A 1938 clipping by E. R. Calhoun captures an outsider trying to decipher the Moscow show trials. Relying on an observer named Krenker, Calhoun theorized victims confessed to buy marked graves for their kin. The true terror was far darker, trading families as hostages rather than resting places.

To save Alabama’s bankrupt rural schools, legislators fought over penny sales tax tokens. Calhoun ignored the political noise, pulling out classical Greek texts to trace public revenue back to the biblical marketplace and revealing the scholar behind the proofreader's desk.

The first time I got a haircut in a salon, I was thirteen. I can still smell that exotic Vidal Sasson shampoo in the tall brown bottle. Nowadays the barber shop is a novelty. Here is ER's take on the salon in 1937.

After repeal, ER toured New England to see how legal spirits were managed. Used to the South’s illicit bootleggers and dry politics, he admired the orderly dispensaries of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, noting with dry humor that cutting out illicit profit took the rowdiness right out of drink.

This companion piece from The Birmingham News introduces the E.R. at his post, profiling three newsroom veterans and capturing E.R. in his element as head proofreader—presiding quietly over hot lead, galley proofs, and grammatical tangles with his trademark pencil and dry humor.