For me, he stays seared in my mind from one particular quarterly editorial review meeting. These came up to examine how your magazine was performing, and sometimes he’d drop in and listen to the proceedings – usually for the big money-makers like Hot Rod and Motor Trend. This was the first time he’d stayed to listen in on one of my little titles. He was lounging off in the background, leafing rather quickly through the lastest issue of my mags – looking somewhat bored, I thought.
All was going according to the regular meeting format: How many pages of ads were we selling? How many pages of edit were we writing? How much was I spending? Were we on track to make our yearly bottom line? But then, my publisher, in a preemptive strike not discussed beforehand with me (or anyone), attacked the Circulation Dept. people attending by pointing out, quite acidly, that the latest issue of our mag had the wrong price printed on its cover! Not too good. Circulation was the final reviewer of each mag’s cover, so he was trying to pin them for this obviously boneheaded, and money-losing error. He had a long-standing underground beef with those guys, but it was on now!
The pages stopped getting flipped at the back of the room. Mr. Petersen closed my offending magazine and started looking at its cover for the price. The room got strangely silent, except for all the other people in it looking for their copy and oggling the cover for the bogus price. Oh, and for the thumping sound as my heart ramped up and the swooshing noise of the blood jacking though my temples.
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Crap, why did I tie my tie so tight!? How could I forget to check the price!? What the hell is my publisher doing!? It’s darn impressive how many thoughts can flash through your brain when the end is near. I didn’t know what the Circulation people were going to say.
They said nothing. We were long past the pregnant pause stage when Petersen’s second-in-command, whom I was sitting beside, and the direct head of all of us, asked sharply and with plenty of “just what the Sam hell is going on?” tone, “How do we put the wrong price on a magazine?” He was looking around the room and settled at last on me. No one had spoken up. His collective “we” had quickly narrowed to a guilty one.
I saw Mr. Petersen now was looking up with a bemused “This is going to be good” expression on his face. People were finding something to look at on the desk in front of them. It was still crypt silent, for what could have been only seconds but was being counted down by the swooshes in my ears and temples. “I’m the editor; it’s my responsibility.” I sort of croaked out as I was trying to keep my back straight and at least look like I had a spine. I saw the wrong price tag right in front of me; figured they were going to brand me with it as a going away present.
Yet. Salvation! A Miracle! Intervention on a Cosmic scale. “But,” I said as only someone who has heard the phone ring with the governor on the line saying the pardon has come through, “I’d like to point out, that the price we printed is five cents more than we normally sell our magazine for.”
Much shuffling around of papers and the offending cover by the assembled ensued. Then followed by Mr. Petersen grinning like a banker, and snorting out “Good!” when he looked at me. Right before he went back to flipping through the pages of my mag.
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