Saga of the fuzzy lemon

The sun looked like a fuzzy lemon shining through haze near the mountain today as I went out to feed the birds. As it turned out later in the day below this on a post called Props, my daughter commented about the fuzzy lemon, which to my mind demands a story.

It goes back to Anchorage journalism in the mid 70s when there were still competing newspapers. One year the Anchorage Times subscribed to UPI in order to get them to send a reporter to cover the Alaska Legislature.

I don't remember the fellow's name now, but he was obviously an old timer with UPI. In the world of news wire services UPI was always known as the creative one with writers producing marvelous featurish leads for everything, while the conservative AP seldom went outside the simple declarative sentence.

The fellow who covered the Legislature for UPI that year dragged out every hack creative lead UPI had ever used on a political story maybe dating back to the 1920s. They were fun to read in the opposition paper and not in ours. But soon he had his influence and competing reporters began picking up the challenge. Gradually our reporter and the AP reporter began writing more creative leads. This went on for a while until one night this lead came over from the AP on a story about legislation to change Alaska time zones and daylight saving time:

"The sun was just a fuzzy lemon over Rep. MIllie Banfield's shoulder as she addresd the legislation …"
That brought a series of groans in our newsroom and every funky lead after that especially if it involved weather became a fuzzy lemon lead. We had contests to write bad ones.

Over time, the UPI reporter left and the fuzzy lemon gradually faded until one night a new AP reporter in Alaska wrote this lead on a story about hours of daylight and darkness in Barrow, North America's northernmost city: "The sun was just a sulfur smear …"

The fuzzy lemon was back. There was a journalism awards banquet coming up and in keeping with rewarding outstanding work, I built a fuzzy lemon trophy. It was just two blocks of 2x4, one horizontal for the base and one attached to it vertically. I finished the wood nicely and then put a springy wire in the top. To that I attached one of those RealLemon plastic lemons. I glued some of the under coat from my dog to that and voila, a fuzzy lemon trophy which I planned to give to the new AP reporter at the banquet.
Fortunately, calmer heads prevailed and we did not embarrass the poor woman.

I did give the trophy to the AP and the last time I saw it, it was on a shelf in their office mid 90s. That was almost the end of the story.

But there was one more chapter. One night a feature photo came across the desk showing the sun shining behind some haze over a body of water in Anchorage. I could not resist and wrote, "The sun looks like a fuzzy lemon as it shines through haze over Westchester Lagoon Tuesday." I didn't think that was so bad and it did get fuzzy lemon into print for the first and only time that I know of, but even better, it led to the best memo I have ever received in my life. It was from the chief editor of the paper and it read like this:

"Tim
Absolutely no more fuzzy lemons in the paper.
Stan"

I still have that note, the typewriter ink fading on the low-grade newsprint copy paper we used at the time. And now someone has unearthed the original picture, that's it at the top of this page.