By WHO: Roger Heineken
WHAT: Interview in which Roger talks about William Allen White and Walt Mason. Mason worked with WAW at the Gazette and wrote the poem “Little Green Tents,” a Memorial Day Classic.
WHERE: KPOR at 90.7 FM (in Emporia).
WHEN: Saturday 5/29 … 12:14 am, 6:44 am, 12:14 pm, and 5:14 pm.
The Emporia Gazette: Heineken interview to air.
This is a re broadcast of an interview done maybe three years ago. Mason’s poem is enduring as is my interview.
In it I read the poem about the fallen soldiers of the Civil War and tell a little about Walt Mason’s success overcoming alcoholism at mid life (45) to become a rock star of his day, read in over two hundred newspapers daily. He even back-tracked and paid all of his old debts in Midwestern towns he had lived in during his alcoholic days. He made his fortune in 13 years working under W. A. White for the Emporia Gazette.
Mason retired at 58 years of age and moved to California in 1920. The Emporia Gazette published a fake newspaper in April of 1920 to be thrown to the Mason home. Everyone else got the real paper inviting them to gather at the Kansas State Normal (ESU) campus to march en mass the the Mason home for a surprise going away party for the family.
“Uncle Walt” as he was affectionately known and loved in Emporia used humor in most of his prose verse. He returned to Emporia once in the 1930s to visit old friends the year before he died. TIME magazine noted his passing in its Milestone feature in prose verse as a tribute to his poetic niche.
His home on West 12th Avenue was built on a cash basis. His builder would tell him another amount was needed to roof the new home, say. Walt would write a short story or special verse, sell it to a magazine and roof the house with the royalties. The Kansas City Star call the house which is on the National Register of Historic Places “the house a typewriter built.”
I hope I remember to listen! Sounds very interesting! (and then, it IS Roger, who knows everything!)
I don’t know EVERYTHING, I just remember well, ele.