If you ask a few people I know, they will clearly state I am a journalist. I don’t think of myself as one, really. If people ask me what I do for a newspaper I usually tell them I write the occasional goofy thing that fills up the (no pun intended) dead space on the obituary page.
A few times I have been asked what my column is about and I tell the person asking the question that is better to ask is what my column isn’t about. In the last few years, I have covered just about everything I can think of. I can think of a lot of things, and I am not out of ideas by a long shot.
There are a few things I don’t write about directly and I have mentioned them ad nauseum in previous columns. It’s not that I can’t write about them, I simply choose not to. There are too many political or current event columnists out there. Most newspapers have one or two columnists that cover the issues of the day. I am not that columnist.
Most of my columns, save for the holiday-themed ones, can be read at any time of the year, any year, and still be somewhat relevant. I do this on purpose. It’s my schtick, so to speak. There are few times that I feel like branching out. When you are primarily a features columnist, every day is a slow news day. There is no urgency. I don’t have scoops or exclusives. I have about a thousand words each week on a particular subject.
Today was not a slow news day in the world of Real Journalism. On a day when the big story of the day was supposed to be the announcement of someone joining the race for the U.S. presidency, the mayor of my hometown had her City Hall offices and her homes raided by the FBI and the IRS. Before the day was out, everyone from the governor of the state to the counter guy at the corner deli was calling for her resignation.
As of this writing, she has resisted resignation. All day long, I listened to news radio for any updates. I was glued to the radio. I am 400 miles from my hometown, so I couldn’t just turn on the TV for updates. By midday, the national news outlets had picked up the story and it was suddenly a huge national story. Something stirred in this small-town columnist. For a brief moment, I felt like running away and joining the media circus.
“Good morning, Mayor’s Office.”
“This is Joe Weaver, from the (insert paper name here)”
“Who?”
I’d repeat myself.
“Where?” the Mayor’s Office would say. “Who?”
And so it would go. I wouldn’t be shut out because they had no comment, I would be shut out because they never would have heard of me. I would have had a better chance of saying I was a columnist for the Weekly Reader.
For an afternoon, I was daydreaming that I was Woodward or Bernstein. I was going to get to the bottom of this story in Baltimore and expose all the players. There would be a Pulitzer in it for me and the paper. I could see myself signing books at Barnes and Noble and talking about the movie rights. J.K. Simmons would play me in the movie. This was my chance at real fame. Now was my time.
Rumpled jacket and wrinkled tie, I’d pound the pavement, wearing down shoe leather going from door to door, meeting people who would give me information on deep background. Cold coffee and bad food would litter my desk. My eyes would be red and my fingers tired from pecking away at the typewriter.
These thoughts were in my head as I prepared for this column. I got home and had a quick dinner. I rolled my sleeves up and told my wife what I was going to do for this week’s column. She had not seen the news from back home yet and she looked at me like I had nine heads.
“I thought you were going to do that column about how most people think a tomato is a vegetable when it’s actually a fruit.”
For a brief moment, even if it was all in my head, I was a hot-shot investigative reporter. A hot-shot reporter who knows a tomato is actually a fruit.
Joe Weaver, a native of Baltimore, is a husband, father, pawnbroker and gun collector. From his home in New Bern, he writes on the lighter side of family life.
