Tag: Pat Stith

Get Out And Stay Out

I don’t remember what I had done to tick him off –maybe he had discovered I was stealing jars of syrup and selling them to buy cigarettes– but my oldest brother, John, told me to get out of the syrup factory he ran at the farm and stay out.

John F. Stith Jr.
John F. Stith Jr., AKA “Mike”

John, Dad called him “Mike,” was a grown man. He had been in the Navy during WWII and was 16 years older. I just a kid, eight or nine.

My first mother died when I was five and my second mother didn’t have much control over Brother Dave or me. I didn’t figure anybody could tell me what to do except Dad so I didn’t think John could make his order stick.

Dad's strip mine, Altoona, AL, late 1940s or early 1950s.
Dad’s strip mine, Altoona, AL, late 1940’s or early 1950’s.

Dad had a strip mine near Altoona, AL, and he was there most days, digging coal, but not every day. So I waited. And when Dad stayed home one morning to take care of some business and he went out to the syrup factory, I followed him. He walked in and I walked in right behind him.

That was a mistake.

John grabbed me by the back of my belt and the collar of my shirt and threw me through an opening in the wall of the factory onto a coal pile outside.

John F. Stith Jr. AKA "Mike"
John F. Stith Jr. He was 17 when he joined, in 1944.

NOTE: During World War II John gave up a deferment, joined the U.S. Navy, and then volunteered to serve on a submarine. He washed out of submarine school when one of his eardrum burst during a pressure test and ended up on USS Pocomoke (AV-9), a seaplane tender, in the Pacific.

Coming Monday: Making Boys Into Men

Calm Down, Pat

During the 42 years I worked as a newspaperman I made a couple of wrong turns into editing, once for eight months, once for 18 months. I thought it was time to try to start working my way up the management ladder. I had done all right at reporting so they pretty much had to give me a shot.

I didn’t like editing and, truth be told, I wasn’t all that good at it.

As a reporter it got to the point where I rarely had to work with anybody I didn’t respect, who couldn’t carry their end of the stick. As an editor it wasn’t that way, I had to make do with the reporters I was given — some of whom were excellent, some of whom were, I’m being generous, pretty average.

There wasn’t anything I could do about that. It was frustrating. I couldn’t fire them or discipline them. And I didn’t have the temperament for holding someone’s hand, coaxing good work out of them or, at least, better work.

This is what one reporter said I needed.
A reporter told me I needed less of one and more of the other.

Maybe I was a little too intense.

I got into a dispute in The News & Observer parking lot one afternoon with another N&O employee who had parked in my spot twice.

“You better calm down,” he told me, “before you have a coronary.”

A reporter who worked for me, at least in theory, told me the same thing, but more gently. He said I ought to get a dog and quit drinking coffee.

Coming Friday: A Language He Understood