Cobb's grandfather was a Paducah frontiersman when hostile Indians were still in the area; his father, Joshua Cobb, was an alcoholic, upon whose death Cobb had to begin earning a living at age sixteen. The skinny, narrowshouldered, gangling Cobb, whose boyhood friends called him "Shrivly," was described as "about as homely a kid, except for his eyes and brow, as ever hit Kentucky since Abe Lincoln left home." He was six feet tall, with Irish coloring--pale skin, blue eyes, and black hair. Prior to his father's demise, Cobb had driven an ice wagon for two summers, delivered circulars, and collected bills to bolster his family's modest income. His original ambition was to go to a military college, then law school, or, failing that, to become a cartoonist; but when his father drank himself to death, Cobb took the best-paying job he could find--cub reporter for the
Paducah Evening News at $1.75 a week.
On his first day, Cobb was given a pencil and paper and was told to go out into the street and find some news. "Always before this street had seemed to me fairly to throb with life and movement. Now, all of a sudden, it had become as cold and empty as an open grave.
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