One of the most peculiar assignments I’ve covered working at a newspaper was the second to last stop on Vic Browning’s road trip from Texas to California in 1996. And it’s why I loved working at newspapers. I was a staff photographer for The Daily Press in Victorville at the time and teamed-up with writer Don Holland on the story.
It’s been a few years, but as I recall, Don said he just taken a phone call about a dead guy who was soon to arrive in Hesperia after being driven from Wimberley, Texas in his Cadillac. Don asked if I wanted tag along and check it out. He added that we better hustle because the caller said the guy was due at the crematorium later that afternoon. About 30 minutes later, we were standing in a driveway in Hesperia, Calif. next to a blue 1990 Cadillac Seville. Sitting in the back seat was the late Victor Ajax Browning, Sr., 83, appearing quite relaxed while sporting a red corduroy ball cap and blue Adidas sweat suit. Browning’s attire complemented the interior of the Caddy rather nicely. Accompanying the dead Mr. Browning were his son, Vic Browning, Jr. and grandson, Shane Browning. Both sported T-shirts commemorating the Dallas Cowboys 27-17 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XXX.
It was a last wish of the senior Browning, who battled a number of ailments late in life, that after his passing he was to be driven from Wimberley to a Victorville crematorium in his Cadillac. The family indulged him. After his death on Jan. 30, 1996 , Browning was embalmed in a sitting position. The various paper work needed to legally transport the body across state lines was obtained. And twenty hours later, Vic, Vic Jr., and Shane arrived in Hesperia.
I’d covered my share of fatalities by this time, so I wasn’t thrown too far off my game after meeting Mr. Browning. It quickly became clear to Don and I that the Browning road trip was the exclamation point on fully lived life (and, by extension, poking some fun at the Grim Reaper). The difficulty I faced was conveying the spirit of the Brownings’ 1,000-mile trek in a photo.
Don’s copy helped tremendously to that end. He quoted grandson Shane, who said “this wasn’t a time of mourning for us. It was time for us to do what granddad wanted us to do.”
Shane also related a rather humorous anecdote from the trip. After an otherwise uneventful trek, upon entering California, the three Brownings were stopped at a check point near Blythe. The border patrol agent “sticks his head in and looks at granddad and says ‘How ya doing, sir?’ And I say ‘Oh, he’s asleep.’ And he says, ‘Damn, he’s sleeping pretty hard.’ And I say ‘he’s been sleeping’ ever since Texas.'”
Don’s and my little report caused a bit of stir back at the office. There were discussions about whether or not to run the story. And if it did run, how should it be played? It ran A-1, under the fold. Later that evening, the Associated Press picked up Don’s story and wanted the photo too, but I had been at the paper just over month and had yet to learn how to move a photo on the wire using the paper’s new Leaf Desk software. No one else left in the newsroom knew how to, either. The guy on AP’s photo desk in Los Angeles–Harrington was his name –was not happy.
When you work at a newspaper, you don’t wake up thinking you’ll be reporting on a road trip like Victor Ajax Browning’s. But when you work at a newspaper, you just might.
