Journalism Archives

September 7, 2013

Signs and Superstitions

This motorcycle wreck on Hwy 51 near Lutesville in July 1967 didn’t make the paper. It might have been because the wreck was at the edge of our circulation area or it might have been that the wreck wasn’t all that serious.

The main reason, though, is that I didn’t have the rights lens or the right skills yet to make a good piece of “sign” art.

Elements needed to be closer

Unfortunately, the “Prepare to Meet Thy God” sign was just too small to be read.

This might have been the start of my superstitions and hunches. When I moved to Florida, lots and lots of cars had “Arrive Alive” bumper stickers on them. I shot so many of those things on wrecks they became cliches. I refused to put one on my car because that was just tempting fate.

I did a number of stories about houses that burned down on the day the homeowner brought home a smoke alarm, but held off installing it. I made it a point to ALWAYS put up the smoke alarm with fresh batteries as soon as it hit the door. I didn’t want some photographer doing that story about me.

Hunches and feelings

I also paid attention to “feelings” and hunches. I can think of a couple of times when I started to walk into a hot spot news scene only to turn back to grab my body armor out of the trunk. I never needed it, but I could see myself in a hospital bed wearing all kinds of tubes and wires telling a reporter, “I had this hunch…..” That vision was the convincer.

I pushed the envelope in a lot of situations, but never when I had that bad feeling alarm bell ringing. Well, ALMOST never. I guess you can get away with a certain number of false alarms.

June 18, 2013

Interested in Cape Calendar?

I’ve been pulling together enough photos from the ’60s to fill a calendar from October 2013 through December 2014. If you are a regular reader, there’s a good chance you’ve seen most of the pictures. I’m racing to get it done and a sample run printed before I leave for Cape June 25.

One of the tasks is to narrow down the photos to ones that you could stand to look at for a month. For example, here are three shots of Cape Rock. (I mean, you CAN’T have a publication about Cape without showing Cape Rock, right?

Do you like the one of the Towboat Albert M?

Towboat Issaquena

Or, do you like the Towboat Issaquena passing the water plant intake north of Cape Rock better?

Submarines vs towboats

Maybe you think submarines and not towboats when you remember Cape Rock. Anyway, if you had to make the choice, which one do you think best represents your memory of Cape Rock. (No, a totally black page won’t work.)

Lots to work out

I have to finish a photo exhibit for the Athens County Historical Society and Museum, get photos together for a future gallery show in Cape next year, rough out a couple of Ohio calendars and assemble a portfolio for some folks in St. Louis. If the blog is a little light for a few days, I hope you’ll understand.

Back to the calendar

So, who is interested? I’m estimating them to cost about $20 each. I have to see if there is anyone in Cape who will handle them locally. Since you folks are scattered all over the country, I’ll have to find out what it will cost to mail them. I think the folks at the Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum found it was about $5, including shipping materials, but don’t hold me to it.

If there’s enough interest, I may try to knock off a color calendar of contemporary SE Missouri photos for this fall or next year.

Is it worth the effort?

Earlier Calendars

I’ve published three so far.

Glimpses of East Perry County

Ordinary People

Trinity Lutheran Church in Altenburg

Trinity Lutheran Church (same link as Ordinary People above)

June 4, 2013

Chuck Murdoch’s Kids

I’ve run a picture of Missourian Sports Editor Chuck Murdoch a couple of times: here and here. The first time I did, some of his relatives ran across it and left the following comments

Judy Weiss: “Chuck was husband’s uncle. I had not seen that picture before. Thanks!”
Norman Weiss: “Unfortunately cancer took my Uncle Chuck’s life but many great memories remain. Trivia about my Uncle Chuck before he became a sports writer, he was a St. Louis Cop.”
L. Louton: “Oh wow, just stumbled across this article – Chuck Murdoch was my grandpa. It puts a smile on my face to see such a great pic of him!”
Cara Murdoch: Would you be able to send those photos of Dad(Chuck)? I would love to get copies! And, of course, my little sister, Terri and little brother, Roy. Any of Mike(big brother)?

Chuck’s kids

I KNEW I had some pictures I had taken of Chuck’s kids for a New Year’s Eve illustration.

Let’s set the record straight: I was lousy at shooting illustrations and setting up photos in general. These hokey photos prove it. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

The microfilm copy of the December 31, 1966, newspaper was missing part of the caption, but the part you could read said “Terri, 5, and Roy, 4, children of Mr. and Mrs. Charles W. Murdoch, 106 Edgewood, thought it would be great fun to practice for the arrival of a new year. At 8 o’clock Terri and Roy were going strong.”

Midnight was a different story

“But as the clock ticked off the minutes and hours, eyes got heavier and by midnight the sandman had called. Well, maybe next year will be different and sleep won’t be so overwhelming.”

A favorite sports editor

Chuck was one of my favorite sports editors. To be frank, most sports editors fit into one of two categories: former high school athletes wanting to relive their glory days or ones who were dumber than a packet of possums.

The latter would drive us crazy. One of them would send you out on the most hackneyed situation with an assignment sheet that would invariably read, “Avoid cliche shot.”

Another one couldn’t read a sport schedule. The photographer would show up at where an event was supposed to be held and find out that it wasn’t at THAT field or on that date. We couldn’t dope out how a couple of thousand spectators could manage to figure out where the game was being played, but the sports editor couldn’t.

Chuck was easy to work with, tried to get me as many $5 assignments as he could sneak by jBlue, and didn’t take himself or his job too seriously.

Gentlemanly politically incorrect

Much of what Chuck’s persona wouldn’t pass today’s politically correctness, but he was careful about his language around “the ladies” in the office. He COULD fog up the place with his cigar, though.

His watch says 11:20. If it’s AM, that means he has wrapped up his section for today’s deadline and he’s wandering around kibitzing; if it’s PM, then we’ve both made it back to the office after covering a game. I doubt that’s the case. I would have had to go home to process the film before going back to the office to drop off the prints so Chuck would have them when he came in around 4:30 in the morning. With those kind of hours, I doubt he was hanging around in the evening. He’d been banging out sports stories for so long he wouldn’t have been staying up late agonizing over every word.

A technical side note: the pictures of Chuck were taken with the half-frame camera I carried for “goofing around.” It shot two photos in a normal 35mm frame, so I could get 72 shots out of a 36-exposure roll. The trade-off was that the quality was only half as good. On top of that, this roll had some uneven development streaks. I guess it would be the equivalent of taking photos with a cellphone camera instead of a real camera these days: you sacrifice some quality for convenience.

May 31, 2013June 6, 2013

Cubs’ Pitchers Had Problem

The day after I graduated Central High School in 1965, I showed up bright and early to start my Missourian summer internship. To my dismay, my first assignment was to fill in for the sports editor, who was going on vacation.

I confessed to Chuck Murdoch that I knew virtually nothing about sports and was in deep trouble. He took a couple of sucks on his ever-present pipe and a look of relief passed over his face as he realized his job was safe: this was ONE high school kid who wouldn’t show him up. He gave me the crash course in sports journalism (something that I always thought was somewhat of a contradiction in terms).

He explained that the first thing I had to do when I showed up three hours before the rest of the staff was to go to a dropbox on the Broadway door to retrieve an armload of youth league score books the coaches had dropped overnight. I was to take those score books and interpret scratches and scrawls that showed every batter and every play and write a play-by-play of the high spots of the games. I prayed for a tight paper so I could get by with just a game summary.

I got the job done, but I felt like a monk translating ancient scrolls from one language into another. So far as I know, nobody ever complained about my accounts.

Last night I found this comment written by a coach who either had a great sense of humor or a flair for understatement: “Cub’s pitchers couldn’t find the strike zone and walked 22 batters.”

First AP story

I thought it amusing enough I phoned it in to the Associated Press, which put in on the wire. I’m pretty sure that was the first time anything of mine moved on a news wire. It was a real thrill when I heard the clatter of the teletype and discovered that it was my brief that was going out to the world (well, maybe the nation or the region or the state. I don’t remember the codes well enough to know how far it was broadcast. It didn’t win the Pulitzer, I know that.).

I didn’t do too badly covering government and cops, but the society and agriculture beats were a bit of a stretch. I loved it.