At Reed, he became a columnist and humorist for the school’s paper, dubbing himself “The Campus Cynic,” contributing to the yearbook and humor magazine, and reviewing books for a Eugene daily paper. Haycox was a very active writer from the start. When he applied to Reed College in Portland, Oregon, he explained on his application that he wanted “to equip for fiction writing,” and once accepted in 1920, became a journalism major and took every creative writing course available. He served in France during World War I and then went to Alaska to work as a commercial fisherman and save money to go to college. At 16, living on his own in San Francisco, Haycox lied about his age in order to join the Oregon National Guard and ended up stationed at the Mexican border during that country’s civil war. By 14, he’d held a number of odd jobs - delivery boy, bellhop, dishwasher, peanut seller. Haycox’s parents separated when he was a boy, and he grew up with various relatives and in various towns.

Haycox didn’t live the open-range life that he would write so much of later in life, but he had plenty of adventure in his youth, his youth spent in and around logging camps and shingle mills, coal mills and ranches, and the small towns that were the locales of the American West’s pioneer experience. Today is the birthday of prolific novelist and short-story writer Ernest Haycox, who was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1899, and is probably best known for the story Stage to Lordsburg, which became John Wayne’s Stagecoach and Alder Gulch, which became the Jimmy Stewart film The Far Country. TWA from Saturday, Octo“ A Night at the Opera ” by William Matthews, from Search Party: Collected Poems.

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