MR Richard Everett Londgren

Mind Your P's and q's MR Richard Everett Londgren

High school junior Carl Bengtstrom visualized himself to be like the hero of the radio series "Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy." And when the St. Paul Daily News was seeking a new "Copy Boy" (flunky) for the newsroom, they selected Carl (after his journalism teacher recommended him). But there his role expanded to be the "Muscle" as the not-so-muscular reporters and photographers drafted him to accompany them in the city "infected" by the Boston-based Irish Mob. At the same time, Carl had inherited the family's small print-shop because his dad, during the Great Depression, had gone to work on the new Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State. And Carl's older brother Neil signed up for the CCC in Oregon. So from school, Carl enlisted brainy Inga Halvorson (who liked to "joust" with Carl about the merits of Minnesota authors F. Scott Fitzgerald of St. Paul and Nobel-prize winner Sinclair Lewis) to help at the print-shop. There, a pair from the local Irish Mob tried to engage the print-shop in a scam to print counterfeit New Deal food stamps. But Carl and Inga quietly alerted the eager FBI, and at the right moment, their G-men swooped in on a meeting at the print-shop as a first step in cracking the Boston-based Irish Mob. Meanwhile, Carl the Copy Boy alerted the Press reporters too, so the newspaper finally got its long-awaited opportunity to expose the local criminal cartel.