Readers of the Salt Lake Tribune in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s probably recall the work of Dan Valentine in his daily “Nothing Serious” column. Don’t they?
A friend recently sent an old piece of schmaltz from Valentine, “I trust you’ll treat her well,” about sending a daughter off to the first day of school. It was misattributed to Victor Buono (now you start to see my interest).
Valentine’s column was a rambling collection of not-serious observations about people the newspaper covered and events in Utah and the Intermountain states. Occasionally he would write about some event in a memorable fashion — the first day of school for his daughter, the first day of school for his son — and occasionally he’d do a tribute to some underappreciated profession, like truckers, waiters and waitresses, young mothers, secretaries. In those tributes, there was almost always a line like, ‘She’s America’s [future (teachers), heart (nurses), breakfast-tomorrow-morning (truckers)] with a smile on her face!’
Old columns appeared in paperback print collections sold in every truck stop and diner in the west — at least, that’s what it seemed like when the University of Utah debate squad travelled, and found the things everywhere we stopped. Standard breakfast behavior was for someone to grab the sample and perform one of the columns, for sport, to irritate the other debaters — but often enough to the appreciation of other breakfasters who found Valentine’s columns appropriate and touching, rather than out of place and out of time in the Vietnam era, especially at breakfast.
Dan Valentine passed, and his son, Dan Valentine, Jr., took over the column briefly. Valentine joined our writing team with Orrin Hatch for a brief time, too, later.
Query — Does anyone know: Are those collections of Dan Valentine’s old columns still available anywhere? (I don’t find them on Amazon as currently published.) Does anyone know where Dan Valentine, Jr., is these days? If any reader knows, please put a note in the comments. Read the rest of this entry »
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