Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 9, 1993 TAG: 9302090049
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Kevin Kittredge
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
NO STORY, NO GLORY, NO IDENTITY
There are the stories that go into the newspaper, and there are the stories that don't go anywhere at all.There is the glory - such as it is - of a byline, and there is the shame of empty hands.
Last week I had empty hands.
All week.
Unlike fishermen, journalists don't talk much about the ones that got away. It's too embarrassing.
Once, I drove all the way to Petersburg after arranging an interview with a federal prisoner.
I spent the night in a motel, at company expense. I ate breakfast, also at company expense.
I showed up at the prison at the designated time - and was informed (the hotel room and the meals and the mileage and all that notwithstanding) that the man didn't want to talk to me after all.
Pretty funny, huh?
Not to an editor.
Nor to a reporter, either. No interview means no story. No story means no glory.
A few no-stories in a row can mean an identity crisis, and counseling.
"I have to see my byline," another reporter told me once, "just to know I still exist."
Last week, I began to wonder about myself.
There was the Russian artist I couldn't find.
There was the teacher who told me a really fascinating story in an interview - then called me later and made me promise not to write it. (Sorry.)
There were the two old people on the mountain top.
I spent hours on that one, following a lot of twisty little roads I'd never seen before, looking for a man and a woman who allegedly lived a pioneer existence.
No electricity, I'd been promised. No car. No industrial-age anything. Caught in a time warp. Lost in space.
I found the mountaintop, finally.
And the pioneer stuff was more or less true - although the old man did apparently mistake me for Ed Shamy.
But when I asked if we could take his picture, he balked.
No picture meant no story.
Just a wasted afternoon, in a career black with similar misfires.
I remember the guy with the pet gorilla.
Years ago I squandered one whole lovely Saturday morning in search of that gem. (Of course such a pair would have to live far from normal folks).
I had a front page spread in mind. A warm, fluffy, Lassie-type feature about a guy and his gorilla.
Maybe a book someday. Maybe a movie.
Spinning down the empty roads, mile after mile after mile, it was easy to hallucinate.
What I found in the end was a monkey in a cage.
A stump-tailed macaque, to be precise (I personally didn't know a macaque from a mongoose - although I was pretty certain the thing was no gorilla).
I took a picture and showed it to a college professor who knew his apes. A mean stump-tailed macaque. One that greeted me with screeches and rattled its cage.
A man and his macaque?
It would never work.
I still charged the newspaper mileage.
That's the biz, of course. Nothing ventured. . . . The good thing is, there's always another day.
And always, somewhere, another guy with a gorilla. You'd be surprised.
It keeps me going.
Kevin Kittredge is the New River Valley bureau's general-assignment reporter.