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27
Nov 12

War stories

Everybody has them, some are better than others. Some can be told to illustrate a point. Some can be told just to be told. I try not to share too many “war stories” in class because they are usually disturbing or pointless or sound like bragging. But I told some stories today. It is a trip down memory lane for me, some of these things I’d all but forgotten.

Once I was called on my off day to go stand outside in the bitter, freezing cold and watch a hostage standoff. Seems a man and a woman had gotten into a fight. He displayed a knife. She got out of their house, but the three kids were stuck inside. I remember stamping my feet for warmth, wishing for a bigger jacket, watching the SWAT team rehearse down the block and then this kid, maybe seven or eight, dangling from a window in his home. It was just a bit too high for him and he was having trouble letting go. There was a police officer in body armor right under the window and he was reaching to get the kid and his shirt was riding up and then he was on the wrong, in the officer’s arms and being trotted away. All the kids got out safely and we reported from there for the better part of a day.

Not every story is a happy one, of course.

I talked about the guy so cranked out on drugs that he used the toddler in his arms as a weapon to ward off police officers. I always thought watching the police sit on their cruisers crying after that was the best part of the story.

Sometimes, I say a lot about any format, the story is about timing. You turn away, you miss it. You leave early, arrive late, you miss it. Really talented reporters can see everything, hear of everything and are apparently everywhere. Or at least they can make it seem like that. For mere mortals, chance plays into it.

I think I was just driving by when I saw a big scene in this one apartment complex. Stopped in there to find out a police officer had just been shot. Jack Cooper was his name, I remember that a decade later. The guy he was dealing with was worried about vampires and demons and pepper spray didn’t bother him. Somehow he got Cooper’s weapon and got off a shot before being killed himself. That was a pretty neighborhood, and I stood around those cruisers and ambulances for hours talking to and about the neighbors. I got back to the studio that day and received probably the nicest compliment I’ve ever gotten professionally. I described things with words, someone whom I greatly respected said, better than the television cameras did.

I didn’t talk today about covering stories where babies were found in the garbage or molested dogs or bodies found in car washes on Christmas morning. Some of that stuff is too depressing.

So we talked about broadcast news writing today, from which I have several years of stories and experience to draw. Some of my best writing was probably done in a studio somewhere, rewriting something I’d written three times before because I needed to get three more seconds cut from the source time. Perhaps nothing makes a print writer a stronger writer than considering the broadcast style.

Of course perhaps two-thirds of this class was interested in public relations, but still. The lesson plan called for broadcasting, so that’s what we talked about.

I miss it, but only a little. I don’t miss being at work at 4 a.m. Don’t miss that at all. That was my last broadcasting job. When I went online in 2004 and that job called for me to show up at 6 a.m. I thought I’d really earned a step up in life.

Now I stay on campus all night watching students put their newspaper together so, really, I’ve finally found the night owl schedule my circadian rhythms have always demanded.

I don’t have quite the same pool of war stories, because our campus is a beautiful little serene place and I now tell tales of improper pronouns and misspelled building names and warning off plagiarism, but it is a great tradeoff.

And now a very mellow tune performed on a frozen pond that, beyond the name, has absolutely nothing to do with the Joe Walsh standard:

I like the kitchen shots. They’re cute.

That is a band about which you can find little information, called Eden’s Empire. On their Bandcamp page they write:

This is an anthem for hope.

We are the sound of Jimi Hendrix strapped to the front of a run-away freight train with Dylan feeding the fire.

We are not rock stars. We’re not selling sex, angst, or anarchy. We’re giving away songs about how hard it is for our generation to find love, purpose, and truth in a world that just wants us to buy more of what put our parents in this situation.

We are over educated, underpaid, and unsatisfied.
We are James Dean with a guitar.
We are twenty something’s and we’re restless.

Hurricanes, diplomas, love, and big ideas have pulled us from all corners of the country and dropped us together in the Midwest.

We have no money, no map, and no desire to just dream anymore.

We are on an odyssey, we don’t know what were looking for, but so far all we’ve found is rock n’ roll.

A generational diaspora! Except when it isn’t:

The share of Americans living in multigenerational households reached the highest level since the 1950s, after rising significantly over the past five years, according to Pew.

In the never-ending quest for story ideas and opportunities to prove my entrepreneurial prescience I am always looking for a hook or an angle. And, forgive me if this is just the Ken Burns talking …

But I think there’s some modern John Steinbeck story waiting to emerge. This being a tectonic type of tale on the scale of ultimate stories. Of course there will be WiFi and cable television and hipsters and even more politics this time around, but there might be something to it.

I rambled on here for awhile about Franklin Roosevelt, James Bond and YouTube propaganda. Those paragraphs didn’t add much and I discovered the delete button still works; you’re welcome.

It started out, though, with the idea that the Dust Bowl changed a lot of lives, not just in the short term, but generationally. People who lived in Oklahoma moved to California or Arizona, if they were lucky enough to get in, or back east and they had children and grandchildren and those people live in those places, or at least started in those places and where are they now and what got them there? These are the plates of life, right? So I say it is tectonic. I look at my family history and wonder what were the reasons they moved down from the mountains? I found several strands of the tree that ventured to Texas or Oklahoma, probably be cause they knew a cousin there who told them times were good and your parents aren’t here, anyway. And what prompted them to go there?

If you spend time in one of the genealogy books of my extended family you find they came from Germany in the early 18th century. It is written somewhere that generally people of that place and era moved to recapture something in a new place. Then, according to this family book, some of those particular people fought in Pennsylvania regiments in “the Sectional War” and later moved to north Alabama in the 1880s. The why is left to your imagination.

Another side of my family moved down from Tennessee before the Civil War. They were in a part of the state that typically stayed out of the war and some of the young men finally only joined up when the Union all but pressed them into service.

This is all in my mother’s family. On the Smith side of things, well the Smiths are hard, but I found an old newspaper mention early this year that led me to a new name on a genealogy site which led all the way back to the Netherlands in the 16th century. Those people moved to North Carolina before the Revolutionary War, and eventually worked into Tennessee, Alabama and Oklahoma, probably just in time for the Dust Bowl.

They, like the other branch in the book above, were all just farmers for the most part, poor in a hardscrabble world during a challenging time. The whys died with them, but they are probably straightforward and logical. Or fantastical beyond belief. Maybe life was good to them. Who knows what war stories they had?

books / history / iPhone / movies / photo / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
24
Oct 12

Mussolini at Chick-fil-A

Had dinner at Chick-fil-A tonight. Took a piece of paper to give to one of the guys I often see working there. He always asks me what I’m reading. We’ve talked about the various things we enjoy. I read a lot of history. He said he reads a lot about the Revolutionary War period.

So I’d promised I’d bring him a list of things that I’ve read. I spent a few minutes in my library one day last week writing down names and titles. I pulled images from Amazon to put over the names of the books. I gave it to him tonight. He was happy, smiling, pleased, thanked me.

But then I wondered: Maybe he doesn’t really read about this period. Maybe he was just being nice. Now, maybe, he’s wondering why some guy brings him this piece of paper.

So I got my food, found a table and continued reading Jonathan Alter’s The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope — which is good, if you like Alter or Roosevelt. Alter is a fine writer, but he’s a Roosevelt apologist and, really, there’s been enough of that. But I did learn about Roosevelt’s role in contributing re-writes to Gabriel Over the White House, a movie meant to “prepare” the American constituency for a dictator who, ultimately, executes his enemies in the shadows of the Statue of Liberty. This was actually produced and put in theaters. There’s some of that about 62 minutes in and then you’ll see a Star Chamber immediately thereafter. Roosevelt wrote to William Randolph Hearst, who produced the film, that he thought it would be “helpful.”

You can watch the full movie here:

The Library of Congress says about the film, “The good news: he reduces unemployment, lifts the country out of the Depression, battles gangsters and Congress, and brings about world peace. The bad news: he’s Mussolini.”

Happily we didn’t go down those roads, but then again, in 1933 with the Depression on, people in the U.S. thought a lot about Mussolini. Il Duce was in the midst of his successful years. He was winning people over as a dictator with public works, improved jobs, public transport and more. It’d be a few more years until everyone turned on the guy. In 1933 desperate people looked at him and thought, Why not?

So anyway, I’m sitting there, trying to wrap up this book so I can move on to the next thing, and these two ladies sitting nearby are discussing the music they’ll perform in their church choir’s Christmas performance.

They’re flipping through three-ring binders. As it often happens when music people discuss music things there was a bit of singing. The lady on the right was pointing out parts to the one on the left.

A guy comes up, a contractor of some sort based on his clothes, and he says “You sure make that beautiful song beautiful.”

She did have a nice voice.

friends / history / iPhone / photo / Samford / Thursday — Comments Off
18
Oct 12

That’s an expensive radio

I had lunch at Alabama Power today with my friend Ike Pigott. He was a local reporter on television for years, moved to the Red Cross and now is in PR and corporate and strategy communication at the power company. Nice guy. Very smart. He’s on our department’s advisory council at Samford. We’re trying to get him more involved.

We ate under the atrium of the Alabama Power headquarters building, seen in the banner on this page, if you’ve ever wondered. Inside they have a barber, a shoe shine repair and leather stretching shop, a post office, a congressional lobby bureau, pneumatic tubes to deliver the staff home at the end of the day and are tinkering with a transporter platform. The place is fancy.

They also have rows of classic radios on display from the Don Kresge Memorial Museum which is housed in the building. Fitting. The first radio station in the state belonged to the power company. They used it to communicate with their outlying folks and to do weather updates and that sort of thing. Eventually they gave the gear to Auburn University, then Alabama Polytechnic Institute, where it took the WAPI calls. Some time later it came back to Birmingham, where WAPI broadcasts today. I used to work on the oldest station in the state. Lots of fun and news and anguish and entertainment went over those airwaves over the years. Most of it during my time there!

But I do go on.

Here are some of the radios they have out for your examination. I skipped most of the oldest models, as Lileks called them the other day, the woody old cathedrals. Why look at those when you can stare at the beauty of the Crosley Bullseye. The 1951 model here came in eight colors. Beautiful bakelight and tubes build. And you thought the 50s were staid:

Here’s the Trav-ler T201, from 1959. How many teenaged girls had this in their room in the early 1960s?

Here is the Westinghouse H124, also called the refrigerator radio. It was in circulation after the war, from 1945 until 1948. It came in four colors, which is probably two more than you could get the fridge in. This radio came with the refrigerator purpose. I wonder if the companion model is available at the refrigerator museum. (There are a few of those, surprisingly.)

The Motorola 53H came in several colors when you ordered it in 1953. Someone in your family had this radio. They were the most boring person in your family. But the rockabilly sounded great:

The Airline 84 BR 1508, just about as beautiful as the genre could get. It has six buttons, so you could set up six pre-set stations across the manual dial. “No more fighting with sis!” the ads might have said. This radio was so important they made postcards about it:

OK, two from the wooden cabinets. Because this one is a globe: The Colonial “New World” picked up only the AM band and had a top vent for the five-tube configuration. This was in catalogs in 1933. Someone listed to Franklin Roosevelt for the first time on this radio:

This Superflex, this very model, was made in Birmingham at Radio Products Corporation in 1927. The engraving on the front panel, which doesn’t really come across in this one shot, is admirable. This Superflex is thought to be the only surviving example.

It was built right here:

Oh, that Crosley Bullseye? The sexy, red picture above? You can buy one of those on ebay for $1,840.

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29
Sep 12

A Saturday mishmash

Something I wrote, and photographs I took, last spring made it on to the Smithsonian Magazine’s website.

It has some formatting problems that weren’t there in my submission or the version they returned to double check. No matter. There’s a better, longer version, published here, but, still, Smithsonian.

This is hardly the biggest thing in the world or even the best publication news I’ve had in the last month. But I get to say I’m published on the Smithsonian’s site.

Again.

Back in the old days — and I mean about 1996, which is in no way old, or far enough removed to suggest they are the old days — I perfected my dry sarcasm and speed typing on a chatroom site that doesn’t seem to exist anymore. As we have learned is the norm, a bigger company bought the little company. They made changes, ruined the aesthetic and people left. Some of those people stuck together on ICQ. My ICQ number, which I can’t grab at just this moment, was shockingly low. But the friends stuck together, from Maryland and out west and the Deep South and somewhere in London and in Australia.

One by one they all sort of fell away. Life demanded them. They grew bored. They lost their password or their Internet connection. And finally that group was down to just two people. So there was me and this Australian lady. We’d talked for a couple of years by then. Carol was friendly, and liked folk music and all manner of interesting decorative styles. She worked in the government in Canberra and had a big burly husband who sounded hysterical.

We even talked on the phone a few times. We discussed the virtues of the Australian accent in the United States and my accent, which she found charming, in Australia. I was well underway in my broadcast career by then and thinking a lot about sound. Carol figured I could do very well in Australia. I hatched the sort of plan that you never even try to implement — summer in Australia wooing girls with my southern accent and then running from the winter there to have summer at home in the States, wooing girls with a blended Aussie, Southern accent.

She was my mother’s age, almost. So I jokingly called her my Internet mom. Or, mum, being Australian and all. Her parents were English, but she was raised in Australia, so she had a terrific mixture of both sense of humor. She was a sweet lady.

And yesterday she found me on Twitter.

“You remember me!” she said.

It was the biggest, dumbest smile of the day, lasting into the afternoon.

Saw that this is closing.

Sent the picture to The War Eagle Reader. They made a few calls and turned it into a story.

I have claimed DIBS! on the neon sign out front. You. Can’t. Have. It.

Legendary Auburn quarterback Pat Sullivan told me his Heart of Auburn story last year:

Sullivan looks at his career through those relationships he’s cultivated along the way. His Heisman Trophy experience was no different.

Back in those days the announcement came as a halftime feature during the Georgia-Georgia Tech game. Instead of being on the front row in New York, Sullivan was in Auburn.

“We were actually at practice that day because we had Alabama on Saturday. My parents had come down to hear the announcement … Our TV went on the blink so we had to go rent a room at the Heart of Auburn. We watched it on TV just like everybody else,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan, perhaps the last Heisman Trophy winner to stay at the Heart of Auburn, says his room number has been lost to history. There are plenty of clear memories from the night, though.

“After the announcement we went back over to (Beard-Eaves-Memorial) Coliseum and all my teammates, coaches and their families, (Auburn President Dr. Harry) Philpot and Coach Jeff Beard (then the Auburn athletic director) were all there and I was able to share that with them. That was something that I’ll never forget because I know I didn’t win it by myself, they were a part of it.”

Remember, I’m claiming the neon sign out front.

Links: Iranian news agency uses The Onion. And that says pretty much everything about the gulf between two cultures.

Hints that water once flowed on Mars. In every previous instance of water in human history scientists have found life. Does that project out to Mars?

Sadly, Birmingham News staffers depart as paper ceases daily publication. On Monday the new company, Alabama Media Group opens for business. I have friends and colleagues at both. There are plenty of talented and caring people involved. I project, after a slow start, big things.

Presidential ad spending soars past $700 million means I’m glad I don’t live in a battleground state.

Kickoff

Auburn opens with Clemson tonight in Atlanta. This will be the third year in a row the two teams have played — and it’ll be nice to see them play someone else after this.

Meantime, Auburn needs to exact a bit of revenge for their treatment on the road last season. In honor of this, the 39th meeting between the occasional rivals, here is a picture from the 13th game in the series. It was October, 1916. Auburn won 28-0. War Eagle was an expression no one used yet, but we’ll say it over the picture anyway.

This picture is from the 1917 Glomerata, which I own, but is a cover I’ve not yet uploaded. You can see quite a few more here, though.

UPDATE: Auburn lost 26-19 in something of a strange contest. Both teams seemed to avoid the end zone for a while. If just a few plays changed Auburn wins. If a few other plays had worked out differently Clemson would have won in a walk. Up next for Auburn: Mississippi State.

Samford, meanwhile, thrilled a sellout crowd at Seibert Stadium by driving 50 yards in the final moments of a game to set up a field goal in the waning seconds to defeat Furman 24-21. It was the Bulldogs first ever win in a Southern Conference opener. How ’bout them Bulldogs?