INDISPENSABLE LESSONS FROM A POP MECH LEGEND

With people moving around so much these days, it's perfectly natural to wonder how an editor can just come along and stick like a barnacle to the hull of Popular Mechanics, lasting for 35 years.

- ROY BERENDSOHN

People laugh when I tell them how the two of us became acquainted. It happened this way. I took my résumé, cover letter, some clippings, and photos from my work as a newspaper reporter-photographer and bundled the whole mess together, addressed it to this magazine, and put it in the mailbox. Then I dutifully raised the red flag on the box so the postal carrier would be sure to stop. I went inside and cracked open the New York Times.

By then, my journalism professor had passed away, but you might say I could still hear his voice exhorting his students to always read the obituaries. If anything, read them first. "You always want to find out who just died," he said. My professor was Arnold Brackman (he has a Wikipedia page), and he was tremendously wise in many things, but especially journalism.

So, I turned to the obits and learned that the editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics, John Linkletter, had just died. Although I never knew him, I was told that he was adored by his staff, a mentor to many, and emblematic of his generation-a WWII Navy pilot serving off of carriers and a sturdy son of the Midwest. But there he was, gone.

Then opening Popular Mechanics to its masthead page, I saw that executive editor Joe Oldham was next in line. Now you may find this pathetically innocent, too young to know better, or just plain dumb, but I assumed that Joe would be promoted to editor-in-chief. So, I went out to the mailbox, fetched my package, and retyped a new cover letter, addressed to Joe Oldham, Editor in Chief, Popular Mechanics. I redid the label and slipped the package back into the mailbox. Minutes later, along came the U.S. Postal Service.