the Telegram in 1921 and continued with it, again as columnist and as dramatic critic, until it merged with the News. He then joined and has since been with the radio department of the Oregon Journal, handling programs over KOIN and writing for the paper a daily column of verse and comment.
The bulk of his literary production includes columns of verse written for the Polk County Observer, Oregonian, Telegram, Oregon Voter, Portland Spectator and the Oregon Journal, which, at 22 inches to the column, Mr. Collins estimates would have attained a length since 1910 that would be equal to the distance from Mt. Tabor to the entrance of Washington Park. He wrote the satirical Bedtime Stories which were published in the first volumes of the Hoot Owl Classics in 1927 and 1928. He is author of the pageant Where Rolls the Oregon, presented by the Rose Festival in 1927; the American Legion satirical revue in 1928; a published one-act play, The Edge of the Law; and the Civic Theater productions of Alice in Wonderland and A Christmas Carol in 1933 and 1934. In 1931 he organized and edited The Loop, an Oregon Journal serial story in an Oregon setting by 13 Oregon writers. In 1933 he wrote The Cheddar Box, a history of the cheese industry of Tillamook County, and in 1934 edited More Power to You, both published by the Oregon Journal and the latter a book on the Bonneville Dam compiled by Fred Lockley and Marshall Dana. Since 1932 he has been instructor in radio writing and one-act playwriting in the school of the Portland Civic Theater.
Ballad of Colombo
“One from Colombo's crew.”
The torches flared, and the door crashed back,
As the sailor swaggered through.
“Back! Give place!” the stranger cried.
“Mine be the favored seat;
For ne'er before have you ope'd your door
To a man of Colombo's fleet.
Pedro and Juan and I,
Who slit the throat of a wandering monk;
And we waited our turn to die.
We waited, and heard in the corridor
The sound of the gaoler's feet.
