THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, December 16, 1995 TAG: 9512160013
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Another View
SOURCE: BY CARL CAHILL
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
Hold it! I can no longer squeeze out any sympathy for those people whose financial woes are caused by the weather, foreign competition or governmental regulations.
You see these unfortunates often on the nightly news: Fishermen in the Northwest, poultrymen in Harrisonburg, cattlemen in Colorado, steelworkers in Ohio, oystermen and crabbers in Chesapeake Bay, all facing economic disaster because El Nino changed course, avian flue destroyed the turkeys, hoof and mouth disease decimated the herds, June floods ruined the oyster beds and the Outer Mongolians make steel at half the cost of U.S. workers.
There's always a close-up shot of a mournful breadwinner putting his home or boat or car up for sale while calling on the federal government to offer him and his colleagues some low-cost loans.
Pardon me if I don't choke up while the news anchors recite their courage in the face of privation because I belong to a profession - if such it can be called - whose embers are enmeshed in economic calamity every day of their lives.
You ever see a network correspondent interviewing a sobbing freelance journalist about his bleak future? Of course not. Sometimes I pray for a hurricane to change course to my house to blow away some of the unpaid bills.
There are more freelance writers in this country than fishermen who, as one television reporter said, ``look death in the eye every time they leave port.''
If those fishermen had a freelancer's income they'd not only leave port but would keep on going until their fuel ran out.
Watermen may be tough but they're not as tough as journalists and freelance writers. You take the toughest crabber or oysterman ever spawned and post him by the mailbox to wait for a check from a forgetful editor and in a week stress will have clogged his arteries in some places and ballooned them out in others.
I'm talking poor, now. Freelance writers, a recent survey revealed, earn less than what a steelworker spends on Budweiser and a crabber on boat insurance. Have you ever seen a fat writer?
I told my wife the other day we were lucky. Why? she asked. Because, I said, we need never worry about obesity.
A NBC camera crew came to our house once, not to focus on poverty but to tell the nation about a protracted fight I was having with Chesapeake over asbestos in the city's drinking water.
The sound man flung open our refrigerator to turn off the motor, the hum of which was bothering him. What he saw inside was the family food hoard - a half stick of margarine, a stalk of drooping celery and a lemon mummified with age.
The producer, a soft-spoken man, suggested that the crew film a shot of my family seated at the dinner table. My wife feverishly polished the silver and cast around for a piece de resistance, discovering to her surprise in the innermost recesses of the icebox a roast which she popped into the oven.
Just when it started to brown the producer announced that a previous commitment prevented taping the dinner, and he rescheduled the scene.
The roast was our only culinary showpiece. We devoured it, sans camera. The following evening we were faced with dining on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before 20 million people.
But my wife negotiated a deal with the butcher and she prepared a chicken that was almost as photogenic as the roast.
What I'm getting at is this: Fishermen, cattlemen, poultrymen, crabbers, peanut growers and steelworkers beat their breasts at the bad hand dealt them by storms, disease, drought, changes in ocean currents and foreign competition and moan about having to start all over again. Writers have to start over every time they put a sheet of paper in their typewriters or seat themselves at their word processors.
When it comes to courage in the face of economic chaos, I'll put my money on writers every time. They've got mettle, tenacity, spirit, resolve, stubbornness, persistence and an unwillingness to admit defeat - sterling qualities all.
Too bad they can't be traded to the supermarket for a couple of pork chops. MEMO: Mr. Cahill is a Chesapeake resident and former Ledger-Star columnist.
by CNB