Bud Tinney was a part-time sports reporter for the Collier County News. (Naples Daily News, now) And a part-time sports reporter for WNOG. Fact was, Bud would tell you, he was part-time at most everything.
Born under fortunate circumstances, his family owned the island they lived on in New England. Bud still lived there, occasionally, when it got warm up north. He said he spent his youth on the amateur tennis circuit, until his dad decided a reluctant Bud should really go to work and bought him a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. He tried stock brokering a few months--until he found out how valuable the "seat" was--and promptly sold it. Since then he'd been part-timing it.
When I first met him he had to be in his sixties. Small and wiry with a nose like Elmo, and dressed in outlandish golf garb, he was hard to miss. And harder yet not to like. Bud would've fit nicely in any Damon Runyon story.
Bud, and other reporters, liked to hang out at the NPD and we enjoyed having them. There was a desk set aside for when they actually took notes from the reports for a story, but mostly they drank coffee, smoked cigarettes, and BS'ed with the officers.
Bud came in one day with a photograph of him and Richard Nixon. It was taken on a local golf course during one of Tricky Dick's visits and was one of probably a hundred Nixon had taken with anyone who wasn't ashamed to be photographed with him. Bud wanted to borrow an envelope so he could mail it off to Nixon and have him sign it. When he received an askance look, he said, "Dick's an old friend of mine." Uh-huh.
"I'll call him in advance and tell him it's coming," he explained.
"That's the White House," I said.
"I have another number," he said.
Bud was alway telling how many celebrities he knew. Said he'd met them when he was a hot-shot tennis player. We chalked the Nixon thing up to that kind of polluted air.
Until, a couple weeks later, when Bud returned with the photo and an inscription from Tricky Dick about how much he'd enjoyed talking to Bud on the phone, and how much he missed him.
Later, Bud brought in an album with photos of him with the "A" list of Hollywood. After the Nixon thing, it looked good to me.
"I'll call him in advance and tell him it's coming," he explained.
"That's the White House," I said.
"I have another number," he said.
Bud was alway telling how many celebrities he knew. Said he'd met them when he was a hot-shot tennis player. We chalked the Nixon thing up to that kind of polluted air.
Until, a couple weeks later, when Bud returned with the photo and an inscription from Tricky Dick about how much he'd enjoyed talking to Bud on the phone, and how much he missed him.
Later, Bud brought in an album with photos of him with the "A" list of Hollywood. After the Nixon thing, it looked good to me.
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