You may recallIn 1972, Denise and I were married on August 19, and two days later, we were in Mansfield to settle in a house on Pickle Hill. Has a storybook ring to it. I was to attend Mansfield State College to earn a teaching degree so I could teach and coach. We didn't have jobs, and I wasn't enrolled in school, but we didn't care. We were together; that's what mattered.
About two weeks later, we ended up in a women's dormitory at Mansfield, where Denise became the "Head Resident" of approximately 350 freshman college girls. In other words, Denise ran the dormitory, a giant stone fortress of a building built in 1874. Men weren't allowed inside the dormitory then, just me. If my lifelong friend Pete is reading this, I can only imagine what he's thinking: "You're shitten' me, are they nuts?"
I went through my freshman year unscathed and got a summer job as a desk clerk at the Penn Wells Hotel in Wellsboro. Talk about luck. I was looking for a job when I ran into the hotel lobby, trying to avoid a heavy downpour. I met the hotel owner, Frank Dunham, in the lobby and ended up with a job as a desk clerk for the summer.
Not bad.
Back to school in the fall, but not quite yet. One afternoon in late August, I told Denise I was taking our car and going to Elmira, New York, a small city on the New York, Pennsylvania border, about a 30-minute drive from Mansfield. I didn't tell Denise where exactly I was going, but I knew — the Elmira Star Gazette, a daily newspaper that was part of the Gannett System of small city newspapers across the country,
I was hoping to get some part-time writing job, possibly at home, long before work-at-home jobs became popular. To tell you the truth, I had no idea what I was looking for at the Gazette; I was just looking. I parked in the paper's parking lot, went into the lobby, and asked the receptionist if any part-time jobs were available. She said she didn't think so but told me to take a seat and she'd make a call (she was one of those angels you meet in life).
A few minutes later, she summoned me and told me to take the stairs up one flight to the newsroom. "Go inside the blue door, someone will be waiting for you." The someone was Al Malotte, a tough-talking, gruff man straight out of the Citizen Kane movies He immediately asked me if I could write. Of course, I said I could, even though I wasn't sure if I could. I found myself in the newsroom of the Star Gazette, and I tried unsuccessfully not to be intimated.
Malotte took me to an unoccupied desk with a typewriter and gave me a few sheets of paper. He told me to sit down and write a story about the Mets and Yankees in the World Series. "Just a few graphs, not the history of baseball," he said, then departed.
About 15 minutes later, he returned. "What the hell are you writing the Megna Carter? Let me see that." And he pulled the paper right out of the typewriter. "Hmm," he said, "not much for spelling, are you? All right, you'll do."
I got a job working 2-3 nights a week in the newsroom from 6 to 9 pm, sitting at a desk waiting for the phone to ring. I'd pick it up and say, "Star Gazette." On the other line would be a high school coach — basketball, football, volleyball, you name it, calling the paper to report the outcome of their team games. I'd jot down notes from the conversation and write a two, three paragraph story for the next day's sports page.
Nothing really fancy, just stuff like this: The Corning West boy's basketball team got past Elmira South, 52-38, last night in the Elmira City Conference boys' basketball clash. Tommy James led all scorers with 16 for the Warriors, while Bobby Thompson had 11. Mike Fanny let the Hawks' scorers with 10.
Once I wrote it, I'd zip it out of the typewriter and take it to the editor's desk, where Don Bonell sat with his special back editing pencil and tore through my work like a five-year-old wrote it.
Bonell was so gruff he made Al Malotte look like a choir boy. These were old-time newspapermen. Initially, he would say, while never looking at me, "Wait, here, rewrite it. Hurry up." Hurry up was used a lot in the newsroom because the paper had a 10 p.m. deadline before the presses rolled for the morning paper. Talk about pressure.
But I improved. I'd attend class all day and leave for the paper around 5. I'd return home, and Denise and I watched the Johnny Carson Show and ate ice cream before going to sleep. After several weeks, my wheels started to spin, and creativity kicked in. One night, a coach called in, and after he gave me the details, I said, "Coach, do you have any kids who live on a big farm?" He said he did, so I arranged — without the paper knowing — to go to the farm and meet the coach and the player.
I did a feature story with photos (I took my Minolta). Malotte was impressed. "Okay, but next time you tell me what you're doing, understand. You're breaking the paper's rules by going off alone." It wasn't the first time I broke the rules.
My story and photos comprised nearly the entire sports page's Sunday edition. I couldn't have been happier. But you'll never believe what happened next.
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