Son of the Sun-Times In his new memoir, After Visiting Friends, Michael Hainey solves the mystery of his father's death.Quote:
Today Mike Hainey is deputy editor of GQ. He grew up knowing his father from scrapbooks and fugitive memories—such as this one in After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story, a memoir Scribner is publishing this month: "I would have been four, maybe five. My brother and I are with our father. Walking through the newsroom. It is his day off. We are here to get his paycheck. The newsroom is bright and big and wide, the largest room I have ever seen. White lights hang overhead. Windows rim the room. And everywhere desks and paper and men. Men in white shirts and black ties sit at battered desks. Some have typewriters. Some do not. Some read pieces of paper. Others type on pieces of paper. Telephones ring. Men yell across the room."
This is a child's memory. Why does it move me as I read it? Why do I remember the Sun-Times newsroom of the same era in roughly the same way—as a conglomeration of simple elements? Shouts. Typewriters. Telephones. Tobacco. Hainey continues: "Clouds of cigarette smoke hang over the room like storm clouds in miniature. Some of the men are older than my father. They have hard guts and greased-back hair. When my father walks with us through the newsroom, his hands on our shoulders, guiding us through the labyrinth of desks, men stop us. 'Your boys, Bob?' A cigarette jangles from the man's lip and he slides a red pencil behind his hair-pocked ear. 'Put 'er there, son.'"
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