Dark and bitter aptly describe a steaming cup of black coffee, a slice of Coffee Chess Pie and stories about an editor who squandered his talent on really bad choices.
I’ve been re-watching “Lou Grant.”
I found it on YouTube in April.
It’s entertaining, of course, in a weird sepia sort of way and startling in it’s exploration of issues that continue to dog us 40-some years later. It’s even more poignant than expected, now, in the wake of star Ed Asner’s recent death.
I want to say the fictitious “LA Tribune” newsroom is what led me into journalism, but that really isn’t true. “Lou Grant” was on the air for its original run when I was in high school and college, but I don’t remember watching it that often. I think (or like to think, anyway) that more engaging things — like football games and school activities, movies and pizza with friends, and, oh yeah, homework — filled my evenings.
I understand from reading tributes and chatroom threads that the show did indeed ignite interest, if not passion, in many people who went on to careers in news. After Asner’s death. many of those same people mourned by sharing stories about their own Lou Grants, irascible editors who were tough but fair, strict but encouraging, gruff but charming, men — always men, it seems — who gave them a pass “just this once” for some cub mistake and, as a result, they became more discerning writers or sharper editors or simply better people. Many of those people described their own ambitions as wanting to be Rossi or Billie or to “work for a boss like Lou Grant and then become a boss like Lou Grant.”
I spent most of my time in a newsroom as a copy editor, designer and columnist, so my relationship with editors was different than what was described in “Lou Grant.” But when I began working for a newspaper right out of college, I was a reporter. I covered courts and council and potato administration meetings for a weekly newspaper in southern Colorado.
My editor at that paper was the anti-Lou. He was, at times, irascible and gruff, charming and entertaining, and certainly memorable. But while everyone has only good things to say about Lou Grant and their own personal Lou Grants (and Ed Asner, actually, which is even more impressive), no one would tell completely positive stories about Dwight — at least, not if they were being honest.
He was an extremely talented writer and a great glad-hander, both skills that are important for reporters, but he rose to his level of incompetence and imploded. When he hired me, he was managing editor. Two weeks after I started working for him, he became publisher/editor when the former publisher resigned under a cloud. Less than a year later, when he decided doing both jobs left him without enough time for schmoozing (and by schmoozing I mean cocaine, allegedly, and affairs with college-age reporters), I became managing editor. Totally in over my head but eager for the $50 a month raise, I did that job for about eight months before moving on to the neighboring daily.
What I found when I googled him was a mugshot of my first editor, my anti-Lou Grant, and stories about an in-process criminal trial in which he was charged with rape and aggravated human trafficking ...
At one point, when I was safely ensconced at that competing paper, Dwight showed up early on press day at the newspaper he still oversaw. The only people at work that early in the day were two, maybe three young women tasked with pasting up ads for the next day’s paper. “How about breakfast?” he asked them; and although there were constantly deadlines, the paper didn’t have to be off the floor for, maybe, 15 hours and he was the publisher, so they said, sure. There was a bakery in the next block, a hotel diner two blocks away and the next town over, a bigger town with more dining options, was just 17 miles away. But instead of one of those options — which, really on press day, would have still been surprising but maybe not shocking — Dwight drove the paste-up crew to Pueblo, 2½ hours away.
There were no cell phones back then, so I don’t know how people back home figured out that the publisher of their hometown paper had taken those young women out of town for an unplanned and unannounced excursion. I don’t know if the women in question were worried or fearful when they noticed the miles between them and work had grown long (140 miles, more or less) or if they were fully consenting.
At some point, however, the husband of one of them contacted the police and insisted a
warrant be issued for the publisher who had “kidnapped” his wife.
That didn’t happen. At least, I don’t think it did. I do know that Dwight never faced charges and that he was looking for work not long afterward.
Fast forward about 25 years and a group of fellow journalists and I were swapping stories about our first jobs and first editors. I knew Dwight had left Colorado (after a brief stint at the daily down the road where I was working, a job that was cut short by a non-compete clause) and that he had ended up in Kansas. I knew that for awhile he ran a news-based website in Kansas, writing a weekly or semi-weekly column, a task he always excelled at even all those years before when I knew him. Sometimes I would look up that website to see if anything interesting was going on in Kansas, but it had been years — so that day, I decided to check in.
What I found when I googled him was a mugshot of my first editor, my anti-Lou Grant, and stories about an in-process criminal trial in which he was charged with rape and aggravated human trafficking in connection with his job as a bail bondsman. According to testimony at the trial and recorded phone calls entered into evidence, he coerced at least four women into performing sex acts in exchange for bail and threatened to send them back to jail if they didn’t comply. “The dude had my freedom in his hands,” one woman told police investigators.
After six trial delays and a massive heart attack, he was convicted. All counts. He is now seven years into a 21-year prison sentence.
Even though he was no Lou Grant, I admired Dwight’s passion for the news and for the newspaper and town we shared. I admired his skill as a writer, and in fact still have clips of some of the columns he wrote when I worked for him. (Notably, a Father’s Day column in which he described his own father as “a hard man who ruled his world with his fists, his brutal honesty and an etched-in-concrete sense of right and wrong that somehow always appeared distorted …” He went on to explain that his father “accidentally” killed a man with his bare hands for disrespecting a woman in a bar, which, of course, 30 years later, seemed kind of ironic.)
Dwight wasn’t a bad editor — until he was. And I kind of liked him as a boss — until I didn’t. When he failed me, which was inevitable, it was a failure with resonance, impacting many of the decisions I made going forward.
And there it is. That lasting impact. Maybe that made him a Lou Grant, after all.
The Pie
Coffee Chess Pie
One day when I was a junior in college, my roommate decided to teach me and our other roomie to drink coffee. She had an impressive habit and couldn’t quite understand people who didn’t share her love of the hot, pungent elixir. She made the coffee, poured it into heavy ceramic mugs, spooned in the sugar and turned it into a nondescript beige by adding too much creamer. I didn’t drink coffee again until I got a full-time job that sometimes required early-morning and late-night hours.
When I recounted that story to my dad, another caffeine aficionado, he explained that cream and sugar was the worst way to drink coffee. He learned to love it black with something sweet to eat while he was in Korea with the U.S. Army. Always drink it with a treat, he said, a cookie or a donut or a nice slice of pie.
This pie, Coffee Chess Pie, is sweet like late-night gossip sessions in a college dorm room with new friends. It’s black and kind of bitter like chasing final deadlines while a behemoth press churns in the backshop and tomorrow’s first assignment grows ever closer. It’s satisfying like a midnight omelette and a hot brew at a roadside diner, while the music of a long-anticipated concert echoes in your mind and insistent rain keeps time against the window. With a generous helping of cinnamon whipped cream on top, it’s spicy and exciting like looking forward and making plans.
The Recipe
One 9-inch crust, blind baked and cooled
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup cold-brew coffee
1 stick unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
¼ cup espresso powder
¼ cup fine yellow cornmeal
¼ teaspoon salt
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup heavy cream, at room temperature
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
In a saucepan over medium heat, whisk together the brown sugar and cold-brew coffee. Cook until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture has reduced by one-third. (This takes awhile, so be patient. You can gauge the progress by measuring the level with a ruler, the handle of a wooden spoon or a clean craft stick.) Pour into a medium bowl and let cool slightly.
Whisk the melted butter, granulated sugar, espresso powder, cornmeal and salt into the coffee mixture.
Crack the eggs into a small bowl. Add the cream and vanilla and whisk until combined. Slowly pour into the coffee mixture and whisk until combined.
Pour the filling into the pie shell. (Don’t overfill.) Place the pie on a baking sheet and place in the oven. Bake for 40 to 60 minutes. (I baked my pie for 55 minutes and kept a pretty close eye on it for the final 10 minutes.) The pie is done when the sides are puffed and the center jiggles slightly. The filling will continue to set as it cools.
Remove the pie from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool. Allow to cool 4 to 6 hours before serving. Cut into slices and top with cinnamon whipped cream.
Store leftover pie, well wrapped in plastic wrap or under a pie dome, for up to 3 days.
To make the Cinnamon Whipped Cream, pour about half a cup (or more depending on how many people you are serving and how much you like whipped cream) into a metal bowl and whip with an electric mixer until the cream is thick and forms peaks. Add about 2 teaspoons sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon and whip again. Taste. If it isn’t sweet enough or cinnamon-y enough for your taste, add more and whip again.
BUTTERY ALL-PURPOSE CRUST
2½ cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
¾ cup (1½ sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces
¼ cup (4 tablespoons) cold vegetable shortening
¼ cup (4 tablespoons) cold vodka
6 tablespoons cold water, plus extra as needed
In a large bowl, mix together the flour, salt and sugar until thoroughly combined. Add the butter and shortening and cut together with a pastry cutter until the mixture forms small pea-sized crumbs.
Pour the vodka over the mixture, a tablespoon at a time, using a rubber spatula. Add the water and press the dough together to form two large balls. If the dough seems dry or does not hold together, add extra water a tablespoon at a time until all the ingredients come together. (Be careful not to work the dough too much to prevent the crust from being tough.)
Press each ball into a 1-inch disk, wrap each in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour — or up to two days — before rolling out.
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