On parties past and making Christmas deadlines
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- December 23, 2019
- 925
Like a latter-day Ebenezer Scrooge, I’m going to share scenes from three different Christmas celebrations, which means we’re dealing strictly with parties past.
Hmm.
That might make a good title for my collection of columns, due this summer, available online and at reputable booksellers everywhere.
Kidding, folks.
Just kidding, though I wouldn’t mind a coast-to-coast tour; then again, in this political climate, it’s probably safer to stay home, hunker down and try to survive the spitstorm headed our way.
It’s gonna get real ugly, real fast.
So, as the song says, we need a little Christmas, right this very minute, and that’s why I’m here.
I’ve been lucky enough to have survived more than 40 years in the newspaper game, and trust me, it is a game, meaning you can easily lose, especially when you think it can’t happen to you.
The road is littered with the bodies — figuratively speaking — of those who have been forced out of the contest, driven into the ditches and left to fend for themselves, no safety net in place, no way to get back in the game.
Journalism wasn’t always this way, though. It wasn’t an easy career, but it was never as cruel as it is now.
There was a time when working at a newspaper meant something, and not just getting the primal kick of seeing your words in print.
My first gig happened only because I was a pretty good ballplayer.
I hooked up with some guys, some of whom were sportswriters at my hometown paper, and before the summer was over, I found myself covering high school football on Friday nights.
Part-time employment led to a full-time job, and by that Christmas I was a professional journalist, which meant I could finally afford an apartment and move out of Mom and Dad’s basement, which had to have thrilled them immensely.
We were an afternoon paper, which meant the presses rolled around noon, if we were on time, which we mostly were. Oh, and by the way, if you’ve never seen one of those big Goss units operating at full tilt, you owe it to yourself to take in the show.
Wear ear protection, though, because those beasts create hellish noise, which never bothered me because I considered it a sign of success. Getting the paper on the streets was our priority.
On Christmas Eve, though, we worked even harder to make deadlines because everyone had the next day off and we had places to go, people to see and, well, gifts to buy.
Dec. 24 was my Black Friday, and like the Dickens spirits, I did it all in one night.
Speaking of “A Christmas Carol,” there was a genuine Fezziwig feel to the newspaper office that day as the lunchroom was buzzing with folks — spouses and girlfriends mostly — who set up the most amazing array of home-cooked foods I’d ever seen.
Casseroles and side dishes, salads and desserts, snacks and finger food, and, of course, a discreet, but nonetheless real, speakeasy.
Then after the tables had been cleared and the amateurs had left the building, those of us who had the competitive urge raging alongside our Christmas spirits got down to some serious cards.
Euchre was our game, and it wasn’t for beginners.
Most years we’d adjourn to the biker bar across the alley and shoot a few games of 8-ball before heading home for family time.
My second stop on the newspaper highway took me to a new town in a new county, meaning I had a 50-mile daily commute, largely through Amish country. If you’ve never tried to negotiate an ice-slicked hill on a skinny two-lane road while trying to avoid rear-ending a horse-drawn buggy in whiteout conditions, well, all I can say is you haven’t lived.
I cannot tell you how many times I barely kept my silver five-speed Mustang between the ditches and away from disaster as I made my way to the office, but it was in the hundreds.
Once inside the city limits, my first stop every morning was at the highway patrol post, where I’d peruse accident reports from the previous 24 hours. If it was one of those snowy days, the news was happening at the dispatcher’s desk where I hovered, taking notes.
Like any reporter cultivating sources, I was pretty good at establishing a level of trust with the men and women who worked to keep the highways safe, and that was important because when something very bad happened, they knew I’d handle it properly.
That was the trademark of that newspaper. Every person on the staff took the job seriously, and it showed in the quality of the work.
Which didn’t mean Christmas wasn’t fun.
Every Christmas Eve the entire operation shut down for an hour or so, and every employee from every department — editorial to advertising, circulation and the press room — gathered in the newsroom and watched as the same thing happened every year.
The publisher would receive his gift from all of us, usually something silver and engraved, and would then give a simple, yet always moving, talk, one that always revolved around the fact that we were a family and that he was proud of each one of us.
Then, finally, I relocated to the Crystal Coast at the turn of the century, and after the whirlwind of moving in to a new house in a new town in a new state, it was Christmastime again.
I’d been at the paper for all of three weeks. You can imagine how disorienting it all was.
I mean I knew the names of maybe a dozen people when it was announced that the annual holiday party would be held at a glitzy riverfront hotel in the historic downtown area.
Thankfully my wife — then my fiancée — was right by my side as I did my best to mingle, to meet and greet, to generally try to fit in.
We sat at a candlelit table with the editor and his wife, and after a sumptuous seafood meal, we adjourned to a nautically themed tavern, where we listened, fascinated, to a live-aboard couple whose residence was a three-masted schooner, docked in the harbor not far from our house.
A few nights later we joined them on deck to watch the Northern Lights — luminescent green with a hint of red — as they illuminated the southern sky and ushered in a new Christmas season, one that was the first of 20 that have followed. It’s been quite a ride.