I was an assistant metro editor at The News & Observer for eight long months* and, of course, being the junior man I worked on Sundays, the slowest news day of the week.
Except for shootings and wrecks nothing much happened on Sunday and we grabbed at anything, including a tractor pull at the N.C. State Fairgrounds.
The young reporter who covered that event wore a blouse, shorts, and sandals. Claude Sitton, the paper’s executive editor, stopped by the office that afternoon, saw her outfit, didn’t like it, and told me so. I told Claude I thought she was dressed appropriately under the circumstance — she had just finished covering that tractor pull for crying out loud and it must have been 100 degrees that afternoon.
Anyway, he let it go.
That evening, unlike most Sunday evenings, news broke out. There was an accident, a chemical spill, near Zebulon, a bedroom community 22 miles east of Raleigh. I assigned a photographer and the tractor pull reporter to cover it.
Now her shorts were inappropriate and I asked her if she had a dress at the office. She said she did, and I asked her to put it on.
When I think about that incident I still smile to myself. She was a stunningly attractive woman and I’m pretty sure I’m the only man who ever had — or ever would — ask her to put her dress on.
*I asked for the “promotion” to assistant metro editor because I thought it was time to begin working my way up the management ladder. After a day or two, I knew I had made a mistake but I stuck it out for six months, to the day, before I yelled “Uncle!” It took another two months to hire and train my replacement — eight hard months altogether. There were a lot of things I didn’t like about that job, but the main thing was this: Every day there were dozens of ways to mess up, to lose, but no way to win, no way to excel. That job was all lemon and no sugar.
Coming Friday: The Wasp Debacle