Category: Newspapering

Miss Mattie

It rarely snows in my neck of the woods, in Knightdale, N.C., but when it does it reminds me of Miss Mattie, an old lady who worked where I worked, at The News & Observer in Raleigh.

When a big snow or ice storm was forecast, The N&O would rent hotel rooms near the paper for reporters and editors, so we could walk to work the next morning.  You could go home but if you did you darn well better be able to get back to work the next day. I always stayed in town.

Occasionally a snow or ice storm slipped up on us and when that happened you were still expected to get to work — we published 365 days a year.

Miss Mattie was way too old to make it to work on her own so The N&O would send two men in a four-wheel drive vehicle to pick her up , literally, and bring her to work.

I don’t know what her regular job was but on snow days she answered the phone and took messages from employees who called to say that they were not coming, that the roads around their houses were impassable.

One day I had to make that call.

The hill, on a warm, snow-free day.
The hill, on a warm, snow-free day.

There’s only one way out of my neighborhood, up a hill at the end of my street. And when there’s snow and ice you can’t drive up that hill.  That’s all there is to it.  Not even in a four-wheel drive.

Miss Mattie answered the phone. Her voice sounded like she looked, old. I told her there was no way my car was going up that hill.  And eight miles was too far to walk.  

She replied in her creaky, old voice, “That’s OK, Pat. I understand. I’ll tell them the weather too bad for you to come in today.”

I knew exactly why they had assigned an old lady to take messages from people who couldn’t get there.  I also knew how she got to work on snow days.  But she was pushing 80 and however she got there, she was at work.    

“No, wait.  Wait, Miss Mattie,” I said.  “Tell ’em I’m coming, just tell ’em I’ll be late.”

Postscript: I was walking down the shoulder of U.S. 64, toward Raleigh, when a kindhearted soul stopped and gave me a ride into town.

NOTE: The N&O published every day no matter what.  In March 1980, when our presses were heavily damaged in a fire, we published. Rival newspapers came to our aid. The Durham Herald printed our paper that first day and The Fayetteville Observer printed it the next two days, until we could get four of our presses back on line begin limping along on our own.

Coming Monday: The Source Of The Problem

Strange But True – Parts 3, 4 & 5

No. 3

Gov. Jim Holshouser
Gov. Jim Holshouser

During the inauguration of North Carolina Gov. James E. Holshouser Jr. a 21-year-old N.C. State University sophomore climbed a tree on New Bern Avenue to get a better view.

A State Capitol Policeman told the fellow to come down, but he refused. The policeman climbed up the tree, jabbed the student with his nightstick, maced him, and finally knocked him out of the tree. Then he arrested him, and took him before a magistrate — who  released him.

The magistrate released him because he could find no law against sitting in a tree.

The magistrate said that because the student was not violating a law when the officer ordered him to come down the officer’s order was unlawful.

* * *

No. 4

More than 1,000 patient medical records, covering a decade, were hidden in a wall of the Cherry Point Naval Hospital, according to a report the Navy finally gave me. Instead of filing those records with the patients’ other medical records, hospital corpsmen apparently climbed onto a chair or desk, lifted a ceiling tile, and dropped them into the space behind the drywall.

They could file a lot of records quickly that way and go back to reading a book, or whatever they thought was more important than doing their job.

NavyEmblemMy partner had tried for weeks to get a copy of that Navy report, which we were entitled to have under the Freedom of Information Act. But, plain and simple, it was embarrassing and the Navy was dragging its feet. No, it was worse than that: To save face the Navy was breaking the law.

When I drove to Cherry Point to interview the captain in charge of the hospital I told him I had served in the Navy, aboard USS Los Angeles. My three brothers had been in the Navy. My oldest son and his wife were naval officers.  Both were graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis.

“My family is Navy,” I told the captain. “Why is the Navy doing this to one of its own?”

A few days later the report arrived at The News & Observer where I worked an investigative reporter.

* * *

No. 5

The most unusual traffic case I ever wrote about involved a District Court judge who signed an order changing the date of a drunk driving charge. Bet you thought only God could do something like that, change the date something happened.

The defendant had 15 previous traffic convictions, including two for reckless driving and one for drunken driving. His driver’s license had been revoked five times. And now he was back in court, accused, again, of drunk driving. But why change the date he was caught?

Here’s why.

Under North Carolina law at the time a driver who had not had a drunk driving conviction in the previous seven years was eligible for a limited driving permit. Moving the date 11 days put the the defendant’s conviction outside that seven-year window, and making him eligible for a limited permit, which the judge gave him.

Coming Monday: What Can Go Wrong Will