The public information officer from the Department of Insurance arrived at The News & Observer late one afternoon –some of them always came late because that left us with less time to check out whatever they had to say– and demanded a correction.
He showed the city editor the press release he said he had delivered to The N&O the previous afternoon, he showed him the story we had published, and he pointed out the difference, the error.
There was nothing the city editor could do but order a correction. He told Doug McInnis, the reporter who had rewritten the press release, to write what we called a “Beg,” short for “Beg Your Pardon,” the headline that always appeared over our corrections.
But Doug said no, it wasn’t his mistake. He said the flack must have changed the news release.
Huh?
As much I mistrusted some government public information officers –you couldn’t believe a word some of them said– I thought Doug had lost it. Even a really bad flack wouldn’t do something like that. “Flack,” by the way, is a derogatory term that was often applied to a PIO in the old days.
Doug started looking for the news release he had been given and when he couldn’t find it anywhere on his desk, or his trash can, he began going through trash cans of all the government reporters. When he couldn’t find it in the trash he kept right on looking. He went to the Associated Press office on McDowell Street, next to The N&O, and he got lucky. The AP still had its copy.
McInnis was right.
The flack had made an error in the original news release and instead of taking responsibility, he changed the news release, told our city editor that the corrected version was the original, and tried to blame his mistake on The N&O.
In the late 1970’s or early ’80’s, not long after Charles T. Stith Jr. – Chuck– married Cheryl K. Paul, he was wiring the lights in his garage.
Chuck Stith, telling stories at Snowbird.
“I climbed up on the table, on a beer keg,” Chuck said. “I was in the dark and it arced a little bit and when I moved the table leg broke.”
Chuck fell.
“I hollered, ‘Oh,ooo, awwww, I broke my arm!’ I said, ‘Go call Pop!’”
He said he told his bride the bone was sticking through so Cheryl took off to call Pop — his Dad and one of my older brothers.
“I get up laughing,” Chuck said. His arm wasn’t broken. In fact, he wasn’t hurt at all.
He was laughing, but Cheryl wasn’t. He said she told him, “Never again!”
* * *
Some years later Chuck was building a cabinet and Cheryl went with him to buy the wood.
“She saw that I gave sixty-some dollars for a sheet of plywood.”
Next morning, Chuck went to work on the cabinet. He was cutting some small pieces when the saw knocked a big chunk out of one of his fingers. Chuck put the damaged hand behind his back so blood wouldn’t drip everywhere and finished the cut. Then he wrapped his hand in a blue rag and went to find his wife.
Cheryl Stith
“She’s working in the flower bed. And I walk around the house and I say, ‘Cheryl, I’m gonna go up here and get some stitches.’ By then the rag was soaked and blood was dripping.
He said she jumped up and asked him, “Did you ruin that plywood?”
* * *
Later on, Chuck got hurt again.
“I was ripping a piece of wood on a table saw and when it kicked back and hit me in the stomach, knocked a big knot on my stomach. I was holding it in, trying to hold it in, and I stumbled out of the garage.”
He said Cheryl was on the back porch and she saw him and saw the knot.
“I tripped over the tongue of the trailer, and I fell. I didn’t have a shirt on and when I stood up you could see the knot. And I was holding it in and I said, ‘No problem, no problem at all.’” “She went on in the house, never said nothing else about it.”
* * *
That’s not all.
“I was under my truck, working on my truck, changing out a U-joint and I guess the Good Lord was with me that day.”
Chuck told me he had backed his truck up on a little rise and chocked it – everything was in good shape, he said. You know by now how safety conscious he is.
“It wouldn’t come loose when I got the bolts out. So I go in the garage and get a little pry bar. And when I laid back down under the truck, instead on laying under it sideways I laid under it long ways. I was just gonna reach under there and pop the drive shaft out.”
He popped it out and when he did his truck began rolling, across his right shoulder and arm. The drive shaft caught on his belt, pulled his pants, and wedged him under the truck.
Chuck screamed so loud the neighbors heard him, screamed for his wife to come out there and jack up truck, or back it up, or something.
“She said she didn’t hear me but I know she looked out the door,” Chuck said.
He finally got his belt loose, and freed himself. He could move the arm that got run over so he figured it wasn’t broken.
“I go in the house, I had a pink tire mark on this shoulder and arm. It was already turning blue and red.”
“I just told her, ‘I got this, no problem.’”
“She says, ‘What do you want me to do about it?’”
“I said, ‘Well, the truck just ran over me.’”
“And she said, ‘Well, evidently, it didn’t hurt you any.’”
* * *
Earlier this year Chuck all but severed the little finger on his right hand with a skill saw.
“She was at the grocery store, and a, I called her to tell her that I’m going on up to the hospital, get a few stitches.”
“And she said, ‘Don’t go up to the hospital, go up to the doc-in-a-box, they’re cheaper. And quicker.’”
“And I said, ‘Ah, I believe it’s going to be a little more than a few stitches.’ And she said, ‘Well, do I need to come up there?’”
“And I said, ‘Yea, better come on up there where I’ll have a ride home.’”
“And she, ‘Well, let me put my groceries up.’”
Cheryl and Chuck
By the time Cheryl got to the hospital where they live, in Gadsden, AL, doctors were preparing to have Chuck transported to Birmingham, to try to save his finger.
Postscript: Surgeons in Birmingham put a bone from a cadaver in Chuck’s finger and, so far, so good.
Chuck and Cheryl are still married, 40 years now. And, best I know, he hasn’t yelled “Wolf!” in quite some time.
