Bob Tippee
Editor
This column exists mostly for fun. Journally Speaking features are wonderfully fun to write and, when done right, equally fun to read.
In this space, OGJ editors take turns addressing subjects that would be out of place elsewhere in the magazine. They write more breezily than would be appropriate in serious news and technical articles.
OGJ Editor Henry Ralph set the light tone for Journally Speaking when he invented the feature in 1948 and wrote nearly every installment of it until he retired 20 years later. Ralph, who died in 1983, even invented a popular foil, the curmudgeonly Churly McCaustic, through whom he made painfully serious points in humorously human ways.
Although fictive characters like Churly seem to have fallen from fashion, you never know: Creative license rules this space.
Writing guidance
Guidance for writing Journally Speaking appears at the bottom of an assignments document painstakingly assembled each year by editorial management: "Look for fresh approaches to subjects relevant to OGJ readers. Ideas can but don't have to tie with special report topics. While trips can provide good Journally Speaking material, don't write travel logs. Journally Speaking is the place to take readers behind the scenes at OGJ, to make serious points in light ways, to cover offbeat subjects relevant (in some way) to our readers, and to cover routine subjects in offbeat ways. Let your personality show in the writing without relying heavily on first-person pronouns."
Whether OGJ editors actually read helpful tips such as these from editorial management remains anyone's guess. Results nevertheless suit the objective: Journally Speaking is eclectic, quirky, and—except when the report is about someone's passing or changes to OGJ, and sometimes even then—fun.
Word came recently from a reader who described one of many jewels Senior Writer Sam Fletcher has crafted in this space as "the highlight of my Christmas dinner party."
Otto R. Snel of Crudestope Mines and Oils (Private), London, said he read Sam's Journally Speaking of Dec. 2, 2002, aloud to guests after they had dined.
In the column, "Oil patch Christmas," Sam had reminisced in savory detail about holiday traditions years ago in the piney region of giant East Texas oil field.
Sam and his brothers would don their "cowboy-print flannel pajamas" and be driven from home in Gladewater to nearby Kilgore, where derricks still standing had been decorated for the season.
"Festive signs of 'Merry Christmas' and 'Happy New Year' stretched between derricks to span Kilgore's streets," Sam wrote. "And each year folks flocked from all over East Texas to see Kilgore's lights."
Sam remembered: "Even before it came into view, Kilgore's festive glow was visible beyond the tree-covered hills. The tall steel derricks sparkled with holiday magic. We would join the parade of cars cruising Kilgore's streets, with us kids hanging out the windows for a better look at the brightly lit derricks."
In town, friends and relatives converged in parked vehicles. "We kids piled in the backseat like puppies, sharing snacks and comparing Christmas wish lists. Moms huddled in the front seat, sipping coffee and exchanging neighborhood news. Dads congregated outside, leaning against fenders as they swapped work experiences and tips on who was hiring."
Get the picture? With writing like that, how can you miss it?
Sharing the magic
So, 8 years on, Otto Snel shared the magic with dinner guests, who, he reported in an e-mail to Sam, applauded at the column's end. Here's what Sam wrote:
"It's been a long time since I left East Texas, and I've seen many places in the ensuing years. But the bright lights of Las Vegas, New York, London, and Paris never impressed me much.
"After all, I've seen Kilgore at Christmas."
Only one thing can be more fun than reading words so rich with transcendent fun, then hearing how Otto Snel and his Christmas dinner guests joined the celebration: envisioning Sam in cowboy-print flannel pajamas.
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