Author: pat Stith

You Need To Check My Contract

I’d been working at The News & Observer for at least 10 years when a new assistant managing editor told me I had to quit spitting tobacco juice in newsroom trash cans. That was a nasty habit, he said. The cleaning crew didn’t like it and ought not have to put up with it.

That bulge in my face is not bubble gum.
That bulge was Red Man.

Oh, sure, I know, he was right.  And I knew that then.  But I had issues with him so I told him he needed to check my employment contract — I had permission from the executive editor.

I didn’t actually have a contract, not a written one anyway. But I did have a verbal agreement that gave me the right to spit in any trash can in the newsroom –mine, yours, anybody’s.

When Executive Editor Claude Sitton offered me a job in 1971 I told him I chewed tobacco, Red Man mostly, and I asked him, “If I come to work here can I spit in the trash cans?”

He said yes. 

I don’t know if that AME talked to Sitton, I guess he did because I didn’t hear any more about it. I did notice, however, that within a day or two the trash cans in the newsroom had plastic bag liners.

Coming Monday: The Football Coach Made More Than Dean

You’re Not Bo!

My sons, Bo and Mark, played football for nine years, from the fourth grade through their senior year at East Wake High School and, early on, I instructed them:  Do not fake an injury.  Do not lay on the ground acting like you’re hurt unless you are.  If you don’t get up, you better be hurt.

It wasn't #66.
It wasn’t #66.

And here we were, with less than a minute to go in the last game of Bo’s senior year, a playoff game we were about to lose, when he went down.  And stayed down.

I’ll be damn! I thought. One more play and his football career would have been over.  One more lousy play.

Then I did something I had never done and never dreamed I would do.  I stood up and walked down out of the stands onto the track beside the field. I walked down the track a little ways and then out onto the field.  I stopped beside the boy laying on the ground and looked down.

He was not wearing number 66, Bo’s number — it was the other offensive guard. Bo was standing nearby with his teammates, looking perplexed.

I was not embarrassed. I was relieved.  That was not my son laying on the field in pain. One more play and Bo would walk away from football dinged up some but with no injury he couldn’t live with.

Relieved and grateful.

Coming Friday: You Need To Check My Contract