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Best Reader stories from 1975
Helen Copley, thumbing to Vancouver, San Diego Detox death, bailbondsmen, David Cheney, San Diego Rowing Club, City Rescue Mission
I tell them my name is Ernie Klein, I'm 42 years old, and I'm unemployed
- It's the day after Thanksgiving and I'm standing in line at the unemployment office. I'm near the end of my line, and I have a kind of quivering pain in my stomach which kept me from eating breakfast this morning and has been making me wonder lately if maybe I have an ulcer.
- By Steve Sorensen, Nov. 27, 1975
Helen Copley works a change at San Diego's dailies
- She has cut down the size of the organization from fourteen dailies to nine; five in Illinois and four in California. She whittled down the pay roster from 3,800 employees to 3,200, with 250 Union-Tribune workers cut after the move from downtown to the technologically advanced Mission Valley plant.
- By Paul Krueger, Steve Esmedina, Nov. 6, 1975
Thumbs up
- I left San Diego at 1:00 p.m. on the 21st day of July for Vancouver, British Columbia. A minimum of planning, a small amount of reefer, no maps, a sleeping bag and backpack, mosquito repellent, and I was on the road. Attitude is all-important in hitchhiking and I had been rapping about how much fun I was going to have for so long that the night before takeoff, my good friend Mike signed on for the expedition.
- By Robert M. Cook, Jr., Sept. 11, 1975
San Diego's gypsy
- Oh, I was a surf bum, y’know? I'm a bum all the way - I mean, I finally figured that out. And so I was in the islands surfing and I ran into a Flamenco guitar player over there — I was at the time washing dishes in a coffee house (it was the Beatnik days) - and this guy was working up the street in a nightclub."
- By Elise Miller, March 20, 1975
Scalding shower, green nightgown, beans and rye cocktail bread, and an offer from older man to "keep him company"
- I know I was supposed to stay overnight at the City Rescue Mission on Saturday. An assignment’s an assignment. But when I got there at 7:30, the doors were closed. “Sorry Full House Tonight.” So I decided to try the one down the street, the Full Gospel Rescue Mission, at 441 5th Avenue. They have an evening meal with their evening service, too. Journalistic objectivity, you know.
- By Carlos Bey, Jan. 23, 1975
Greg dies after stint at San Diego Detox
- Greg H. is a 27-year-old veteran. He has been an alcoholic since 1967. Three weeks ago the doctor warned Greg that he would be dead within two years if he didn't stop drinking. Asking around, Greg was eventually referred to the Men's Detoxification Center at 1111 Island in downtown San Diego.
- By Robert M. Cook, Jr., July 31, 1975
Bounty hunters
- All along lower Broadway and its side streets, near the restaurants with the misspelled signs and the gum wads under the counters, alongside the loan sharks and the plasma merchants, business goes on as usual for the bailbondsman.
- By Robert Louis, April 17, 1975
The poor man's country club
- The San Diego Rowing Club is kind of a cliche as far as story ideas go. Once in a while San Diego Magazine or one of the gushy Union Tribune writers will come down to the clubhouse on Harbor Drive, talk with one of the old-timer members, borrow one of the musty brown 1908 photographs hanging on the wall, and there it is — the Rowing Club is taken off the shelf alongside the other great San Diego nostalgic wonders (the Hotel del Coronado, Villa Montezuma, the Old Globe), dusted off, and held up for all to sigh and swoon.
- By John Martin, May 8, 1975