I placed a pot of cold water on the stove and turned the knob. After a few creeks and groans, the heating coil began to show signs of life, and in less than a minute was emitting a warm volcanic glow. As I stood in the kitchen, preparing a mug of green tea, I tried to envision the task at hand. It was 10:00 p.m. The stack of twenty papers in the nearby room beckoned.
Read me, Read me, it seemed to be calling out. It was no longer a collection of individual student work. It was now a singular, seemingly impenetrable entity. Its mere presence intimidated me.
I suppose I should explain why and how I came to this position – a graduate student and adjunct composition teacher at Plymouth State College.
After graduating from UMass Amherst with a journalism degree in 2000, I landed a reporting gig at my hometown newspaper, the Framingham, Mass., based MetroWest Daily News. Everything had gone according to Hoyle. Not even a month removed from college, I was working in my chosen field. No doubt a yearlong internship at a gritty weekly paper in Holyoke, Mass., and the fifty some-odd resumes I sent out had something to do with it.
So there I was, Joe Reporter, covering everything from the banal to the mind-boggling. I had my share of exciting stories: fires, robberies, car accidents, drownings. There was even an industrial furnace death – some guy got trapped inside a giant oven and died of asphyxiation. Of course, not every day was that exciting – or grave. I sat through a seemingly countless number of school committee, selectman, planning, zoning and health board meetings. Often these political gatherings would last for hours, some overlapping into the wee morning. I remember, quite vividly actually, leaving Northborough-Southborough School Committee meetings at midnight, loading up on fast food – usually Wendy’s – then speeding back to the newsroom to write my story before I passed out. Deadline was 2:00 a.m., however, the editors could hold a space until 3:00 a.m. if you were covering breaking news.
Once, as I was prepared to leave the newsroom after belting out a twenty-inch piece on the school district’s failure to secure funding for a new high school, the night editor received a call over the scanner about a fatal car accident on the Massachusetts Turnpike. Because I was the “rookie” I got the assignment.
“Go get ’em B-G.”
As I left the parking lot a stream of expletives flew from my mouth.
This job sucks. When do I get to go home?
I arrived near the accident scene around 2:00 a.m. The State Police had closed a good chunk of roadway surrounding the collision – I wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near it. From a small hill I could see automobile parts strewn across two lanes of highway. Cops with sniffing dogs walked about the carnage, searching for clues. Searchlights from Crown Victorias and fire engines lit the site with a hard synthetic glow. Pieces of broken glass sparkled on the blacktop.
I soon learned three vehicles were involved in the crash. Two automobile drivers were dead, and the operator of an SUV – who had apparently caused the accident by trying to exit the turnpike via the entrance ramp – was alive and on the run. After chatting with a local television crew, I hopped in my car and proceeded to a nearby golf course, where the motorist was believed to be hiding. I remember patrolling the manicured greens in my 1992 Honda Accord, not really sure what I would do should I happen upon this person, who was now a murder suspect.
A State Police helicopter buzzed my car, bathing it in white light. The downward gust from the chopper’s blades wisped the branches and leaves of trees lining the fairway. I was in the center of the action, navigating a narrow dirt road in the middle of a crime scene.
Unfortunately I would learn no more about the accident or suspect that night. At 2:45 a.m. an editor rung my cell phone and told me to return to the newsroom and write up what I had.
Such was the journalistic life – very demanding, often taxing and usually unpredictable. Police later captured the SUV driver; a middle-aged woman who said she left the scene to track down her dog who had fled the vehicle.
So why did I bid adieu to this exciting, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants occupation and return to the abstract and often theoretical world of liberal arts education? Check back next week, as it appears this column has filled its quota.