Living in Chicago with my new bride and working for The Associated Press in 1969 felt like some kind of dream.

Judy was soon volunteering at the Lincoln Park Zoo animal nursery _  Zoos weren't yet hiring woman as keepers _ and I was going into Chicago's Loop to work at a job that I still had trouble believing was mine.

For a while, I was working 4 p.m. to midnight and Judy would sometimes drive into the city to pick me up at the end of my shift. There was an all-night movie near the office that showed classic films and we took full advantage. We also made occasional forays to Rush Street to take in a jazz club or two.

On the way home, we often stopped at Dewey's, near our apartment on the far North Side, for Chili - at 2 a.m. That would kill me today. But, back then, it was a delight.

And my work was amazing. I was learning more about writing and editing and being a reporter and editor every day. It wasn't always fun, though.

This was the height of the war in Vietnam and one of my assignments was to get a list of the military casualties from Illinois and call their families for comments and a picture. We published a list once a week. It was a grim job, although some of the family members that I spoke with were very happy to talk about their son,daughter, husband or wife.

The first time I had to make those calls it was all I could do to dial the phone. I really didn't know what to say. But most of the people I called were uncommonly friendly and understanding.

I was still helping out Joe Mooshil or Jerry Liska at the Cubs games and, any time I wasn't busy with news work, I was hanging around the sports desk asking if I could help them. The two sports writers were often away, covering games, and I became the designated fill-in, taking calls, writing up handouts and taking dictation whenever I could shake free of the news desk.

I was itching to write a sports story, hoping to impress whoever would notice. I had lots of time on my hands one quiet Saturday night and was hoping the sports phone would ring. It didn't.

Around 9 p.m., I was working my way through Jerry Liska's roladex (remember those?) on his desk and saw a home number for Bobby Hull, the Chicago Black Hawks' star. I knew he lived somewhere in western Canada, three hours earlier, and, for some unknown reason, I decided to call him and see if I could do a feature on his season that had just ended.

He answered the phone. I introduced myself and told him why I had called and he said, "That's great. I'm bored as hell tonight. Let's talk."

Before I left that night, I wrote up a feature on the interview and left it on Jerry's desk. It went on the wire on Monday before my shift started. It was my first sports byline for AP and not a word had been changed by the editors.

Not much was said about the story, but I got very few complaints after that about hanging around the sports desk. And, just days later, I got called into the bureau chief's office when I arrived for my 4 p.m. start.

"Mr. Harris, we like what you're doing,'' Al Orton said. "We're taking you off probation a couple of months early and we're bumping you up to the next pay level immediately. Keep up the good work."

Ironically, that was the first I knew that I had actually been on a six-month probation. Nobody had bothered to mention it when I was hired. Glad I didn't know.

Shortly after that, I was moved to the overnight shift, midnight to 8 a.m. That was considered a right of passage at the Chicago bureau. All the rookies eventually wound up on the overnight for anywhere from four to six months.
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I'm a natural night owl, but staying up and staying alert all night five days a week took a little adjustment., especially when I worked the shift that began at midnight on Saturday. After the last night editor left around 1 a.m., I was alone until the morning guy arrived at 6 a.m.

It was one of the most boring times I have had in my life. The phone didn't ring, there was no one to talk to and you had to stay awake in case something did happen.The only time in all the Sunday mornings I worked that anything happened, it was a crank call.

I answered the phone about 2 a.m. and the voice on the other end said, "I'm going to shoot the president."

My hesitant reply was, "Why would you do something like that?"

He said, "I hate Lyndon Johnson and I'm going to kill him."

I tried to think about the best way to handle this and said, "What's your name?" Amazingly, this dingbat told me he was Russell Johnson.

I hung up the phone and found the number of the FBI in the supervisor's roladex. I called and told the agent who answered about Mr. Johnson's threat. He said, "Yeah, he's calling all the newspapers and wire services. We'll take care of it. But thanks for calling."

That's the last I heard about it. It did break up the morning, though.

The one job that did keep my attention for at least part of the night each week was editing what we called the Interbureau Wire. AP, an association owned and operated by newspapers and TV and radio stations, sold a variety of products to those members.

The bigger papers took the AAA Wire, which had all the major and minor news of the day and cost them a lot of money. There were other options as well, including the Interbureau, which was an affordable wire meant for smaller media outlets.

My main job on the overnight was to pick out the biggest news stories and features from the AAA Wire and edit them down to just the necessary details for the Interbureau.

One of the features that moved every Sunday morning on the IB Wire was that week's list of the top-selling songs and albums of the week. One song that popped up for weeks was a hit record by Sly and the Family Stone. Every week for more than a month, it came across as Thank You For Letting Me Be Mice Elf Again. And every week for more than a month I edited it to read Thank You For Letting Me Be Myself Again.

Finally, one of the day editors noticed it and left me a curt and rather rude memo correcting my correction.

I was desperately looking for something to do on another extremely quiet Sunday morning when I noticed a stack of unopened mail on the supervisor's desk. It was all what we would now call spam, announcements of events, promotions and ads.

Looking through the stack I spotted a return address from the Playboy Club in Chicago. Inside was an invitation to cover a celebration of the Bunny of the Year at the Playboy Mansion.

I folded it up and put it in my pocket. On Monday morning, I called the office and asked the news editor, Carroll Arimond, if he had any objection to my covering the event and writing a feature about it?

The usually gruff Mr. Arimond laughed and said, "Have fun and keep the story tight."

Then I did something that may seem a little improbable to some of you. I called the PR lady listed on the invitation to tell her I was going to cover the event - and I asked her if I could bring a plus-one.
She was very happy that I was coming and said, "Sure. You want to bring a photographer?

"No. I want to bring my wife."

There was a long pause and I said, "We're newlyweds and, if I came to the Playboy Mansion without her, our marriage might be over almost before it starts."

She laughed and said, "No problem. I'm sure you'll have a good time."

We showed up at the Mansion on the appointed night and were greeted like VIP guests, ushered into a huge, beautifully furnished living room with lots of expensive-looking art. There was a bar, of course, and a table laden with very fancy and delicious hors d'oeuvres.

And, not surprising, there were lots of beautiful women walking around the room saying hello and introducing themselves as Bunny of the Year contestants.

Eventually, Hugh Hefner walked in, wearing his signature silk robe and scarf and slippers and smoking a pipe. He looked like a caricature of himself.

As Hefner made his way around the room, Judy leaned in and whispered, "I really don't want to meet him. I'll just stay behind you."

Judy is the opposite of star-struck. To illustrate her aversion to celebrity, we were once in a Chinese restaurant in New York's Times Square and I spotted Woody Allen at a nearby table. I whispered to Judy, "Hey, look over there. It's Woody Allen."

She didn't even look up from the menu, saying, "Everybody's got to be somewhere."

It took a while for Hefner to get to us as he chatted up people around the room. Judy was trying not to make eye contact. But there was a burst of laughter from across the room and she turned just in time to bump into Hefner's chest and spill her club soda all over his robe.

She was totally flustered and embarrassed and Hefner could not have been more gracious about the incident, joking that he usually used club soda to get rid of wine spills. After an introduction, Hefner asked Judy what she did and, when she said she was volunteering at Lincoln Park Zoo, he lit up.

"I'm a patron of the zoo and I really love that place,'' he said. For the next few minutes, Judy and Hef, as he insisted she call him, talked zoos and animals. He wound up spending more time with us than with anybody else in the room, even letting me ask him a few questions for my story.

As he walked away, Hefner said, "Don't forget to go down to the game room later. There's going to be lots going on."

After the Bunny of the Year announcement, we took his advice and asked how to get to the game room.

"His PR lady, the one who I talked to about bringing Judy (who was as beautiful as any of the contestants), told us there were two ways to get there: The stairs or the fire pole. We took the fire pole. It was pretty cool.

The game room was loaded with beautiful people, huge couches and the best electronic games available in 1969. There was also an Olympic-size pool in the next room with a bunch of mostly undressed people swimming and diving and splashing around. We later found out most of them were the cast of the musical "Hair," which was playing in Chicago but was dark on Monday nights.

We left before things got too wild. But it really was a great evening and we wouldn't have gotten to enjoy it if I hadn't been bored stiff on the overnight shift.