A Christmas memory of the newspaper vendor who sang her way into Fort Worth’s heart | Opinion
(First published Dec. 23, 2021.)
After more than 50 Christmases in the news business, I still remember the first.
On Christmas Eve 1972, I was working in the Fort Worth Press newsroom, slapping a newspaper together amid the old-time clatter of teletype machines and typewriter keys.
Pete Kendall, the late sportswriter, was on the desk. We edited and headlined stories about the upcoming Cowboys-Redskins game and the Texas-Alabama Cotton Bowl.
Then, at 9 p.m., we left the Press Building at 501 Jones St. and walked a chilly three blocks to the Blackstone Hotel coffee shop, 601 Main St.
On a night reserved for family, gifts and church, we had been working in a sooty newsroom that smelled of newsprint, cigarettes, ink and old pastepots.
In the hotel dining room, we were alone.
Except for an older woman sitting in a corner. She wore a bright floral-print dress and sang Christmas carols to herself in a raspy voice.
“The-ee fer-ust No-ell, the-ee ain-julls did say-ee .... “
Kay L. Gale was always alone.
For 30 years, the frustrated singer-songwriter picked up the first newspapers off the presses and sold them from the curb at the Tarrant County courthouse, charging a nickel or a dime for a paper and a quarter or 50 cents to sing a song.
Over the years, Gale boomed out “Happy Birthday” and blared “God Bless America” to hundreds of courthouse officials and visitors — sometimes beautifully, sometimes just loudly.
Yet when she died in 1981, no family member could be found to manage Gale’s $5,540 estate, according to Star-Telegram archives.
Nobody knew her birthday, or when she was born, or when she was married, although at the rundown hotels where she lived, she was listed as “Mrs. Kay L. Gale.”
Even her closest newspaper and courthouse acquaintances said they didn’t really know anything at all about the 5-foot-2 woman with a fondness for brightly colored dresses, wide-brimmed hats, white gloves and tennis shoes.
Yet they gladly paid her 50 cents to interrupt some judge’s birthday party and loudly sing, “The Old Gray Mare.”
Years before she took up selling newspapers, Gale had struggled and failed as a singer and songwriter.
A 1950 Star-Telegram announcement described her as “Kay Gale, blues singer.” In 1953, she advertised in Billboard as a composer, selling “Tomorrow’s Top Tunes! They’re New! They’re Beautiful!”
But they weren’t.
Some of her songs, including ”How I Love That Flag” and “The Team Song of the Dallas Cowboys,” are topics on a website devoted to “The World’s Worst Records.”
In a 1975 WFAA/Channel 8 interview, Gale said she didn’t make it as a singer because she wasn’t “glamorous” and because she didn’t smoke or drink.
She was much better at selling newspapers, gaining a reputation as a master of the hard sell.
When her bundle of the evening Press hit the courthouse sidewalk just before the lunch rush hit the street, she quickly scanned that day’s news and went door-to-door to judges and lawyers demanding: “You’ve got to buy a paper. Your name is in it.”
If she saw a headline that said “Jury Selection Begins Today” in a trial, she went to the jury room selling papers, which meant they were immediately all bought by the defense attorneys.
“But sell you a paper or a song or not, she put a big smile on those in and around the courthouse,” retired Star-Telegram reporter Roger Summers wrote in an online message. “And did it all for free.
“In a place of sometimes gloomy, heavy news, Kay made everything better, made everything seem worthwhile.”
And even on Christmas Eve, she could sell newspapers.
This story was originally published December 24, 2021 at 5:45 AM.
