Category: Newspapering

No Dogs Or Reporters Allowed

I was sitting in Honey’s Restaurant on Tryon Street in Charlotte having lunch with my city editor, John W. Jamison, and another reporter from The Charlotte News, minding my own business.

Our food had arrived — I got a hamburger and fries — and I was trying unsuccessfully to open one of those little plastic packs of mustard.   It was frustrating. That pack was designed to be torn open. By a child. But I couldn’t, not that day.

A child could open it.
A child could open it.

So, as unobtrusively as you can do that sort of thing, I put a corner of the mustard pack in my mouth, bit down, and tried again to rip it open. But it was no dice.

Now I was determined.

I couldn’t tear it open with my fingers or my teeth so I decided to squeeze it open.  Very gently, of course. I knew when it came out, it would come out fast, under pressure. So as the mustard pushed through the package seal I carefully, very, very carefully, aimed it at my hamburger patty.

But I was not careful enough.

When the mustard broke through the seal, it arced up like a missile. It flew over my city editor’s head –well, not all of it, a little bit fell on him — and it kept going, up and up, until it barely touched the ceiling of the restaurant, where it left a short yellow streak.  Then it arced down, splatting like a big, yellow gob of bird poo-poo on the white shirt of a man two tables away.

I was mortified. I didn’t say a word. He didn’t say a word either, at first. He just picked up his knife and began scraping mustard off his shirt.

The guy knew my city editor and he must have guessed what I was because he said to Jamison, “They shouldn’t let dogs or reporters in this restaurant.”

Coming Monday: “What Poor Smelled Like”

The Retort

The woman who came to see me was in her late 40’s or early 50s but she looked older and dressed younger, a lot younger.  She was still attractive, sort of, but she looked, how shall I say — different.

Her hair was peroxided.  Her skin was a deep leathery brown — she had spent way too much time in the sun. But, if I noticed such things, I would have said she still had a nice figure.

Dudley Price
Dudley Price

She had come to The News & Observer to see me about a story and we sat in one of the interview rooms talking.  Out of the corner of my eye I could see she was getting a lot of attention.  As reporters walked up and down the hall outside they could see her through the window of the interview room. Several times I saw a head jerk around to look. Some of my colleagues paused to get a second look.

As soon as I returned to my desk up walked Dudley Price, a friend, a reporter, and the newsroom’s most notorious character: Dudley would say almost anything to almost anyone at almost any time.

“Who was that whore you were talking to?” he asked loudly.

And for once in my life I had a response.

“That wasn’t a whore, Dudley. That was my sister.”

Dudley staggered backwards a step or two — he actually staggered — like I’d hit him in the face with a wet towel. He mumbled an apology and left.  He came back a minute or two later and apologized again.

I was loving it.

I didn’t give Dudley a heads up, not that day, or the next, or the next. And then my phone rang. It was Brooke Cain, a researcher at the paper, and a good one. For years she had help me on almost every story I had worked.

“Why is Dudley doing a background on you?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied.  “What does he want to know?”

“He wants to know about your sisters,” Brooke said.

Coming Friday: “Vintage Jack Hyland”