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Pedagogical Purgatory

The room’s vague perimeter swirled in mists of gray and green enclosing countless classroom desks that apparently survived WWII, but just barely. Not seeing any other interesting distinctions, I traced a finger over names carved along with other messages into the deeply scarred desktop before me. Some inscriptions were clear, brazen, and creatively vulgar, others only faint etchings, small cries for attention. “I donated my brain to science” and “There is no gravity-school sucks” competed with many more, racing up, down, over each other, sometimes shrinking as they reached the edges, or just stopping abruptly for reasons I didn’t know.

After a while, I grew increasingly pensive reading epitaphs and instead earnestly scanned the room again. Above to my right, covered in dust and hovering without visible support, a clock floated over a small speaker. The round white and black clock clicked softly but failed to advance, except for the moving secondhand that didn’t advance the minute and hour hands. I took it to be a taunting decoy circling around for some unknown advantage.

I stood up then but almost fell when challenged. Continue reading “Pedagogical Purgatory”

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Tales of Route 22

“I’m a road runner, baby,” goes the old rock lyric, one we took to heart and lived as much as we could. Like most American teens, we sought freedom and liberation, a wide variety of old rusty clunkers our admission ticket to fame and fortune. The precise pathways were many, but I’d say none more frequently utilized than Route 22.

NY Route 22 meanders through all sorts of early settlements, many if not most going back to Colonial times, some much larger today, but quite a few not changed all that much over the past 100 years or more. Although at one time or another I’ve traveled over most of it, the section between Salem and Hoosick Falls comes first to mind, so indelibly etched I could almost navigate it blindfolded.

Some 22 sections almost invite high speed driving while other parts bend and twist so severely that passing even a slow moving tractor is insanity. The highway goes right through the heart of Cambridge and Washington County, the crossroad with NY 372 hosting our only traffic light, something outsiders frequently found amusing. Continue reading “Tales of Route 22”

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We’re Nuts for You Class of ’92

I once worked for a publisher who fished a cigarette butt out of the men’s room urinal and then like Diogenes seeking an honest man went to every male in the newspaper plant, over 20 different guys, asking each as he held the soggy cancer stub in a wet paper towel, “Is this yours?”

“It sure is,” I wanted to respond. “Got a match?” I wasn’t quite that stupid, though, and knew with absolute certainty such a crack would have me fired on the spot. I’d already grown to believe my old boss viewed us all like a plantation owner did his field hands. Although he never said it directly, the message the Louisiana publisher and newspaper owner wanted to convey was that he would spare no indignity to find anyone who dared soil a urinal he owned. “Thou shall not disrespect my property” was clearly intended, and this definitely included the normally foul smelling, deeply stained WWII era plumbing fixture.

With that story in mind I pose a question: Who was easier on the mind to work for, the Louisiana slave driver or a compassionate, caring high school principal when the major task at hand was producing a good newspaper and quality student journalists? Hands down, boys and girls, the relationship with the publisher was far easier because the mission was well defined. When I taught journalism and sponsored a high school newspaper, it commonly seemed that doing a really good job often made my boss uncomfortable, and by then I’d long ago stopped throwing cigarettes into urinals. This is not to say I worked for bad administrators; they were quality people. Continue reading “We’re Nuts for You Class of ’92”

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Waterproof Negro Drowns in Bayou

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” the classic Dickens line rolls when I think about the Houma Daily Courier. Even more revealing is the headline this paragon of American journalism printed: “Waterproof Negro Drowns in Bayou.”

Now even a clod like me has a smidgen of basic physics in his background, enough to think most anything waterproof couldn’t drown, but not so according to the Courier, as it was generally referred to by the locals, or just as often by a good selection of epithets ending with Courier, or in more printable and just as common language, many diverse descriptions culminating in “rag.” Continue reading “Waterproof Negro Drowns in Bayou”

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Facebook Pardons a Sinner

Facebook in its divine benevolence apparently just pardoned a poor digital sinner who for the past five years has been barred from the hallowed halls of electronic chitchat. I relate this because it’s an interesting story from one who really does not get social media. Maybe this is age talking and maybe it’s more a case of fearing an invisible chain where every move is monitored and recorded today, I really don’t know, but I do know I made the great Facebook god mad a few years ago and now he (or she?) has apparently forgiven my great transgression, or more likely, just forgotten about it when rolling over a new data bank to monetize. Continue reading “Facebook Pardons a Sinner”

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Upside Down: Being on the Wrong End of a News Story

It was about six months into working as a Substandard Press reporter when I first began to think I wouldn’t be fired the following day. Most gradually, I started to gain a tiny bit of confidence that it might be possible to make a living being a professional observer of humanity and recorder of obscure bits of it. I also, quite frankly, fell in love with Hoosick Falls. The more I grew familiar with the community, the more I liked it, a small town in upstate New York struggling to get by but very willing to share what it had. Over 40 years later I still think I couldn’t have picked a better place to learn about real journalism, and, on a much broader scope, what it took to be a responsible adult.

In many communities, I might have been hung from the nearest lamppost for my first six months of terrible blunders in print, or at least had my car vandalized, but then my crudely hopped up 69 Camaro wasn’t worth vandalizing, even when it ran, which it often didn’t. When the Camaro wouldn’t start, I travelled to many news events on a rat Triumph chopper, another dangerous, rusty and despicably loud mode of uninspected and clearly illegal transportation. That old Brit bike also leaked as much oil as it burned, which was a lot, and this common Triumph condition led to the now classic statement: “Old Triumphs don’t leak by accident. They just like to mark their spot.” If the street hasn’t been paved in front of my old apartment, I’d bet I could still find evidence of my “spot,” most apt testimony to me as a stain maker as much as the machine’s contributions. Continue reading “Upside Down: Being on the Wrong End of a News Story”

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Saved by a Great Reporter and Hoosick Falls Living Legend

It took me a long time to figure out that one door closing means it’s time to open another one. This lesson often came  brutally hard because I still needed to smash into the closed door repeatedly until I was half-conscious and bloody, never one smart enough to take the obvious at face value, insisting instead to test the immutable repeatedly until I was so soundly beaten I had no other viable alternative but to reassess and redirect. One of my old newspaper supervisors once said about a colleague, “That guy’s too stupid to quit. I have to fire him.” He could have been talking about me. Fortunately, dogged persistence can be a quality if appropriately channeled, but I sure do wish the channel changer worked a bit easier.

Had it not been for Darlene Ward I might have sought a longer career in newspapers. Darlene was the first good reporter I met on the job, a kind yet incisively agile combatant when this was necessary, and it often is in the news game. As for her caring and gracious side, Darlene quickly taught me many things about the craft and also, indirectly, about my own native abilities, or more accurately, the lack of them with respect to being a reporter. Continue reading “Saved by a Great Reporter and Hoosick Falls Living Legend”

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Small Town Journalism: Mr. Magoo Meets Blind Bob

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. Continue reading “Small Town Journalism: Mr. Magoo Meets Blind Bob”

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One New Year’s Tale from the Washington County Post

Being such a talented journalist I was fired the first week I worked at a newspaper often called, for excellent reasons, either “The Standard Mess” or “Substandard Press,” although the masthead read “The Standard Press.” All three of you who read my writing with any regularity will more remember “The Washington County Post,” but both publications were actually identical on the inside 12 pages, only the outer four reserved for more local readership in Hoosick Falls and Cambridge. Jointly we were called “Horicon Newspapers,” the publications owned by Nick and Laurie Mahoney who made the grave error of hiring me fresh out of college in 1976. I’ve often wondered had they not done so how my life would have wound up, and today strongly believe not nearly as good. It’s astounding what working 60 hour weeks for 90 bucks every Friday will do for the soul, if not more mundane things like the chance to learn necessary job skills. Beyond question, the opportunity was a great gift to a most unworthy recipient. Continue reading “One New Year’s Tale from the Washington County Post”