America On Show To A Peripatetic Ghanaian Scribe

Don’t worry, if you don’t know the meaning of “peripatetic”.

I didn’t know either.
Until I became – “peripatetic”!

I first encountered the word when I visited the United States in 1968. I had been invited to participate in a “Foreign Journalists Programme”

that took place annually at the University of Indiana (Bloomington). It was the autumn of 1968 and an election campaign was in full blast.

Indiana in autumn (or what the Americans call ‘The Fall’) was a magnificent sight to behold. Bloomington was close to a vast forest, and as one drove a few miles away from the University, one encountered the most amazing colours in the foliage of the trees that stood close to the roadside. And beyond...and far yonder.

The scene under the skyline was like the deliberate creation of a very good human artist, not a beauteous tapestry accidentally woven by Mother Nature and intentionally streched out over the vast landscape.

One could discern leaves that were in the process of changing colour: from green to a kaleidoscope of other colours – golden brown, interspersed with purple and/or lilac; a golden sheen shining through shades of red! Just beautiful beyond words.

As someone born and bred in a green “rain forest”, known in Ghana as Kwaebibirem, I’d always thought myself blessed to have been exposed to the beauty of luxuriant vegetation from a young age. Indeed, I would have laughed at anyone who told me I would ever be “envious”of the beauty emanating from a forest situated somewhere else in the world. But, then, I went to Indiana, and at the best time of year to be compulsorily robbed of long-held illusions.

Kwaebibirem was the only forest that could offer superlative foliage to the appreciative eye?

I was taught to "wait small" before engaging in boasting. I just had to become humbler.

Mottos penned on the signboards of Ghanaian passenger lorries rhat I had forgotten now ran through my mind: “Dade bi twa dade bim’ [iron pass iron!]; “travel and see!”; “aboa bi akum King Kong”![Some worse monster has laid King Kong low!] Etc.

One of the superb opportunities provided by the journalists’ programme of which I was a participant, was that it enabled one tp go and work on an American newspaper for a month or two. And before I left Accra, a friend at the information section of the US embassy recommended to me, a newspaper in Palo Alto, California. He said I’d just love Palo Alto.

But in the US, the Director of the programme, suggested that I go, instead, to Louisville, Kentucky – to work with the prestigious Louisville Courier-Journal.

He told me that when I got to the paper, I should go and see “the peripatetic Assistant to the Executive Editor, a guy called John Herchenroeder.”

That left me with two problems: to my shame, I didn’t know what “peripatetic`’ meant, and I also didn’t know how to spell “Herchenroeder!”. But I wasn’t going to let down African journalists by admitting to an American organiser of an international journalists programme that there was anything in the world I didn’t know!

However, there was no Google in those days! So I had to wait until I was able to go to a library to look up “peripatetic” in a dictionary.

And there it was: “travelling often, from place to place.”

Oh, so Mr Herchenroeder didn’t stay at one place whilst working for the paper? Suppose he wasn’t around when I got to Louisville?

Fortunately for me, he WAS at post when I arrived at the Courier-Journal.

As for that hard-to-pronounce name of his, no sooner had I begun to try and pronounce it than the receptionist took over and finished the job for me. Obviously, his name was a well-known slayer of tongues at the paper! And so it should have been, for lhe’d been acting as the paper’s pointman who dealt with readers’ complaints – a position that was later formalised and was to cement his name into history as America’s first “Newspaper Ombudsman” (who arbitrated settlements of complaints between the newspaper and its readers).

I found Mr Hercheroeder at his desk, and he was a very big man, with a personality that was immensely friendly and welcoming.

He promptly arranged for me to attend a very important function to be addressed by the wife of Mr Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic Party's presidential candidate. At the gate I told the security boss that I had been sent by the Courier-Journal.

The man asked me: "Who at the Courier-Journal"?

I replied: "Mr Herchenroeder!"
He let me in. I heard him mutter: "Anyone who can utter that name without batting an eyelid must be authentic!"

Yeah -- America in election year can be fun. I don't think even Trump can ruin the current election, try though he might! Good luck to God's own country!