(00:23:28):

And what they do in Wahoo is pretty damn good.

(00:23:34):

But the damn weather.

(00:23:37):

Curse that weather.

(00:23:41):

California’s got them beat on that, huh?

(00:23:43):

Oh my gosh.

(00:23:47):

I wonder what the heck I’m doing here sometimes when the snow flies.

(00:23:55):

I always did.

(00:23:56):

Now my dad was the, I don’t know why I didn’t inherit more of his.

(00:24:06):

He was born to be an Eskimo and missed his calling.

(00:24:11):

I was on the back end.

(00:24:15):

I was a child at the time.

(00:24:17):

I was riding in the back end of his 1947 Harley Davidson Hill Climber motorcycle.

(00:24:30):

And it didn’t even have a,

(00:24:31):

it had a little small shield,

(00:24:34):

windshield on the driver’s benefit up front.

(00:24:40):

But his arms were stretched out, bare arms, I might add.

(00:24:46):

It was wintertime.

(00:24:48):

Bare arms.

(00:24:49):

And I said, Dad, I’m freezing back here.

(00:24:55):

Aren’t you cold?

(00:24:56):

He said, no, no, no, I’m not cold.

(00:24:59):

Your arms are out there in the wind.

(00:25:03):

No, no, feel them.

(00:25:05):

Warm as toast.

(00:25:07):

In the wind.

(00:25:08):

In the wintertime.

(00:25:10):

Bless his heart.

(00:25:12):

So you didn’t inherit that from him?

(00:25:16):

I wish I had inherited his Harley.

(00:25:19):

You wish you inherited his Harley?

(00:25:20):

Yeah, I wish I had.

(00:25:22):

Later he had a real knucklehead full size.

(00:25:28):

Boy oh that the hill climber though that I was on the back of that’s a little

(00:25:37):

leather pad leather stuffed pad on that fender and that was designed for the hill

(00:25:45):

climber driver rider driver I guess to sit his butt back there and put the weight

(00:25:53):

on the

(00:25:56):

Powered Rear Wheel.

(00:25:59):

Well, I sat on that.

(00:26:00):

I was about 10 or 11, God knows.

(00:26:03):

And we were going to a hill climber at Morse Bluff.

(00:26:10):

This was in about 1949, I guess.

(00:26:13):

And he had to stop every mile or so on the bumpy country road

(00:26:23):

So my kidneys would stop aching.

(00:26:27):

I was bawling back there.

(00:26:30):

And we never could make a straight line to it because it wasn’t hell on wheels.

(00:26:38):

There wasn’t much of a suspension on it?

(00:26:41):

It was a hard tail.

(00:26:46):

None of that sissy stuff for us.

(00:26:48):

God knows I wanted it.

(00:26:55):

Didn’t you say he made like a special pad just for you to sit on on that bike?

(00:26:59):

No, that’s what that hill climber did.

(00:27:03):

That was its purpose.

(00:27:06):

A hill climber.

(00:27:07):

They had contests at Morse Bluff in this case.

(00:27:12):

And they’d all try to get up to the top of the hill without falling on their tail.

(00:27:21):

It was a contest.

(00:27:23):

I thought you told a story once that your dad had a special seat that you sat on

(00:27:27):

the back of his seat.

(00:27:29):

No, that was the seat I was talking about.

(00:27:31):

That was not meant for passengers, but it was designed for it.

(00:27:42):

Actually, Dad had bought that hillclamber from my cousin, my elder cousin,

(00:27:53):

He dumped it and never got back on it.

(00:27:58):

They were designed to be fallen upon and served a purpose well.

(00:28:06):

Designed to be fallen on?

(00:28:10):

To be dumped.

(00:28:11):

Oh, to be dumped.

(00:28:13):

No, the purpose of the hill climb was to stay on without getting dumped.

(00:28:18):

If you do, you get back on.

(00:28:20):

Okay.

(00:28:22):

So they’re meant to take a lot of abuse then?

(00:28:25):

Yeah, they were abusive, that’s a fact.

(00:28:30):

When’s the last time you were on a motorcycle?

(00:28:33):

I bought one of my own.

(00:28:34):

I bought a Suzuki when I was in California.

(00:28:38):

We rode that all over California.

(00:28:41):

I loved it.

(00:28:43):

Well, any parting thoughts or wisdom or anything else?

(00:28:48):

Oh, Lordy.

(00:28:55):

Yeah, brother, can you spare a dime?

(00:28:57):

A dime won’t get you much anymore.

(00:29:01):

Hey, baby, you might give it what you can.

(00:29:04):

You need to adjust your phrases for inflation there.

(00:29:08):

Brother, can you spare a 10-spot?

(00:29:10):

I’ll spare you a dime, that’s easy.

(00:29:13):

No, that’s not easy, I don’t have one.

(00:29:15):

You could have found something in my center console in my car over lunch.

(00:29:22):

I said I could have given you a whole bunch of dimes out of the center console of

(00:29:25):

my car when we were getting lunch earlier.

(00:29:30):

What would you do with the dime if I gave you one?

(00:29:34):

Probably tighten a screw.

(00:29:39):

Maybe I ought to get you a screwdriver.

(00:29:41):

No, no, no, this will work fine.

(00:29:44):

Haven’t you ever done that?

(00:29:45):

I mean, I’m...

(00:29:48):

I’m sure I have at some point in my life.

(00:29:50):

No, you can’t use a credit card either.

(00:29:54):

I tried that once and it broke.

(00:29:55):

The credit card broke?

(00:29:56):

Yeah.

(00:29:57):

Oh, no.

(00:29:58):

What kind of screws do you need?

(00:30:00):

How many screws do you need tightened?

(00:30:04):

Counting my brain?

(00:30:05):

Yeah, it seems like you got a few screws loose.

(00:30:07):

I think your screw is loose.

(00:30:12):

I’m good.

(00:30:13):

All right, let’s wrap this up.

(00:30:15):

Thanks, Bob.

(00:30:15):

I don’t know how to wrap up an interview, but you were the first one.

(00:30:19):

How’d it go?

(00:30:20):

Well, listen, I wish I could do better, but I was glad to try.

(00:30:26):

You did great.

(00:30:30):

All right, I’m going to turn this thing off.

(00:30:34):

Interesting People is produced by Chris Beaty in his basement.

(00:30:39):

And today’s episode was recorded in Uncle Bob’s recliner in his Wahoo, Nebraska living room.

(00:30:45):

If you want to hear more of Uncle Bob’s stories,

(00:30:48):

check out the As Told by Uncle Bob podcast episodes from the As Told by C.S.

(00:30:53):

Beaty podcast universe.

(00:30:55):

Please subscribe and tell all your friends about my interesting friends.

(00:30:59):

And if you have interesting friends, well, let me know so I can talk to them.

(00:31:04):

Signing off from the greatest city on earth, Omaha, Nebraska.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.chrisbeaty.com