Once again, I had fallen for false, inflated flattery
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- September 15, 2018
- 1165
The county fair was a very big deal where I come from, and the newspaper for which I worked for more than a decade treated it as if it were the biggest event of the year, which it might well have been.
Not only was the agrarian overload given front-page status each day, it got its own special section all week. I’m talking 28 pages filled with stories and photographs — not to mention advertisements — that put every aspect of the fair in the spotlight.
It was quite a production, and I admired — from a safe distance — the enormous effort and energy and efficiency required to generate that kind of coverage on a daily basis.
Until, that is, the fair called my name.
After that, well, just let me say being part of 13 of them gives me a rather unique perspective, one I’ll share now.
I’m a rock ’n’ roll guy, always have been, always will be. The people who hired me knew this. The people who read my work knew this. Even the people who ran the fair knew this.
And yet there I was, listening as my editor — who had called in reinforcements from the newsroom to back him up — told me that as part of my job, I’d be reviewing three concerts: country music concerts.
“Yeah, right,” I said, getting up to leave, “good one.”
“Sit down,” he said. “I’m serious.”
I looked around the conference room and saw no smiles, just a collective body language that indicated tension and resolve. Immediately I re-evaluated my position.
How bad could it be, really?
A couple of years earlier while sports editor of the paper in my hometown, I pinch-hit for a news reporter who was unable to cover the Crystal Gayle show at the county fair. Not only did I enjoy the concert very much, I got a chance to sit down with her in a one-on-one interview in her motor coach an hour before she took the stage.
And I had a lot of fun writing the review, weaving in the various threads into a tapestry that readers said they appreciated.
“Stiletto heels?” asked a guy in my bowling league. “Red ones?”
“True fact,” I said.
“And that bit about her sitting there in her bathrobe,” he continued, “with her wet hair wound up in a towel?”
“Again,” I said, “that’s exactly how it happened.”
“Man,” he said, “I didn’t think you liked country music.”
He knew me pretty well, but what he might not have understood was that as a journalist I went where I was sent and wrote my stories to the best of my ability.
I’ve covered murder trials, been dispatched to the scene of fatal car crashes, interviewed authors who served in wars, and brushed shoulders with politicians, celebrities and sports personalities.
My strategy is always the same: Wherever I go and whatever I’m covering, I know I can write well. And this is what the editor, backed by his support team, pitched to seal the country-music deal.
He appealed to my vanity. “You’re a great writer,” he said, “the best we’ve got.”
“Well,” I said, “when you put it that way.”
He had baited the hook, and I’d swallowed it, once again falling for false, inflated flattery.
But all writers are basically insecure egomaniacs who need the occasional infusion of abject and unadulterated praise to continue to churn out words, hundreds at a sitting, always wanting their work to be better than anyone else’s. It’s who we are.
So that’s how I found myself walking from the office to the fairgrounds on a hot and sunny Sunday afternoon in mid-September, about to cover a country music concert.
The star was Louise Mandrell, and she was very talented and very pretty, establishing a pleasing trend that would last for better than a decade. Almost every year the fair board made sure there was a fine-looking lady on the schedule, which was very smart.
But what I remember most is the opening act. He was a comic, and his material — slightly cornpone smutty — struck me as somewhat inappropriate for a Sunday evening in God-fearing North Central Ohio, where many in the grandstand had probably been in church a few hours earlier.
Besides, he just wasn’t all that funny. So I tacked on a couple of paragraphs at the end of my Louise Mandrell review, gently criticizing his choice of material, and called it a night.
I felt pretty good about my piece, since I knew nothing of her music, drove home and listened to the new Replacements record turned up loud.
The next afternoon my phone rang, and I heard an agitated voice, and it’s the comic from the Sunday show. Or so he claims.
Immediately I suspect a prank and look around the newsroom, seeking telling smirks, but it’s all serious. So I listened as he defended himself but admitted he might have gone a little overboard with the cruder material.
“You covering tonight’s show?” he asked. “I hope so, you know, so you’ll give me another chance.”
Guess what? He was a lot funnier.
It never was about country music, not really. It was always about being there and sharing insights, serving as a witness to life.
Mike Dewey can be emailed at CarolinamikeD@aol.com or snail-mailed at 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560.