When I worked at The Charlotte News in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s only two reporters were assigned to work on Saturdays and, for a while, I was one of them.
It was a hectic day, rewriting obituaries that had appeared that morning in The Big Zero — that’s what we called The Charlotte Observer —rewriting their news stories, too, and handling any breaking news. The News was a Monday to Saturday afternoon paper so while Saturdays were busy, they were short, 7 a.m. ’till shortly after noon.
[I know how strange that must sound, rewriting stuff published in a “competing” paper even when we couldn’t add a single new development, but both papers were owned by Knight Newspapers Inc. and both papers did it to save money, I guess. There was competition, however, lots of it. You wanted to make The Observer reporter who covered your beat rewrite your stories instead of having to rewrite his.]
One Saturday my sidekick didn’t show up for work and I was so busy doing my job and his I didn’t have time to pee. It was 10 a.m before he called and asked to speak to the city editor, Tom Sieg.
Tom Sieg, city editor
Sieg was steamed.
“Where are you?” he shouted into the phone.
The missing reporter, who had a reputation for drinking too much too often, said he was in South Carolina.
“Where in South Carolina?” Sieg asked.
The reporter said he didn’t know.
“Then how do you know you’re in South Carolina?” Sieg asked.
“Because all the cars have South Carolina tags,” the reporter said.
NOTE: I posted The Final Edition’s first storyon Nov. 25, 2016, a little over 18 months ago, and since then I’ve posted more than 150 stories. Listed below are 10 most read stories.
I always figured that newspapering [5], hiking [2] and river stories [1] would have broader appeal, and they do. The other two Top Ten stories are about my eccentric father.
Eight of the Top Ten were published last year. Older stories have more hits, in part, because, well, they’re older. OK, here they are:
PIZZA! PIZZA! PIZZA! Paddling The Roanoke, the winner by a wide margin. Maybe a lot of people want to paddle the Roanoke River and this story would surely help them. Posted June 23, 2017.
Hiding In A Privy, a hiking story you can read or watch. Posted Aug. 21, 2017.
This Was Not A Real Job, my first day at work at The Charlotte News. Posted Sept. 4, 2017.
Those Mean Old Newspapermen. I know and like newspaper people — I was one for a long time. But some of them have a little bit of a mean streak. Posted March 20, 2017.
Oh, Copyboy? Another newspaper story, about behavior modification, I guess you could say. Posted Jan. 30, 2017.
Here, Take My Blackjack. The blackjack belonged to my father. I’ve posted 15 stories about him with more to come. If you like this one, scroll down until you see a selection box call “Categories” and pick “My Dad Was A Pistol.” Posted May 26, 2017.
The Good Fairy, Part 1 of 2. The odd thing is that Part 2, posted the next day, is better than Part 1 but hasn’t received as many hits. Posted Feb. 23, 2018.
Lost on Blood Mountain, Part 1 of 2. My Appalachian Trail thru-hike could have ended in Georgia, on the second day of my hike. Posted Feb. 16, 2017.
It’s A Good Life. This one, I think, helps us understand how we get to be the way we are. Posted Sept. 25, 2017.
Pretty Woman. Was the high sheriff serious or was he pulling my leg? Posted Jan. 19, 2018.
To see these stories go to the calendar at the bottom of the list of the 100 most recently posted stories and click on the date.
Today is my 76th birthday. And I’ve been thinking about jobs that used to be, like milkman and TV repairman; things that I used to see all the time when I was a child, like a caboose and newsreels at movies; and things we used to do, like play mumbly peg and float on tire tubes, and I decided to make a used-to-be list.
1940 Chevrolet, with running boards
Good riddance to some of those things, like segregation signs [“White Only”] and, oh yes, polio, a scourge when I was a boy, years before a vaccine wiped it out in the United States. But recalling some of the other things on the list, like running boards on cars and old radio shows, like “The Lone Ranger” and “The Shadow,” makes me a little nostalgic.
I know I’ve forgotten, or just failed to list, lots of things that were part of our lives and now are mostly gone and almost forgotten. Tell me other things you remember and I’ll add them to the list.
Alarm clocks. Oh, there must be some left. But it’s mostly i-phones alarms now.
Ash tray
Ash trays. They were ubiquitous, home, office, restaurants — everywhere.
Banking a fire. That way you didn’t have to start from scratch the next morning.
Barber pole. Until the last few years I wouldn’t even consider getting a haircut anywhere but a barber shop — with a pole out front.
Battleships
Blue laws, restricting business on Sunday
Blue plate specials
Bumpers on cars. When is the last time you saw one car pushing another one to get it started? Used to happen all the time.
Butter churn
Butter churn. I haven’t seen anyone churn milk since I was a boy.
Caboose, carbon paper.
Collect telephone calls, where the person you called paid. The caller asked the operator to “reverse the charges.”
Castor oil. It’s still around, but I don’t think errant children are forced to swallow it as punishment any more.
Chain gangs, inmates wearing chains, cutting grass on roadsides.
Chicken pox, four million cases a years down to a few hundred.
Cinder running tracks, replaced by tracks with synthetic surfaces.
“Dixie,” the song. I haven’t heard it played in public in eons.
Draft, which ended in 1973. Big, BIG mistake. If draftees had been fighting, and dying, in Afghanistan that war would not have last almost 17 years — and counting.
Duck tails, a popular hair style in the 1950s.
Dunking for apples
Eight-tract tape cassettes and players
Electric street cars
Elevator operator
Elevator operators. Oh, yea. Hard to believe but some elevators had drivers.
Encyclopedias
Extra editions of newspapers, “Extra, extra read all about it…”
Fans, hand held, often with a picture of a painting of Jesus on one side and a funeral home advertisement on the other.
Flash bulbs
Five cent cokes. Or 25 cents a gallon gasoline, for that matter. That’s what I paid for gas in 1960, when I graduated from high school. Adjusted for inflation, that’s about $2.12 a gallon now.
Flip phones, going, going, going…..
Flip
Flip, also called as slingshot, made with a forked stick, two strips cut from an inner tube, and the tongue of a shoe. Used to shoot rocks at whatever.
Five diget phone numbers. The number at our farm, in the early 1950’s, was 63296.
Hadacol, patent medicine that was supposed to cure high blood pressure, ulcers, strokes, asthma, arthritis, diabetes, pneumonia, anemia, cancer, epilepsy, gall stones, heart trouble, and hay fever. A 12% alcohol content helps sales a lot.
Hair curlers. Oh, I know they’re still around, but not like they used to be, when they were a nightly ritual.
Hand crank starters on cars. Brother Pop drove a car he had to start by hand.
Hoochie Koochie shows at county fairs
Hoola hoop
Hopscotch
Hopscotch
House calls by doctors
Mule or horse-drawn plows
Icebox, now known as a refrigerator
Ice pick
Ice picks to chip ice. You can still buy one but in the old days, every home had an ice pick.
Ice plants where you could buy a block of ice
Inner tubes for tires. And when they were just about worn out kids patched them, pumped them up, and took them swimming, in creeks and ponds.
Kodak film
Knickers. I actually owned a pair, back when.
Letters, personal and handwritten
Lye soap, homemade. We washed clothes with lye soap at the farm.
Milkman
Milkman who delivered to your door. When we moved to Raleigh in 1971 we had a milkman.
Movie cartoons, serials, newsreels
Mumbley peg. You played with a pocket knife, which almost every boy carried.
Newspaper hot type and all that went with it — linotype operators, stone, chase, hell box, pica stick, galley.
Nylon hose, with seams down the back.
Outdoor roller skates. Kids wore the skate “key” on a string around their neck.
Paperboys hawking papers on the street with the sing song chant, “Read all about it! Charlotte boy threatened by the Gaffney strangler…” That was my story, unfortunately. And I’ll tell you about it one of these days.
Paddles [some with holes drilled in them] used to spank naughty school children.
Peg pants, worn by boys with duck tails
Penny vending machines. Brother Dave and I owned some and I’m going to write about them soon.
Phone books
Phone booth
Phone booths
Picking cotton. Machines have taken over that job, too.
Plucking a chicken, after you’ve wrung its neck, or chopped its head off.
Privies. My elementary school in Glencoe, Alabama, had one for the boys, one for the girls.
Push lawn mowers. No motor. They were boy-powered.
Radio shows: “The Long Ranger;” “Dear Margie It’s Murder;” “The Shadow,” and many others.
Records and record players
Red Rover [“Red Rover, Red Rover, send [player’s name] on over!’]
Road maps. They’re still handing them out at state welcome centers, but does anyone use one anymore?
Rolling stores. One came by our farm weekly selling everything from needles and thread to candy and canned goods.
Rotary phones. Before that we had a phone at the farmhouse that hung on the wall. You turned a crank which rung a bell. When the operator answered you gave her the number and she placed the call.
Running boards on cars and trucks
The is the shaving cup, brush, and razor I used when I was a young man.
Shaving cup, brush and razor. Razor blades are gone too, of course.
Slips
Smoking cigarettes anywhere and everywhere, restaurant, movie theaters, and hospital waiting rooms, too.
Songs: “I Walk the Line,” “All Shook Up,” “Great Balls of Fire,” “Earth Angel” and scores more.
Stamps that you had to lick
Steam locomotives, coal fired, puffing smoke and pulling trains
Straight razors and razor straps barbers used to sharpen razors
Switchboard operators, 1952
Switchboard operators
Switching children, whipping them with a branch from a bush. I heard a woman tell her child, “I’m gonna cut the blood out of you!” meaning, I’m going to switch your bare legs so hard specks of blood will pop out.
Switch blades, in the 50’s a lot of boys carried them.
Taffy pulls
Tax tokens, valued at one-tenth of a cent. Alabama issued them from 1937-48.
Telegrams. We got a congratulatory telegram on our wedding day. Fearing bad news, Donna would not open it until after we were married.
Telephone party lines. People sometime listened in on each other, for entertainment, I guess.
Tomb stones, there are plenty of them around, but not as many new ones as there used to be.
TV repair shops
TV shows: “I’ve Got A Secret,” “The Ed Sullivan Show;” “I love Lucy;” “Playhouse 90.”
Two-bedroom, one-bath houses
Typewriters. I wrote with them for decades, and had a tiny callus on the side of my thumb, from hitting the space bar, to prove it.
Vent windows on cars that you could turn backwards and force air into the car
Videos, video stores
Wash pot, wash board
Wash pot
Wash pot, women built a fire under them to heat the water, and then poked the dirty clothes with an old broom handle. They washed the clothes on a wash board.
Water buckets and dippers. That’s what we used before running water. You filled the bucket from the well, and used a dipper to get a drink.
Water meter readers
“White” and “colored” public drinking fountains and bathrooms
