(10 of 10)
Baker writhes, frets, then decides to take a walk. A few steps away from his door he hears a whizz-splatt!
close enough to be alarming.
Strange as it seems, a raw potato has fallen from a window high in a nearby apartment building and has nearly done Baker in. Splendid! A column idea from the gods.
New York has rewarded Baker for moving there.
He hustles to his typewriter and strums a slightly self-pitying ode to his own death by vegetable. In this column, he imagines an Associated Press report —POTATO MASHES MAN—and broods about his friends saying "Poor devil, he never knew what hit him." "What did hit him?" "Haven't you heard?" Baker's high-wire act has never been snappier. He finishes typing and thinks about making himself a drink. — John Skew
* Another member, former Gary, Ind., Post-Tribune Columnist Don Ross, is now a public relations consultant in Tulsa. "I'm envious as hell of Russell's Pulitzer, which I think should have gone to a black," quips Ross, who is.