Post Facto by Darryl Wimberley

Author:Darryl Wimberley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781579625825
Publisher: The Permanent Press
Published: 2019-03-05T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

Senator’s Ghost Leaves Cigar

The Clarion

When I was at the Boston Globe I was responsible for a column a week. Every now and then our chief would assign a story, but by and large I was my own boss. Of course, now that I actually am the boss of my own paper, I have almost no control over what I write. Worse than that, I never have the luxury of covering anything in depth. I have eight columns to fill every week, and any subscriber wanting a print ad or picture gets priority over anything I want to feature in the paper.

Some days I feel like a gerbil in a treadmill, running like hell and getting nowhere. But I have to say that the weeks before and after homecoming provided a ton of low-lying fruit for my modest little rag. Besides homecoming and Halloween, we had the unsolicited sightings of flying objects and virgins and dead husbands all over the county. We even had a crew come down from Atlanta, from CNN, to do a piece on our localized and paranormal frenzy.

Some twenty-something film-school graduate from Emory interviewed me. She had no idea she was talking to a journalist who used to have a nationally syndicated column. So far as this entitled woman was concerned, I was just a small-town hick with a paper useful for swatting flies. Even so, I have to admit I was caught up in the moment. Been a long time since I’d been on camera for any reason, and I was willing to string the conversation along. In fact, the only reason I broke off the back ’n’ forth, was because Hattie’s nurse called me away.

Good damn thing too. Because if I’d ignored that nurse’s summons, I’d have missed the real story altogether.

Hattie Briar was my grandmother’s aunt by marriage, the oldest citizen in our county, close to the centenary mark, and a regular contributor to the Clarion. She’s installed in an assisted-living apartment over at Dowling Park, right there on a high bluff above the Suwannee River. Miss Hattie moved to the Park at her own parents’ deaths and is old enough to remember the orphanage that used to be there, old enough, for sure, to remember every aunt, uncle, and cousin in Laureate.

She loves being the center of attention. I can’t cover Heritage Week without a paean to Miss Hattie; readers won’t let me get away with that. And in fairness it would be hard to find anyone who knows more about the politics and culture of Lafayette and Taylor and Dixie Counties than does Miss Hattie. But you don’t exactly interview her. When you go to visit Miss Hattie, you’re not a journalist. You’re a scribe. You pull up a chair, you sit down, and you try to keep up.

While still ambulatory, Miss Hattie was a recurring guest at high school assemblies and homecoming parades. She remains the doyenne of Heritage Week and loves seeing her mug in the paper. Miss Hattie is very opinionated and dismissive of any authority, which drives her caregivers crazy.

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