Dave Wood

Today’s eccentric, like the first eccentric, is a journalist and prankster I was introduced to in the strangest of places. Ohio. I was a grad student at Bowling Green University where I befriended Harry Harder, a Minnesotan. We occasionally took breakfast together in the Student Union to shield ourselves from all the East Coast snobs who infested the campus. Harry was blessed with a mother back in Mankato who sent him a thick missive every week. Not a lovey-dovey oh how we miss you. Just a bunch of columns by Will Jones whose column was called “After Last Night,” a gossipy piece about restaurants and night clubs in the Twin Cities.

Will grew up in Dover, Ohio and frequently wrote about that crazy town as well. Which eventually attracted Ohio students who crowded around our table. “What’s going on around in Dover, Harry?”

Harry shot back, “Will wrote about his life as newsboy and winning a writing award. To celebrate he took his girlfriend to a speakeasy and insisted on buying her a pickled tongue sandwich on pumpernickel. He reported that she never went out with him again and that he couldn’t figure out why.” 

Will was like that, obsessed with strange foods, chronicled in his popular cookbook, “Wild in the Kitchen,” which  includes recipes for making 3-day Braunschweiger liver sausage stolen from his pal, publicist Bill Greer, and advice such as: “If your host’s cocktail hour lasts 2½ hours, you have every right to elbow your way into her kitchen and prepare grilled peanut butter sandwiches on her remaining clean skillet.”

Graduated from Bowling Green, we settled into our new hobby farm in Whitehall and apartment in Minneapolis and immediately subscribed to the Minneapolis Tribune, where we relished the idea of getting our fill of Will four times a week. We began dining at Wisconsin’s wonderful Hillside Fish House where its owner Leonard Losinski told us a stranger had recently entered the tarpaper-sided Hillside, sat down at the bar and asked Leonard if it was true that he served fried bullheads.

“Yes, but only in spring.”

“Good! It’s Spring, so I’ll have I’ll have three orders, plus a pitcher of dirty martinis.” 

“He consumed the orders, all of it, and drove out and headed west in an old Rolls Royce.  Minnesota plates.”

“Leonard, you served Will Jones, a famous columnist. I’ll send you a copy of the story when it appears in the Minneapolis Tribune.” It did, a week or so later and Leonard pinned it up on the guest bulletin board.

Not long after, I began writing a column for the Whitehall Times and imagine my surprise that Will Jones mentioned my column in the little weekly. My column was about the weird food my grandma served me when I was a little boy. I called it Norwegian Guacamole: hard bacon grease mixed with Karo syrup whipped into a silken dip. Smear it on bread after a cold afternoon of tobogganing. Talk about pickled tongue sandwiches! For a brief 15 seconds I was famous!

Later in life, I had the honor meeting of Will Jones. It was a rare occasion because Will infrequently appeared on the Tribune premises because whenever he did, he demonstrated he was most assuredly no Organization man. He began his quarter century career as a copy editor assigned to clean up stories, and follow the style sheet to a T. There was a new kid at the Tribune, John Cowles, Jr., fresh out of Harvard, and the son of the newspaper’s owner. Junior ignored Will’s orders that the Tribune style book required light on the commas policy. In doubt? Don’t use one. Tired of being ignored by Jr., Will brought a metal rasp and when Jr. went to lunch, Will filed off the commas on Jr.’s typewriter.

Whatta guy! thought I, until weeks later the eccentric wordsmith approached my desk. As I puffed on my Marlboro, he aimed an aerosol can and sprayed my face, then proceeded to the next smoker. “Will doesn’t care for smokers,” a fellow smoker told me. I steered clear of Will after that. He resigned a year later, and I was very surprised to receive a call from Will: “I hear you’re going to Turkey, Dave. Congrats! It has the best cuisine in the world.” “Yeah, I’ll bet,” figured I, recalling his trip to China Kong in search of a cafe where dog was served.

Will’s Head: “Dog Bites Man; that’s NOT news; Man Bites Dog; That’s NEWS!”

(P.S. Turkish grub is great!)

Here’s what Will ate for breakfast before he began writing his wildly funny cookbook, “Wild in the Kitchen”: Grapefruit, hot dog, baked beans, spiced pears, lettuce salad, potato chips, coconut cream pie and tea. Not all of Will’s breakfasts are that eccentric. He tells us readers that whenever he vacations at San Francisco’s Buena Vista Hotel, he gives like-minded tourists his agenda: Arise, sunbathe at the wharf until the bar opens at 10 a. m. Belly up to ingest 2 or 3 Ramos Gin fizzes, followed by 2 or 3 goblets of Irish Coffee. Take a noon nap. 

You’ll get enough coffee, eggs, orange juice to gag his nemesis, Dr. Ancel Keyes, the anti- cholesterol scientist from the U. (Also see his advice on corned beef: (“More fat, please!”). Will wrote his diatribe in 1961. It took the rest of civilization three decades to discover Dr. Keyes’ theory was just bunk.

Maybe we need more eccentrics setting the pace on the culinary front. Thus ends my discussion of three irrepressible acquaintances willing to buck the tide of normalcy. Let me know if you’ve got some that can top these!