A Dispatch from McCaughey

Telephone call in 1996:

Me: “Hi John, how’s it going? Any news?”

John: “No, old chap, not a new!”

That phone call was a typical one following the daily fax (some of you may remember what that was) from my friend the late John McCaughey (1947-2008). At the time I was living in Farmington Connecticut and John, a well-known Irish-American energy journalist, lived in Alexandria Virginia. The fax would be a handwritten note in broad pen strokes, it was usually followed by a brief telephone call. One never knew what the daily topic would be in these short commentaries.

“I was looking up the motto of Winchester College (founded 1387) – the motto is “Manners Myketh Man”[1] and graduates are known as Wykehamists – when (in Brewer’s[2], where else?) I came by chance across chapter and verse on Joseph Hobson Jegger, the man who in 1888 actually did break the bank at Monte Carlo, winning two million FF in eight days, quite a lot of jimmy o’goblins[3] those days. An expert on spindles, he did it by suspecting that one of the roulette wheels had a faulty spindle and he had it watched for a week. He then bet on the numbers that were turning up with much more than mathematical probability and won a fortune. While this proves the importance of a mechanical engineering degree, the money did not buy happiness. ‘He died in 1892’ Brewer reports blandly, ‘probably mainly from boredom.’ Another terrible warning to us all.”

At about the same time as this fax arrived my ten-year old son was assigned a school project titled “Career Interviewing – Working 9-5,” where he chose to interview John. Here are my son’s notes from the prepared interview questionnaire with a few of my comments added in parenthesis:

Name of Interviewee: John McCaughey

Job title: Publisher of Energy Perspective (a weekly newsletter)
What types of tasks do you perform? Writing, interviewing, and editing.
Where do you spend most of your working time? Indoors at a desk
Are you required to wear special clothing? No (but he frequently wore the same cardigan sweater)
What special equipment do you use? Mont Blanc fountain pen, computer, telephone, fax and tape recorder. (the pen has a particularly broad nib, very distinctive)
Do you usually work with other people or alone? Alone (although he always had two corgis in the room)
What are your normal working hours? 9:00 am to 12:00 pm
What special knowledge or training does your job require? A little literary ability, editing skills and interviewing skills.
What do you like about your job? Having fun and annoying people because sometimes I do investigative reporting.
What do you wish you could change about your job? If they made the day 34 hours (responded someone who claimed, he only worked 3 hours a day)
Is there anything else someone should know about your job? Its unsteady and unpredictable

Based on this interview my son (then age 10) concluded “I would not like this job as I do not like to write.” Taking John’s advice from the opening fax, my son Branko George Terzic P.E. went on to obtain a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering.

For more get a copy of John McCaughey’s book Browne’s Guide to Hacks a “short Roman a Clef” of London’s Fleet Street and newspaper days in the 1970’s and 1980s” - available from Amazon

A Dispatch from McCaughey

By
Branko Terzic

Here’s one example:

A Dispatch from McCaughey

By Branko Terzic

Here’s one example:

By
Branko Terzic