Of the thousands of “ledes” I wrote during the 42 years I was a newspaperman, and the tens of thousands of ledes I’ve read, I only remember one.
A “lede” is what newspaper people call the first paragraph, or sometimes the first several paragraphs, of a story. Some reporters put almost as much time and effort into writing the lede, trying to grab readers’ interest, as they do the rest of the story.
If I had written the story in question I would have probably written the lede this way:
“Former state representative Louise Brennan, who had said she didn’t want the job, was elected chairman of the Mecklenburg County Democratic Party today.”
That’s workmanlike, nothing wrong with it to my way of thinking. Lots of reporters would have written it pretty much the same way.
But Steve Landers, my friend and colleague when we were both young reporters at The Charlotte News, had a better idea. This is Steve’s lede, inspired from a line in a 1929 hit song called Louise:
“The lady said she wouldn’t accept a draft, but every little breeze whispered Louise.”
Now, that’sa lede.
NOTE: Back in the late 1960s, early ’70s, Steve and I did everything we could to put a whipping on The Charlotte Observer. Years later his wife, Jennie Bucker, became editor of The Observer.
Jimmy Collins, a Robbinsville man who had hunted wild boar and bear in the North Carolina mountains all his life, was sitting at a table before dawn one cold, fall morning collecting money from hunters who had hired him to guide them on a boar hunt.
One of the hunters, who was from Charlotte, said to Collins in a friendly sort of way, “Here’s your money you old son of a bitch.”
Collins, who was not nearly as big as the other fellow, stood up, and spoke to him calmly, like he was he was instructing a child:
“I’ve been around you city people and I know how you talk,” he said in a slow, mountain drawl. “But if you cuss me again I’m gonna knock your head off.”
* * *
Jimmy Collins and his pit bulls.
The night before I had been in Collins’ home to interview him for a story I wrote about that hunt for The News & Observer. We got to talking about pit bulls, completely fearless dogs whose job it is to catch and hold a wild hog after the tracking dogs, hounds, cornered it. Pit bulls have powerful jaws and when they grab a hog, by the ear or face or throat where the hog can’t bite them, they will not let go.
So how do you get a pit bull off a hog after the hunter shoots it, or cuts its throat?
This is what Collins told me:
You grab the dog by the collar and twist it until he starts to choke. Then you lean over and blow in his ear, which they don’t like at all. When the dog lets go and turns to bite you, you pull him off the hog.
Collins also told me that he used to hunt hogs with a rifle. When that got to where it was no fun, he began shooting them with a pistol, between the eyes at point blank range. And when that got to be where it wasn’t fun, he began climbing on the hog’s back and cutting its throat. He said you grab ’em by the ear with your left hand and cut with your right.
But you better remember: Keep your left arm straight and your elbow locked.
When you cut him, Collins said, the hog is liable to jerk his head around to bite you. If you keep your elbow locked and your arm straight the hog will push your body away from him when he turns his head.
Was this man for real, or was he pulling my leg?
I found out.
Just after dawn the next morning, when his pack of dogs cornered a hog, Collins pulled out a pocket knife offered to let me cut the hog’s throat. Except for two pit bulls, who had the hog’s head in a death grip, the pack was in frenzy, running in and out, biting, barking, growling. They were all over that hog, in a complete frenzy.
I declined.
Collins cut the hog’s throat, keeping his arm straight, his elbow locked. And then he twisted each pit bull’s collar, choked him a little, blew in his ear, and pull him off the dead hog, just like that.
