Dave Wood

Hyperbole—an obvious and intentional exaggeration.  -- Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary

I don’t know why, but I possess a hyperbolic streak down my back as wide as a skunk’s and my use of hyperbole occasionally comes back to bite me.

Ever since I turned 90, I’ve been caught pronouncing the non-fact that I’m so old I have no friends still living.  Just recently my statements turned out to be somewhat exaggerated when three folks braved the hazards of I-94 to travel all the way to River Falls and appeared on our doorstep for two whole days to visit the Beautiful Wife and me and marvel at the sights of our quaint little town. They were Marilyn Hoegemeyer, late of the Star Tribune and the very best boss I ever had. After retirement, this farm girl returned home to Nebraska and wrote her wonderfully humorous, sensitive and deep memoir, “Listening to the Corn Grow.” Let’s have more of your new occupation, Hoegy! 

Would you like to trade some samples of how different 19^th century journalism was back then compared to today’s sanitized version?

Ingrid Sundstrom, Star Tribune staffer and copy editor and potter par excellence, who expertly edited my memoirs entitled “My Mother the Arsonist,” the only one of my seven books that was without error.

Peg Meier, my reportorial colleague for the late lamented Star Tribune’s Neighbors Section and several charming and best-selling books including “Bring Warm Clothes,” “Coffee Made Her Insane,” and “Too Hot, Went to Lake,” and co-authored with me “The Pie Lady of Winthrop.” For my money I’d also call Peg “the Crown Princess of the Inspirational Obituary.”  So what else did we do besides eat, drink and make merry and watch from our front porch the students head for “Study Dates” at Mel’s, the Swinging Bridge and other study carrels downtown? 

Never one to be far away from her chosen profession of writing, Peg read some of my recent columns. When she returned home, she sent me clips from her hilarious compilation “Coffee Made Her Insane,” gently pointing out that I was not the only staffer who retired from a major daily and wrote for smaller weeklies. Peg’s clips come from 19^th century weekly newspapers.

Wanna see what they look like compared to today’s bland presumably factual modern dailies? Here’s one: “An old bachelor named Buckingham, aged 58, and a young lady by the name of Baker, aged 18, both of Jordan township, this county, were married a few days ago, and when last heard from were “doing as well as could be expected, under the circumstances.”  Chatfield Democrat, Aug. 21, 1869.

                                                                ****

A gay and festive little rooster, who formerly edited one of the Rochester papers, has been disobeying one of the commandments lately. The cantankerous little cuss is married, has a charming wife and lives in a beautiful cottage, where also did there dwell a handsome buxom hired girl. His wife smelled one or two large-sized mice, but laid low. One Sabbath she started for church; ex-editor was sick and couldn’t go.

Wife smelt a wharf rat, returned home to get a handkerchief, walked slowly to kitchen window, peeped carefully in, saw husband and the buxom girl standing in the corner. A row ensued, of course, right and proper it should, which the ex-editor attempted to quiet by assuring his wife that he and the girl were just measuring to see which was the tallest. Wife couldn’t see it that way, and the ex-editor took the first train for the East. Chatfield Democrat 1867.”

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Unbelievably, the Chatfield paper couldn’t compete for sheer blood and guts when it came to its neighboring paper, The Shakopee Argus:

“When the hired man got too close to the milling machine he was instantly rolled in between the belt and the wheel. The owner of the mill was upstairs at the time and noticed a curious action in the machinery. In fifteen minutes after he had first noticed it, he went below to see the occasion of the noise, where he found the body in the position described. He immediately stopped the mill, extricated the body of the unfortunate hired man. His arms and legs were broken into 20 or 30 pieces, and the flesh literally stripped therefrom, pieces of which were found in every direction: his body was ground to a pumice and blood was thrown 30 feet. One of his feet was found the next day, and pieces of flesh were picked up for several days after in and about the mill.”

Who needs hyperbole when the truth is wilder than fiction?