Free Writing, San Antonio, Texas: Spring of 1984!

"Writers of the Yellow Prose and the Massacre of the Little Big Horn"

Thanks to the collective literary efforts of these copy editors, copy boys and typesetters, the pivotal battle between the White Man and the Red Man may have well been the one with reality, and thanks to the all-American Press, Custer's crowd didn't stand half a chance!

"From out of the dawn of history they rode with ink stained fingers and imaginations soaring beyond all reach of objective reality, these precursors to the early Twentieth Century's more famous, or at least more ballyhooed, Writer's of the Purple Prose, personified by the likes of Zane Grey.

"These hardy pioneers blitzed the front pages of newspapers from Minnesotta to Paris, France -- from Little Rock, Arkansas to New York City.

"All the glamor of Custer, all the brooding strategy of Sitting Bull were no match for them: for oft times they themselves were nameless, lurking both by day and by night in the remotest recesses of the newspaper offices, all across America.

"You might find them patiently hunched over, setting tiny metal type while perched a top absurdly uncomfortable stools.

"Their bloodshot eyes were hidden under the shade of dark green visors, as they twitched in nervous anticipation, awaiting the next rush of wind from the front office with its teletype machine and copy editor.

"Then it happened.

"A breathless copy boy would all but break his skinny neck and stub his grimy little toes in his haste to be sure he had the next instalment of yellowish scratch sheet covered with the cryptic scrawl of his editor ready to give to the typesetter -- and -- we may well suspect! To the typesetter's own creative writer's imagination.

"If the copy boy was exceptionally bold he might wait expectantly, trimbling with his excitement as he watched for the magical transformation that he knew with a simple but profound faith had to happen, as his latest delivery of chicken scratch morphed into wild, inflammatory newspaper headlines and leads.

"But, alas! Usually in vain. Because a pair of bloodshot eyes, suddenly awash with an onrushing tide of steely grey, would transfix the youth and but one word would be uttered:

"Git!

"Only his thin, drooping shoulders would show the lad's disappointment, assauged perhaps by the consoling thought that if he simply stuck it out long enough, the day would surely come when he, too, would be a thoroughly salted and hard-bitten young veteran.

"And then, he, too, would be initiated into that most exulted of fraternities with its tendrils everywhere; the mere whisper of whose collective name struck terror into politician, soldier, and Indian Chief.

"He, too, would then and there become a member of the Writers of the Yellow Prose."