For entertainment’s sake, I recently made light of much of my first experiences working as a small town journalist, although there was great truth in the comedy and nothing fictional at all in the account. Mostly, I over-simplified and under-explained a great many complex factors that often led me to sitting in an uncomfortable, hard backed wood chair or even more unpleasant metal folding ones for two hours or more listening to the specifications of roofing tar, the need to keep the family dog from using a neighbor’s yard as his restroom, why some potholes can’t be fixed, and the ever-evolving mystery surrounding who siphoned gas from DPW vehicles every Saturday night. Sometimes I could almost cut the high tension with my trusty pen that everyone likes to say is mightier than the sword but in my case was more like a bent butter knife. I was totally unprepared for the monumental importance of issues with earth-shattering consequences that challenged me by the moment, and soon recognized I couldn’t truly convey the deep inner meaning of petroleum products and dog poop.
In total seriousness now, one of my most difficult tasks was staying awake and alert at the minutia involved with running any municipality no matter how small. As for being inadequate, this is absolute truth. I was, at my very first meeting as a “professional,” completely terrified by my inability to even partially record the activity I witnessed and was obligated to share quickly in some semi-coherent form.
Up until my first Hoosick Falls Village Board meeting in the late summer of 1976, I’d never attempted to take notes while three different people spoke at once, one of them mumbling incoherently, another speaking with machine-gun rapidity and the third with even worse grammar than I possessed at the time. Overwhelmed and frightened, my high anxiety over gross ineptitude kept me alert even if the issues didn’t.
As for recording assistance, it’s important to understand good portable audio recording equipment did exist in 1976 but generally wasn’t used in the field of print journalism, and if it was, not very much and mostly only when it was thought an accusation of error might be made later when the facts were indeed accurately reported. Politicians of minor and major variety were most prone to this tactic, and a good reporter soon learned who was most likely to try sticking in the misquote shiv. More commonly, however, as far as small town politics went, the people I covered were essentially honest and decent human beings, the latter quality most fortunate for me in my emerging status as underpaid truth teller, mistake maker and gossip monger. Most people I encountered as a roving reporter were simply earnest community volunteers trying to do a public service, often for free, but a few had different agenda not always obvious but worth watching, probably my most important responsibility.
While I made fun of my previous training in college, I’d have to say in all honesty the program of study I undertook at SUNY Morrisville was pretty good; I was just a terribly lazy student most contented to get by with C’s. I could have learned and practiced a lot more but just didn’t, and I paid the price in humiliation alone later during my first six months on the job. If I had to critique the Morrisville program today, the only component I’d add would be requiring shorthand as some journalism schools today do, as the practice and skills greatly aid in the ability to accurately take notes. However, like most, I soon developed my own shorthand version, one absolutely incomprehensible if left to age for any time, but if I read my notes shortly after an event, they generally did the job.
I was told specifically in college not to rely on or often employ recording equipment for two major reasons. The first was there just wasn’t time to review and transcribe a long tape in the newspaper game.
For lots of meetings and other news events I had to make my meager submission first thing the following morning. Midnight came quickly after many night activities and this was often followed by 12 hours of Tuesday Madness, the last day we accepted content from the public for publication on any given week, and naturally, everybody waited until Tuesday to make contact and requests.
The second reason for not using a recording device concerned human nature. Many froze up or became excessively cautious if they knew every sound was captured, but were much more candid and prone to saying interesting things when only a pad and pen were employed. I’d guess this is because if someone did say something really stupid it could be denied later with no irrefutable evidence to the contrary, and with my work, plenty of previous screw-ups most useful as circumstantial evidence of alleged guilt.
Recording aside, from club press releases written on butcher paper to school lunch menus, a flood of people and paper kept the entire newspaper staff busy far past closing time at 5pm every Tuesday, our weekly deadline. Some of us worked much later into the night. From what I could gather, Mike Mahoney was the long hour champion. It often seemed to me Mike got by on about two hours of sleep a week, and then only on slow ones. I began to emulate his work ethic and dedication to “the cause” and soon volunteered to join the night shift on many occasions.
After my internship in Hoosick Falls, I designed and pasted up the front page of the Washington County Post every week and then typeset corrections myself for the final product. Most times this was around midnight. Around 1 am Wednesday morning, I usually found myself at Bill’s Restaurant eating dinner, sometimes a sandwich, sometimes a hot plate Bill kept for me, either of which I’d wash down with a couple of beers before signing off for the night and going home to my little A-frame in the Town of Jackson where I finally collapsed and slept soundly.
During my college years Bill moved his business from his old corner location we all knew as high school kids and into the old Lamplighter Restaurant building no longer standing now that was across Main Street from the Bell and Costello Garage, also long gone into Cambridge dust on the West Side. The change in venue and a new license allowed Bill to add a bar to his food business, and this suited me just fine. Lots of times I found little difference going from a small band of very tired people into another bunch having long ago consumed one too many beers, passing from one blur into another seamlessly.
Oddly, some of the newest aspects of my life pounding keyboards for peanuts were very old. My first media job demanded considerable contact with senior citizens. The entire small town weekly newspaper industry owes much of its survival to readers over 60 who both contribute to and carefully read the product and are also, very often, the source of a great deal of content, much of which I wanted nothing to do with, then or now, but in my minor league media environment knew was absolutely essential to our survival.
I still feel guilty about getting Roger fired, but it was the right thing to do. Roger liked to say he was “as old as the years” because he was born in 1900. Sometime around 1960 he lost the ability to hear well and by the time I worked with him in 1976 he was almost stone deaf even with two large hearing aides he wore but frequently forgot to turn on, or when he did, some defect caused a high pitched sound like a mouse singing soprano that also hampered Roger’s comprehension.
My first week I thought my ears were ringing from all the hustle and bustle, but when the “eeeee” sound moved when Roger did I finally figured out the source. “Hey, Roger, you’re squealing again,” became an often recited mantra.
Supposedly, it was Roger’s job to come in during the Monday and Tuesday rush and take some of the pressure off of me, but that’s not how things usually worked out. Long before the time I made my first error in print for pay, everyone in Hoosick Falls knew Roger was as deaf as a fence post. Consequently, if Roger answered the phone, the caller almost always demanded to speak to me, or anyone other than Roger.
Every Tuesday on deadline people like Mrs. Buh…buh….buh…Beatrice… baba…baba…baba…Baxter would call in with what’s most commonly referred to in the weekly newspaper game as “neighborhood news.” I didn’t use her real name, but the poor woman’s stutter was very real and most profoundly debilitating as far as basic communication went. Most times it took me the better part of an hour to get the scoop of the century: “Mr. and Mrs. George Baxter spent Sunday at the home of Roscoe and Claudia Dimwit where they enjoyed a dinner of roast turkey and dressing.” Laugh if you will, but this was major content and we ran tons of it every week.
Most fortunately, by the time I made my way to the Cambridge office I found Evelyn Burton not only did this work marvelously, she seemed to enjoy it and this began a great working relationship and soon close friendship with the another classy lady I grew to know and much appreciate in the newspaper business. But this event was still 14 months off. Roger was my eager colleague at first, about as useful as a blind man in a shooting gallery, and just as dangerous.
Roger’s other major duty was attending the Tuesday luncheon of the Kiwanis Club that always featured a free meal for Roger, another major draw.
At first I just carefully edited Roger’s copy when he returned and wrote his weekly Kiwanis article. I knew nothing about cognitive decline and doubt I’d ever even heard the word Alzheimer’s, but Roger very much seemed in the early stages of this terrible disease, at least from my memory, which well might be suffering some now too. Still, I’ve yet to write anything like this: “And then Mr. Jones said and then Mr. Jones said and then Mr. Jones said…” which Roger often did when his mind checked out but his fingers kept moving along the keyboard as they had for many, many years.
Even worse, Roger thought himself quite the comedian and I suspect even in his better days found it difficult to get a really good laugh. Roger’s most memorable comedy piece came when he decided to call a Kiwanis featured speaker, a geologist, “a well known rock head.” He then proceeded to make his usual 15 mistakes in fact in every story he covered because he couldn’t hear a damn thing, and even when he could, didn’t remember it later.
The following week “the well known rock head” wrote one of the most scathing letters to the editor I can remember in a long career of attracting and collecting them. It was so cleverly vicious I kept it, and since it appeared in the middle of the paper and did not specifically mention Roger, everyone in Cambridge thought the letter was about me, but most in Hoosick Falls knew Roger was just up to his old tricks.
After rock head, when Roger came back with his Kiwanis story, I always marched myself over to our competitor who was kind, sympathetic, and also a much better reporter. Darlene Ward worked for the Troy Record and covered the same beat I did in Hoosick Falls. She was enormously helpful on more occasions than I can remember. For one good example, Darlene would let me read her Kiwanis story and then I’d just paraphrase it some and let Roger take credit for it when it was published. I don’t think Roger had any idea what was published didn’t even vaguely resemble what he wrote, and it was at about this juncture I began to lobby Mike Mahoney to put Roger out to pasture. There was one saving grace, however. I knew one reporter who truly was worse than me, and I took great solace in this fact.
Up Next: Learning the newspaper ropes while ignoring a famous senior citizen.