Many years ago I lived in a small college town in North Carolina, near a large city, but not too close. It felt like it was a ways from everything. If it hadn’t been a college town, I would have thought I really was way out in the country.
Now this little town was like some place you’d imagine in a dream. It was quite idyllic — literally. It had a small, liberal arts college with an excellent reputation, nestled in a beautiful setting with enormous old trees. It had a Village Green where the local folks could have their picnics, and concerts, arts events and festivals. And they did.
The Green was directly across the street from the exceedingly quaint Main Street, with its two blocks of brick buildings housing a bank, gift shop, a Soda Shop, some specialty stores, and other businesses. There was the post office, a real estate establishment, and the tiny newspaper office where I worked as editor of the local weekly newspaper.
When I landed that job, the paper was about ready to collapse into nothing. I knew things were bad, but I didn’t realize how bad until I got settled in. I had only seven months prior newspaper experience, and it seemed preposterous that I would get this job. But the journalism instructor I had taken a course under two years earlier, told me one day when I was asking for job advice to call the editor of a nearby paper because they had an opening in one of the weekly newspapers in their chain of ten papers serving small towns, nothing beyond a few thousand subscribers at each. This was really small-town stuff, but I couldn’t imagine why a weekly newspaper would do so poorly in a college town. I knew nothing about the politics and goings-on in small towns, but I was to learn learn a lot in that job, and at the two other papers I worked on in my brief newspaper career.
So, Into this situation in December of 1976, an idealistic and somewhat naive 25-year-old editor came to make his mark, laden with the enthusiasm only someone so young could muster, giving the realities of the situation. I had new ideas, or so I thought. I even had a written philosophy about community journalism.
There was very little crime. The Rexall Drug Store was robbed of $400 the week I got there, the first armed robbery in 20 years, though that was hard to believe. I duly wrote up the story and put it on the front page of my first issue. A few days before that it had snowed, and so I jumped in my car and drove around taking photographs of an enchanting silent winter wonderland, I who had seen and experienced snow only a couple of times before in my lifetime. I believe I put a photo of some kids sleighing down a hill on the front page, with a catchy “cutline” or brief caption.
A few weeks later in January, there was a record -breaking cold snap with the temperature plunging to 0 degrees. I had never experienced such cold weather, before or since. The newspaper office was in a one-story brick commercial building that had 18 foot ceilings. The “heat,” such as it was, came from an enormous old heater attached to the ceiling with a fan that sounded like a jet engine. The top half of the office space was warmed somewhat while the lower part where I and the ad manager had our desks, was barely heated at all.
But what did I care. When you’re young and full of excitement for your job, frigid fingers trying to type stories on manual typewriters, and nearly useless space heaters on the floor next to your feet, are just minor inconveniences.
Every Tuesday night the ad manager and I would stay late to put the paper together on dummy sheets. Mary would always bring a home-cooked meal for the two of us and she was a very fine cook and supper was always some of my favorite Southern dishes.
The next morning, one of the three of us, the third person being the office manager, took turns transporting everything we had assembled on production night, along with photos and ads, to the newspaper headquarters 100 miles away in South Carolina where the 1,400 copies were printed and bundled and then delivered back to town by a courier to be distributed at a few newsstands. Most were mailed out at the post office.
This paper had been in operation since 1949, and it still had a devoted core of readers, mostly old-timers and folks who had moved from the town but still wanted to keep up with the local news. I don’t think too many of the college students read it. After all, there was a lengthy weekly column with all the news and gossip in every issue assembled by a conscientious and well-regarded lady who knew everybody, and who had numerous and impeccable sources. I am convinced she spent a large portion of her time chatting by phone and scooping up details of so and so’s charity luncheon, and countless other tidbits of community news. It was something she obviously loved doing and had done so week after week for at least a couple of decades. Also, anyone who was getting engaged and married was in that week’s paper. Not to be missed were details of townspeople’s vacations or travels abroad, and of course, social notes pertaining to various activities about long-time professors and their families.
This was the most popular item in each week’s paper. Our office manager typed up the handwritten column, and became quite versed in the goings on in the town. I regret not reading her columns more carefully, as I feel sure I missed out on some interesting feature stories. Similar columns were also submitted by correspondents from two nearby towns.
I couldn’t believe my luck. I had an office on Main Street, and I was my own boss, basically. One good thing about the company — they didn’t care what I did, and they never sent anyone from headquarters up that way except for one time when we instituted a futile circulation-building campaign. My two co-workers valiantly assisted me in producing the 6-8 page broadsheet newspaper each week, both of them fantastic people to work with. I remember them well to this day.
I recall a flurry of activity those months I was there putting out the paper by myself, with help from some local correspondents. Every day this included interviews for news and feature stories, photographs to take, town council meetings to cover, and sports stories called in by my one intrepid, very part-time young sports writer, who was a real pro. How on earth I managed to type his stories over the phone as he read them to me I will never know. I wasn’t a one-finger, fast pecking newspaper hack. I had taught myself touch typing when I was 12. I always loved writing, newspapers and magazines when I was a kid, so in later years being editor of a small newspaper was certainly not something out of the blue or unexpected. I just never had that as a career goal or plan.
There were no computers at the time in the late 70s to do everything involved in creating newspapers, as is the case today 50 years later. All this seems positively antiquated now, but it was such fun. At my last newspaper job in the early 1990s, I had the luxury of using early Macintosh computers to type my stories.
Here was the routine: Each morning, I’d come into the office, put my stuff down, and head a couple of stores up Main Street to the soda shop for a fresh-squeezed orange drink and an egg salad sandwich on toast. This was a college hangout, and truly an institution around those parts, and the sandwich and drink were two of the specialties of the house which proprietors whipped out all morning long. I can see Murray now slicing those oranges and placing them deftly under the squeezer. Very simple, very basic food, but good.
Next, I’d walk a block from the soda shop to the post office, collect the mail, including dozens of press releases, and come back to the office and begin editing them if I was planning to use any in that week’s paper. Some gave me ideas for local stories.
As the day wore on, I’d be out taking pictures, doing interviews, and, in general, living the life of a small-town newspaper editor.
I was too young to know any better, but I really imagined myself to be some sort of prominent man about town. Editor of the paper. I even imagined people passing me on the sidewalk on Main Street and saying to themselves, “There’s the newspaper editor. I wonder what’ll be on the front page this week.” Of course, most people didn’t know me from the merest stranger passing through town. I’d only been there a few months, didn’t have any family or connections in the area, and so I wasn’t vested in the community as are some family-owned community newspapers and their editors.
Of course, I had my regular, favorite places to eat, including a nearby motel restaurant where I could get a fried pork chop, mashed potatoes and gravy, navy beans or collard greens, corn bread, and sweet tea, all for one low price. A meat and two vegetables and dessert. That was the lunch special each day.
I’d ride my bike through the college campus, visit its very nice library and sometimes eat lunch in the student center snack bar. I would on occasion go hear speakers and write stories for the paper on their presentations.
It was a great place to live. I got up each morning excited about going to work. I published a number of local writers who sent in contributions, including one delightful woman I’ll never forget, and with whom I became good friends. She would turn in the most enchanting and evocative pieces reminiscing about her childhood in the mountains. They were wonderful memory pieces written in a knowing and wise manner. She lived in the country outside of town and had me over to dinner a few times. She made some of the best fried chicken and potato salad I had ever tasted. She was a member of a writing class at the local community college, and when I left that job they all held a going-away party for me and wrote farewell poems. I was immensely moved, and touched deeply by their thoughtfulness and friendship.
I was there only a short seven months, from December 1976 until June 1977. The paper just wasn’t making any money, so it was sold. The new owner wanted to do everything himself, so I had to pack up and reluctantly leave that little imagined paradise.
I still can picture those old houses near the college with their big front porches, and the huge old trees everywhere which gave the whole place a verdant, wooded appearance.
It had its problems. I don’t mean to ignore that. It certainly had its “other side of the tracks,” but it was essentially a college town, a place anchored by a seat of learning and culture that had a long and proud history.
To me, for a few short, but intensely lived months, it was a dream job in a little place that wasn’t too far removed from what I imagined a Utopian community to be like. It seemed to be a place in harmony with its surroundings, and it made me think, “This is a good place to be. I could live here a long, long time.”
Too bad it didn’t turn out that way.
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