H.B. Baker

“HARD-BOILED” OR “HALF-BAKED”?




     The “H.B” stood for Hillerich Bradsby, the name which H.B.’s eccentric millionaire father had insisted on for his fourth son. When an outraged Mrs. Baker discovered months later that Hillerich Bradsby was not a Baker ancestor but the name of the company which manufactured Louisville Slugger baseball bats, her husband explained, “Hey, number four in the lineup — he’s the cleanup hitter.”
     H.B. shed the childhood nickname Hilly, the pet name his mother imposed on him, by the time he was in high school. From that point on, he was simply “H.B.” to his friends and later his business associates — some of whom kiddingly called him “Hard-Boiled” Baker. But to his critics, including most of the staff at the radio and television stations his father’s money had helped him build, he was “Half-Baked” Baker.
     At fifty, H.B. had a small bay window and was tending toward jowliness. He was red-faced and balding with a temper that occasionally sent the redness in his face traveling all the way up to the shiny spot under his thinning hair. A reincarnation, Buzz thought, of his nineteenth-century mill owner ancestors — a curious mixture of tightfistedness and paternalism. Most of his hourly employees worked six-day weeks — the first forty hours at straight time, the next eight at time-and-a-half as required by federal law. Some favored workers were on the books for sixty hours. Because of embarrassingly low hourly rates, they needed the extra time to make a decent take-home pay. But whether they ordinarily worked forty-eight hours or sixty or somewhere in between, the “paid” vacation for everybody was a straight-time forty hours, forcing some staff members to make tough choices. Stan Wlodyka, Buzz’s number-one news photographer, who was trying to raise five kids, rarely took vacation time. “I can’t afford the pay cut” was Stan’s explanation. Still, when Gert Broadbent, the longtime traffic manager, was out of work more than a year before dying of lung cancer, H.B. kept her on the payroll with a check in the mail every week right up until she was buried. And when Elaine died, H.B. pulled Buzz away from the other mourners at the wake and told him quietly, “Take as much time as you need. Don’t come back till you’re sure you’re ready.”