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Nuts!

One evening I went with friends and family to an ice cream parlor to enjoy my favorite treat.  We sat in a booth big enough for the six of us and pretty soon the waitress came around and took our orders.

When my turn came I ordered a banana split.

You need two people to eat a banana split from
You need two people to eat a banana split from the S & T Soda Shoppe in Pittsboro, N.C.

Banana splits have a scoop or two of three kinds of ice cream, strawberry, chocolate and vanilla, nestled between two halves of a banana cut end to end.  Pineapple, chocolate, and strawberry syrups are poured over the ice cream — and nuts, too.    Whipped cream goes on the very top and, usually, a single cherry.

I like all kinds of nuts, but not on a banana split. So I told the waitress, “I want everything but the nuts.”

“We don’t have any nuts,” she replied.

“That’s OK, because I don’t want any nuts,” I said.

“We don’t have any nuts,” she said, more loudly.  People at my table began to laugh.

“Ma’am,” I said, as politely as can be, “I don’t want any nuts.”

“I TOLD YOU!  WE DON’T HAVE ANY NUTS!”

“OK,” I said.

NOTE:  The S & T Soda Shoppe in Pittsboro, N.C., has the biggest and best banana splits I’ve ever eaten.

Postscript: If I don’t just drop dead, if I get a death notice from my doctor –you know what I’m talking about, when he or she looks sad and tells you: “You have six months to live.”  — if and when I get my notice I’m going to eat ice cream every day for the rest of my life. With no nuts.

Coming Monday: The Favor

 

 

The Memo I Ignored

Bob Brooks, the managing editor of The News & Observer for most of my time there, sent the staff the most puzzling memo I had ever seen.  The memo said reporters could not promise to protect the identity of a source without his permission.

I can’t begin to tell you how nutty that edict was.  I talked to people off the record practically every day. Other reporters did, too. Any reporter  who says he or she never goes off the record must be covering, I don’t know, the school lunch menu?

Bob Brooks, at a news budget meeting in the early 1980's.
Bob Brooks, at a news budget meeting in the early 1980’s.

Bob was a good newspaperman. I respected him, I liked him, too. He couldn’t possibly be serious, could he?

So I went to his office, memo in hand, and asked him what it meant.  He said he meant what it said — end of discussion.  Bob had zero tolerance for anyone who challenged his authority.

I went back to my desk, sat down, and thought about it.   Until recently judges had been citing reporters for contempt and putting them in jail when they refused to reveal the identity of a confidential source.   But judges had finally wised up and realized that some reporters wanted to go to jail to protect a source.

So they quit jailing reporters and started fining their newspapers instead, up to $5,000 a day, a lot more in today’s money.  I figured that must have been the reason for crazy memo: If one of our reporters refused to reveal a confidential source, and they hadn’t gotten permission from Brooks, The N&O would claim that the reporter had acted outside the scope of his or her employment.  That’s the only explanation that made sense to me.

After that I didn’t worry about the crazy memo.   I ignored it.   I kept doing my job the way I had always done it.   And, as far as I know, so did everybody else.  

NOTE: By the way, “Off the record” and “Not for attribution” are not the same thing. Not for attribution meant I could use the information but I could  never identify the source. Off the record meant I couldn’t do anything with the information without further negotiation.  Most often the source would say I could use the information if I could find it somewhere else and he or she might tell me where I could find it.  Or I could use it, not for attribution, after a certain date. The N&O stopped using anonymous sources in investigative stories in the late 1970’s.

Coming Friday: Nuts!