I’m sorting through nearly half a century of photos, newspaper clips and film getting ready for an orgy of digitizing. I just came across pictures that I took in in Southern Ohio in 1968. What struck me is how ubiquitous bicycles were.
A neighborhood fortune teller
I shot a photo essay on “Madame Rosinnii’s” fortune teller tent set up at 80 Briarwood in Athens, Oh. It was the psychic version of a lemonade stand.
I ran into these two boys in front of a decaying general store in the dying coal town of Hemlock, OH.
The 2000 Census found 142 people in 48 households living in the town, so it’s still holding on. You can probably find kids on the streets today, since almost half of the households had children under 18 living in them.
This Galaxy Flyer is set up as a real utility machine. Check out the rearview mirror, heavy-duty rear baskets, fenders and a chain guard.
THIS bike has seen better days
The rear tire is flat, the pedals are shot and the front tire is coming apart. I’m going to guess that at least one older brother put a bunch of miles on this machine before it was handed down.
When I look at these pictures, I wonder if the boys rode their two-wheeled magic carpets out of Hemlock or if they’re one of the 48 households with kids of their own still there.
Stage 2 of the Tour of Missouri is headed to my hometown, Cape Girardeau, on September 8.
Jim Baughn, webmaster of The Southeast Missourian’s web page, has a must-read blog called Pavement Ends where he covers things off the beaten path.
Tour of the Tour of Missouri
His August 31 Tour of the Tour of Missouri Bike Route blog is a collection of photos and descriptions of things along the route that the riders won’t take time to notice.
I love his factoids like A small stretch of Route WW, from Holmes Road south to the terminus with Route T, follows along, or very near, the Three Notch Road. This ancient road, dating from the early 1700s, connected the lead mines at Mine La Motte with the outside world at Ste. Genevieve. It was the first road built in Missouri, although “road” might be a misnomer. Road conditions were so primitive that three lines were notched into trees to reassure travelers that they were still following the road.
One of Jim’s other interests is bridges. Because of that, he takes particular note of some bridges along the way, including a link back to the bridge I’d rather forget from my learning-to-drive days.
I’ve ridden most of this route
I know these guys are pros who go UP the Alps faster than I’d go down them, but anybody who doesn’t do his homework is going to get caught out when they get to a couple of 90-degree turns hiding short, but steep climbs.
The guys in the front 10 will be OK, but there will be a log jam behind them as everybody jockeys to squeeze the peleton through the narrow space.
Legs and math won’t agree
There’s another factor, too. Missouri doesn’t have a lot of really long climbs, but it has lots of ups followed by downs followed by ups.
A series of 400-foot climbs followed by 400-foot descents may add up to a total altitude gain of zero feet for the day, but your legs are going to let you know that math doesn’t tell the whole story.
They won’t stop in Pocahontas for the hummingbird
I doubt that they’ll stop for roadside pictures at the hummingbird mailbox in Pocahotas like Bro Mark and Friend Deeds did on our 2003 ride.
When they fly by Altenburg, they could look up and see some attics that used old glass photographic negatives for window panes.
If a breakaway gets a big lead
If there’s a breakaway with a big lead, they can get off their bikes and take a break pacing the exotic animals at a farm along the way.
On their way south, they’ll pass a huge gravel bluff near Oriole where my dad set up a gravel plant to get material for building roads when I was about 10. (See picture on Jim’s blog.) I’m surprised that I didn’t break my neck trying to scale that cliff.
Sometime riding partner and former coworker George Primm sent me a message this morning:
Saturday is “International Vulture Awareness Day.”
Take a lawyer or politician to lunch….
(My apologies to vultures. As nature’s recyclers, least THEY serve a useful function.)
Vultures seen near Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail
That got me to thinking about how many vultures I’ve seen on or around the Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail (LOST).
The single ones playing around in the thermals never worried me much. They provide an interesting diversion while I’m cranking along.
I AM a little more concerned I pass ones like this. I don’t like the way they’re eying me.
Mommy, make them stop looking at me
Matt and I weren’t too worried about these guys we encountered on our cross-Florida ride. They were full from polishing off a dead deer on the side of the road.
International Vulture Awareness Day
This isn’t a joke. There’s actually a web site promoting it. It started out in England and South Africa and has now gone international.
Vultures aren’t cute and cuddly like some of the other birds I see from bikeback, but just think where we’d be without nature’s garbage collectors.
Somebody has to clean up all those slow-moving armadillos, possums and other roadkill.
Support your neighborhood vulture
So, the next time you see a vulture on the side of the road, give him a nod of thanks. And keep moving. They eat dead stuff.
Tim O’Meilia won’t miss International Vulture Awareness Day
Tim O’Meilia was a general assignment reporter at The Palm Beach Post. Every year, the vultures would arrive in Palm Beach County for The Season.
We locals were used to it, so we weren’t concerned when the skies over us were covered with circling carrion crunchers. Snowbirds and tourists weren’t quite so sanguine. They would be concerned that Bernie Madoff or someone like him had come to pick their bones clean literally as well as financially.
Eventually, some editor would pull his eye off the gazillion TV sets hanging from the ceiling and actually look out the window at the Real World. That’s when you’d hear, “TIM!!!” on the editor bellowcom.
The corpse is already picked pretty clean
See, Tim was the poor guy who had to write The Vulture Story each and every year that I can remember. To his credit, he managed to find a fresh peg every story. We old-timers would have understood if he had put his old stuff on a five-year cycle, but, no, it was always something new.
At one time we started a pool to pick how many years it would be before Tim would grab a shotgun and start blasting away at either editors or vultures. (My money and preference were on editors. See lawyer joke above.)
Fortunately for both the editors and the vultures, Tim was one of The Post 300 who left the newspaper a year ago.
I wonder who’ll get drafted for The Vulture Story this year. With the state of newspapers these days, the circling vultures may actually know something. Unfortunately for them, they’ll find the corpse has been pretty much picked clean already.
Time sure does move quickly. My first newspaper photograph was published April 18, 1963, on the front page of The Southeast Missourian.
The day before, my high school earth science teacher, Ernie Chiles, and I had stumbled upon this crash moments after it had happened.
After taking the pictures, I called the principal at home and talked him into giving me the master key for the high school so I could open up the darkroom to process the film.
The next morning, bright and early, I went in to see John Blue, editor of my hometown paper. He knew my name from letters to the editor I had written, but this was the first time I had ever met him.
That afternoon, when I showed up to pick up my bundle of papers for my afternoon paper route, my pictures, with a byline were leading the front page.
The next day a check for $10 showed up in the mail.
The next thing you know, you’ve put college behind you, worked at The Jackson (MO) Pioneer, The Southeast Missourian (MO), The Athens (OH) Messenger, The Gastonia (NC) Gazette and The Palm Beach Post and Evening Times.
I wrote this to a Telecom group several years ago:
I’ve covered race riots in Illinois, anti-war protests in Ohio and Washington, D.C., a truckers’ strike in Alabama, the gas shortage in Detroit, a blizzard in Indiana, Ku Klux Klan rallies in three states and the Cuban Boatlift.
I’ve attempted to cover, with little success, the landfall of at least 13 hurricanes. (Unfortunately, four of them have found my house in the last few years.)
On the other hand, I’ve also been to a thousand Kiwanis club plaque presentations, 40-million fender-benders and several hundred bridal showers. I still get nostalgic for the smell of teargas in the springtime.
Then, it’s all over
Then, after 35 years working at Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc., as a staff photographer, director of photography, editorial operations manager and telecommunications manager, you’re walking out the door for the last time.
It’s been a year since that door slammed behind me.
Do I miss it?
Not in the slightest. Twenty years ago, when I let the job define who I was, then it would have been hard. When an opportunity arose to take early retirement in 2008, I was ready.
I have to admit a little twinge the first time I went back to visit my old staff and had a visitor pass stuck on my shirt.
I’m going to bed
I had planned to pull together a batch of favorite pictures taken over the last 12 months: the trip to Vegas where I spoke at a telecom conference; pictures around Cape; stuff shot on the bike (and OFF the bike); our trip to New Mexico to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary; shots of Grandson Malcolm getting bigger.
Then, I realized that being retired means that I can just go to bed if I want to. You’ll get to see those pictures later.
August 12, 2008, nearly 300 employees left Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc., under a “Voluntary Separation Program.” Before the end of the year, another 300 employees would be cut, leaving the newspaper at roughly half its size a year earlier.
I worked at The Palm Beach Post 35 years as a staff photographer, director of photography, editorial operations manager and telecommunications manager. I agreed to stay on an extra couple of weeks, after the first wave of folks left, to clean up their phone and voice mail programming, so you won’t get to hear about the anniversary of my new life until after Sept. 1. [Here’s a link, as promised.]
Eliot Kleinberg wanted a reunion
Eliot Kleinberg, a reporter who is still working, decided that we should hold an annual reunion on August 12 of each year to see how everyone is doing.
Eliot is one of the The Post’s most inquisitive and prolific writers. He’s written nine books on Florida lore and has forgotten more of the state’s history than any 10 of us knows. He and I worked together dozens of times.
Post Reporter (still) Eliot Kleinberg
One story stands out in my mind, though. He and I were to go to Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas to meet up with the family of Doctor Mudd, who was convicted of conspiracy in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The family has been trying to clear the doctor’s name for decades.
You have two practical choices to get to Fort Jefferson: a slow boat or a slightly faster seaplane. We elected for the seaplane. I have to share with you that Eliot is a hell of a reporter, a good writer and a fountain of story ideas. He can also be annoyingly perky and bubbly.
Only one of us will be here in the morning
Just before the seaplane pilot took off, stranding us on the island, I told him, “You had better be sure to come back tonight to pick us up. If you don’t there may be only one passenger to take back in the morning.”
The pilot came back, as promised, Eliot wrote his story, I delivered my pictures and Dr. Mudd’s name is still mud, alas.
Listen to Eliot on the video. He’s a true newspaperman with ink in his veins. He told me that he wants to be found face-down on his keyboard when it’s his time to go.
Listen to Eliot at the end of the video
Some of the folks resort to gallows humor in the video, but every one of them has better than 20 years in the business. You don’t log that kind of time if you don’t love it.
Jan Norris, Mother Hen
Jan Norris
Jan Norris, former food editor, mother hen to what she named The Post 300, and publisher of jannorris.com is the glue that sticks the group together. She had the foresight to collect personal email addresses of all the folks who wanted to keep in touch. She shares any job leads she hears about, passes on news and rumors. If she spent as much time keeping her other website, wewereprint.com up to date, she’d have one of the best media blogs in the country. (That’s something I nag her about.) In addition to that, she’s a long-time friend and sometime riding partner.
Mary Kate Leming and her husband, Jerry Lower, a refugee from The Sun Sentinel, decided that maybe Big Newspapers couldn’t cut it these days, but there was a market for smaller, niche newspapers. They founded The Coastal Star, to cover the coastal communities south of Palm Beach.
With the big dailies cutting back on their coverage and with a pool of experienced freelance journalists available, The Star has exceeded expectations. There’s a chance that we may see The Coastal Star expanding its coverage area. They just made arrangements to move out of the house and into a formal office.
Chuck Keefer turned me on to computers
Charles (Ceekay) Keefer
Charles Keefer, AKA Chuck or Ceekay, sold me a Tandy TRS-80 Model 1 computer, one of the first consumer-grade computers on the market. It came with Level II BASIC, 4K of RAM and required you to type in your programs from the keyboard every time the computer was turned off.
Then he sold me a 300-baud Hayes modem that opened up the world of computer bulletin boards to me. The Internet, of course, was still a dream.
When I was cleaning out my office, I ran across a clip of a story we had done covering Ft. Lauderdale’s Spring Break back when it was still a Big Deal.
Girls Gone Wild
I was standing on a bed in a beachfront hotel shooting a bunch of college boys doing what college boys did back before Girls Gone Wild. (Mostly drinking and DREAMING of Girls Going Wild.) A bunch cops charged in the room and started giving the boys a royal ration and trying to scare them into admitting they had a ton of dope stashed some where. One of them noticed me and started to get his cop on.
I motioned for him to go outside. “Look, I know you have to go through the drill to make the hotel manager happy, but we both know you’re not going to bust anybody unless they get seriously out of line. I’ve been with these kids most of the evening. They’re not being all that rowdy, and I haven’t seen ’em doing any serious dope. How about we both go back in there and do what we have to do without making a big deal out of it.”
After huffing around a little bit, he must have seen the logic of my argument. He went back, made “I don’t want to have to come back here tonight” noises and moved on down to rooms that weren’t lucky enough to have reporters visting them.
Glenn Henderson, bureau chief
Glenn Henderson
Glenn Henderson was a bureau chief in Stuart, one of The Post’s far-flung remote offices. Just before his staff was reduced to a total of two, the bureau had taken over a whole new bay in the suite of rented offices. My telecom staff spent weeks rewiring the facility and pulling in extra services.
Glenn was one of those solid, competent pros you liked working with.
The Post gave those taking buyouts two weeks of pay for every year we had worked, up to a maximum of 52 weeks. The catch is that the paper wanted to take the full financial hit in 2008, so many of us found ourselves in tax brackets we had only dreamed about. Glenn, who was dealing with a kid in college, ran into another problem: that much income all at once made the family ineligible for scholarships based on need.
He started a communications business, but has found that some of the clients he was working on have dried up along with the economy.
Gary Brown, a guy you’ve never heard of
Most of the folks I’ve mentioned had bylines. You may have read their stories or seen their pictures. There is another group of folks (at least in the Days of The Dead Trees) who read the copy the reporters turned in for accuracy, spelling, grammar and clarity. Others would lay out the paper, deciding on where the stories would run, how long they would be and what the headlines would say.
Gary Brown
Gary Brown was one of those behind-the-scenes guys who jockeyed copy around. When I got into the business, your story was touched by a whole lot of people before it got thrown into a puddle.
They even had proofreaders whose actual job was to make sure that the type that was set was the same as the copy you handed the typesetter. In real life, they’d bend the rules to save you. The nice ones would come over and say, diplomatically, “This copy looks like there’s a smudge on it. The typesetter read what I THINK you wrote as Mayor Hiller as Mayor Hitler. Which is right?”
Modern technology, particularly in the web world eliminates those safeguards and filters (and jobs). The person writing the story may be the only one who touches it before it’s launched to the world.
That’s why Gary says he’s just about given up on print after sending out 500 resumes and getting zero response.
Every office has (had) a Ron Hayes
Acerbic Ron Hayes
Just listen to the video. You’ll see what I mean. A lot of people used an A-word to refer to him. Acerbic is the one that could be printed in the paper.
I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to get around to seeing everyone who showed up.
I’ll have more war stories when the anniversary of my departure comes up, and I’ll publish photos of our press and production crews closer to the end of the year, which will be the anniversary of The Post farming out its printing to the Ft. Lauderdale paper.
[Editor’s note: Jan Norris thinks I should add the following to Ron’s description. Since I agree, here it is:
When it gets to Ron Hayes — A-word is OK. But please add a line to the effect that he was and is one of the most passionate about the news business (the alter-dark side of Eliot) — and was the one reporter who never failed to hold up editorial and newsroom ethics to the same scrutiny as we gave those we covered. The entire newsroom respected him – despite his cynicism – for speaking up.
Ron also weighed in: Is it true you can’t print “amazing” on your website…?
I should start a poll of Ron’s coworkers to see where “amazing” fits on their list of a-words. Nah, I think I’ll skip that.]
I shot a photo essay on “Madame Rosinnii’s” fortune teller tent set up at 80 Briarwood in Athens, Oh. It was the psychic version of a lemonade stand.
The rear tire is flat, the pedals are shot and the front tire is coming apart. I’m going to guess that at least one older brother put a bunch of miles on this machine before it was handed down.
Saturday is “International Vulture Awareness Day.” 
Matt and I weren’t too worried about these guys we encountered on 
The corpse is already picked pretty clean
The next morning, bright and early, I went in to see John Blue, editor of my hometown paper. He knew my name from letters to the editor I had written, but this was the first time I had ever met him.
