Stories have a lot in common with bad pennies. They always turn up and often in the places you least expect them.
It's something I've known for a while, but never put any proper thought into. Covering the Fourth of July celebration in Salem I found out that most of the proceeds were going to the town's Special Olympics team. A better example would come from a recent trip I took down to the Salem Senior Center.
I originally wanted to do a story on computer lab the center had for seniors - five motley looking machines that were outdated by at least five years or so. The Council on Aging had donated three new computers to replace the center's existing administrative computers. In return those would replace some of the older models in the lab.
On a nice Wednesday morning I made my way over to the senior center and wandered up to the second floor to take a look at the lab and meet some of the kindly senior citizens checking their e-mail and doing their banking online.
What I found was an empty computer lab. And a room full of guys staring at me.
"Are you from the newspaper?" one of them asked. "They said someone from the newspaper was going to come today."
When I nodded they lit up.
What ensued was an hour long conversation with constant interrupts, interjections, and rude jokes about male anatomy. These guys got together three times a week to shoot the shit and then some pool. Retirees for the most part, they enjoyed spending their time with each other rather than wasting away alone at home.
"Look at'im write," said another as I scrawled half remembered quotes onto a notepad. "He's gonna have a novel."
Afterwards they clapped me on the back, telling me what a great paper the Union Leader was (much better than that rag the Eagle-Tribune) and thanked me for stopping by. When I left they were arguing over whose turn it was to shoot.
"We talk for 15 minutes and then no one can remember whose supposed to shoot, who's high and who's low," said a third. "We spend most of our time arguing about it."
It wasn't the story I was looking for, but it was a good story.
1 comment:
Old people make for better interviews. Some people need to be convinced that what they have to say is interesting. Old people are not these people. I work at a supermarket and they tell me their life stories all day long.
Old people are also prodigious segwayers. They ask where the eggs are and then suddenly:
"I was workin' at a hen farm, oh, I'd say it was '58 or so, and one summer..."
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