The newsroom in Charlotte, where I started my newspaper career in 1960, had a couple of white women news reporters and copy editors but no women line editors outside of the “Woman’s Page,” the section devoted to food, clothes, and lightweight features.
There were no back editors or reporters anywhere on the news staff and I don’t recall any other other minorities employed in the newsroom. It was a white man’s world.
When a black person was named in a news story he or she was identified as “a Negro.”
There were unwritten rules, too.
Willie Mays was selected to the National League All Star team 20 times.
Willie Mays, “The Say Hey Kid,” was in the last half of a fabulous baseball career when I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and went to work full time for The Charlotte News in June 1966. He had led both major leagues in home runs in 1964 [47 ] and 1965 [52] and won the National League’s MVP trophy in ’65.
But a Charlotte News sports writer told me the sports department had been told not publish Mays’ picture more than twice a week no matter how many home runs he hit.
Mays, as anyone who follows baseball knows, was black.
NOTE1: I checked. Mays’ photo was published in The Charlotte News 17 times during the 24-week 1965 season, from opening day on April 12 to the last day of the season on Oct. 3. But never more than twice in one week.
NOTE2: When I retired in 2008 a black man was publisher of my newspaper, The News & Observer.
When I was a young reporter, in the 1960’s, newspapers were big on first person stories, like spending a weekend at a nudist camp in the altogether.
I didn’t do that one.
I did, however, drive my car around Charlotte after a winter storm, when the roads were iced up, so I could write a story about how foolish it was to drive on ice. I got a good story – I slid off the road and banged up the front end of my car.
I paid a gypsy to tell me my fortune.
I ask the high sheriff to spray me with pepper spray so I could write about how it felt. It felt pretty bad — that story went way beyond the call of duty. The spray hit me in the forehead and a second later it felt like my face and head were on fire. And, of course, I couldn’t see a thing.
I went boar hunting in the mountains of North Carolina, and saw how you pull a pit bull off a hog.
I rode a canoe down the rapids on Section III of the Chattooga River, the ultimate test, I had read, for an undecked canoe.
And I spent six days and nights, alone, in the woods south of Charlotte with no tent and no food, nothing except a knife, a canteen, a pack of matches and a book called “How To Survive In the Wilderness.”
[I also had the tools of my craft: a pencil, a notebook, copy paper and a typewriter, so I could file a story every day about my adventures. I would write in the late afternoon and then walk half a mile or so from camp and leave my story bottled up in a fruit jar. Another reporter would pick it up early the next morning and take it to my paper, The Charlotte News.]
My adventure lasted six long days.
The News named my six-day series “Babe In The Woods,” an apt name. I was a 27-year-old, married, father of three who had lived on a farm as a child but had grown up to be a city boy. I had never camped in the woods alone. Ostensibly, I went without camping gear or food to see if I could live off the land. The real reason, of course, was to sell newspapers — and get my byline on page 1.
* * *
For the first two or three days I watched every step I took, afraid a snake would bite me. Toward the middle of the week, however, I relaxed. I didn’t care if I got bit, getting bit would mean going home. I wasn’t going to yell calf rope, of course — not in a 100 years — but a snake bite would have been an honorable way to call it a day. Later, when I knew I would be going home soon and I didn’t need a way out, I started watching my step again, watching for snakes.
CAMPNEVERAGAIN
That first day I broke off some small pine trees and built a shelter. It looked good, but it didn’t keep the rain off of me. I slept curled up by my fire every night, even when it rained.
I didn’t have an ax so I picked a camp site near two fallen trees, big ones, but not so big I couldn’t drag them a few feet. That was my firewood. I got the biggest rocks I could carry and put them around my fire. The fire warmed the rocks and at night I would snuggle up to that warmth.
My camp was not far from the Catawba River, and so I had plenty of water. How safe it was to drink I didn’t know, so I strained it through my t-shirt and boiled it a quart at a time in a oil can I found beside a Jeep road, left there by hunters, I guess. I also used the oil can to boil the day lilies I picked every morning, before they opened, and cat tails. The day lilies tasted a lot like string beans and the cat tails, like corn. And I ate ripe, juicy, blackberries by the handful. I make a hook of sorts out of the wire in the spiral of my notebook and tried, without success, to catch fish. I did catch a little box turtle, poor thing, and ate him. And I found a bee hive and raided it. I got stung, but I also got some honey – and a story.
* * *
It was a hot, close to 100 degrees in the daytime and rainy some afternoons and evenings. At suppertime, their suppertime, swarms of mosquitoes came to see me. For the first few days I didn’t put a dateline on my story, a geographic identifier showing the reporter’s location. Later in the week I began using this dateline – CAMPNEVERAGAIN.
My wife, Donna, welcomed me home.
It wasn’t all bad, of course. I learned some things.
** I learned that you don’t get but so hungry. If you don’t eat for a day, you’re hungry but if you don’t eat for three days, you’re not three times as hungry.
** I learned that if you don’t have enough to eat, a place to sleep, you don’t worry about your appearance. Or cleanliness.
** I learned that I missed companionship, family and friends, more than I missed the comforts of home.
