The People's Paper

Recollections of my newspapering life are far in the background of all the years of living since. But sometimes, like yesterday after listening to a radio program about the "future of the free press", I allow myself to go back to that familiar place.

1978 in the back room of The Potter Enterprise

I still feel a pull toward that life - the satisfying work of making sense of a lengthy school board meeting, following borough council's actions, editing the words of various small community correspondents reporting comings and goings from places like Card Creek, Germania, Hebron. And sharing the birth announcements, telling the wedding stories and writing obituaries, making sure that there are no misspellings - after all it is a public record as I was told in the early days of that work.

The back room functions, setting type (though I never actually set type but rather used phototypesetting equipment, then a computer), designing ads, choosing typefaces, and pasteup. And the work of putting the pages together. Then it was Wednesday – unloading the van just back from the printers and getting those thousands of weeklies where they needed to be. The satisfying feeling of the gray mailbags, properly labeled on their way to the post office.

It was, of course, a group effort with many hard-working people doing their jobs - often two or three jobs. Dedicated people and good friends.

And when it was Thursday, we'd begin again.

I had already pushed publish on my post about propaganda and distrust of the media yesterday when I came across this written when my grandfather took the reins of The Potter Enterprise in 1920.

"In the consolidation of the Enterprise and Independent, the owners have the means and hand to give the people of Potter County one of the greatest newspapers ever published. And that it will be, indeed, and truthful of the duty we owe the people of this county. It shall be our persistent effort and loyal and earnest endeavor to so conduct this publication that it will be, in deed and truth, "The People's Paper."

"From its columns we shall divorce all personal animosities and ideas of favor and will present fearlessly and consistently the news in all its phases.

"This paper will stand opposed at all times to corruption and graft and the control, politically of a few, to the detriment of the many. We are in the fight to be of service to ALL the people and we shall not hesitate to expose and make public through its columns any acts or practices on the part of the public officials, whom we believe are violating the trust and failing in the performance of duties that have been reposed in them.

"As the editor of the Enterprise, the writer is not unmindful of the duty he owes the people of Potter County and fully cognizant of that duty. It shall be his constant aim to serve fairly all people and promote all things that may result in the public good. The editor of the Enterprise wants to merit the confidence and support in his efforts and pledges them at all times championship of Right, Justice and Equality and asks for hearty support and cooperation."

Although I've been dissociated from newspapering in Potter County for many years, there's more than a little regret in acknowledging that. As we say these days, it's in my DNA.

I'm Naming It

What year did we have Civics* in high school? That's the year I sat in one of those uncomfortable chairs with the attached desk and listened to Mr. Berger talk about the propaganda techniques that allowed the Nazis to murder millions of Jews and then he told us of the propaganda techniques being employed in the Soviet Union, with its state-run media and silencing of dissenting voices.

I had just read The Diary of Anne Frank. Anne Frank a teenage girl like me, hidden away in an attic for years, writing in her diary - she even named it - before being snatched away to unspeakable horror after someone reported their hideaway. She died, never to have a chance to make real the dreams she shared with "Dear Kitty."

People - folks like us baby boomers sitting in Mr. Berger's classroom in the 1960s - shook their heads and thought it can't happen here. We had Walter Cronkite on the news every night. We had The Buffalo Evening News and The Bradford Era and The Olean Times Herald delivered to our doors every day by the paperboys and papergirls, some of whom were likely in that classroom. We had The Potter Enterprise for our local news and I knew that was dependable because my mother and my aunt and uncle and grandfather worked there.

In fact, my journalist grandfather wrote this in  1948:

"True facts." There is one that gets Golly down. If the fact is a truth, as our dictionary states, what other facts are there except true? Golly would like to know.

Remember when the news media were hesitant to brand any politician as a liar? A radio piece** I distinctly remember, featured various NPR correspondents and editors discussing the terminology, finally giving Trump and his minions a pass on what appeared from my vantage point to be blatant lies. And I wondered at the time why the media was so hesitant to call lying people liars. It was the time of Kellyanne Conway's "alternative facts."

Now it's commonplace for Trump's lies to be called out. Lies about the economy, lies about 'domestic terrorists,' lies about liaisons with Jeffrey Epstein, lies about Greenland and lies about tariffs, lies about the 2020 election, lies about the East Wing, lies about the Kennedy Center. But is it too late?

Have you put your attention on a federal government website lately? The White House site welcomes us to the Golden Age. Then we're directed to January 6: The Real Story.

And if  you want to be truly chilled, take a look at the Media Offenders tab on that White House site: "A Record of the Media's False and Misleading Stories Flagged by The White House. Scroll for the Truth." There's even a link to "submit a tip."

We've been told and continue to be told by our government that the media - journalists charged with keeping an eye on the workings of the people's (yours and mine) elected representatives  – is 'fake', 'dishonest', 'biased', 'liberal.' And not only are we instructed to disbelieve that which we've seen with our own eyes and heard with our own ears, we're asked to report the truth-tellers.

I ask, as a former public relations person, and more importantly as a thinking, observant human being, how can this be? Are we really going to allow this to continue - this artifice, these distortions, these lies?

*1960s American public high-school students were typically required to take three courses in civics—Civics, Problems of Democracy, and U.S. Government.

**I had to look up that piece to check my memory and I link it here. I believe it wasn't until shortly before the 2020 election that liar was regularly used to describe Donald Trump.

An Anniversary

From 1955:

The Golly guy celebrated an anniversary Tuesday, Feb. 1.

It was on Feb. 1, 1920, that the late Arch Bernard and the Golly guy took ownership and possession of the Potter Enterprise from the late M.T. Stokes.

According to our figures that totals more than 1800 Thursdays during the 35 years.

A lot of work–
Tons of ink–
More tons of paper–
A lot of headaches–

And when it's all summed up those 35 years have been happy and satisfying years. Golly is glad to have had a part in editing and publishing YOUR weekly newspaper.

clipped from Potter Enterprise, 1920

From 1968 

Away back about 1920, Arch Bernard came to Coudersport and edited the Potter Democrat. He offered to Golly more pay as a printer than he received at the Potter Journal. So Golly changed jobs.

After a short time, he proposed we buy the Democrat. Neither of us had more than a dollar but made the deal all on credit.

In a few more months, we bought the Enterprise. That piled more debt. We were in away over our heads.

Within a year or so Bernard sold his interest to the late George W. Daniels and departed. Mr. Daniels had no newspaper experience.

Golly had a long uphill battle to pay off. He worked seven days a week and a lot of nights but he made it. During the time a son and three daughters arrived at Golly's home. We could not do so much for the youngsters as we would have liked but they reached maturity and we are proud of them.

From the day Golly took a hand in the operation to the present (1968), there has not been a year without an increase in circulation. Today it stands at 7,500. Mr. Stokes printed about 1500. The subscription was $1.50 per year. Not over half of the readers even paid the $1.50. Such a business!

It is a most remarkable growth and we are very proud of it, but in his old age – if 94 is old – Golly only manages to write this column. Maybe this is "small potatoes and few in a hill."

From the 21st Century perspective of this granddaughter, offspring of one of his four children, a woman whose love for newspapering and printing was shared with me, this accomplishment is so much more than small potatoes!

This appeared in the upper lefthand corner of the nameplate.

Freewrite For An Urgent Time

A Sunbeam, A Sunbeam

Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam

A sunbeam, a sunbeam

I'll be a sunbeam for Him

I interrupt my regularly scheduled program to bring you this piece below, started this week in an online writing practice group "Freewrites For Urgent Times - a space to write through the anger and grief of these times." 

That day I chose to let 'er rip,  no good, no bad, no comment, no filter. It came from a place of deep grief and fear and anger after watching the President of the United States speeching the most hateful, spiteful untruths on the world stage. I turned it off, walked out on the back porch in my fuzzy bathrobe and stood in the cold stillness, watching the birds at the feeder and breathed in the cold, cold air. Air so cold it hurt, a physical pain to muffle the crashing waves of fear.

I've experienced that particular kind of gut-punch fear before, a fear borne of realizing you, a sole human being, have no control over what's happening. Of course, I've lived long enough to know there is little control in most of life but my first awareness was what history calls the Cuban Missile Crisis. I remember lying in my bed that night with the thought that there was a very real possibility that the dread mushroom cloud would appear over Consistory Hill. I was physically ill, the aforementioned gut-punch that sent me down the hall to the bathroom in secret.

And now, this woman, removed by many years from that little girl on North East Street, greeted the faces in the Zoom boxes, earnest and stalwart. There was a poem to get us started as often happens. And though I didn't write down the name of the poet nor did I copy the poem in its entirety, here are the words of another upon which I composed this essay.

"I pick flowers for my dead father when I'm sad..."

The Father, The Son, The Holy Ghost - but these days I prefer to think Source, Word, Spirit. But it was the Father who was the God I was instructed to worship in many years of Sunday School at the Presbyterian Church. God Of Our Fathers, Holy, Holy, Holy, A Mighty Fortress.

Sunday School, every year the gift of a little bar to hang from the second year wreath that circled the pin presented that first year of Sunday School. The little girl with her toothpick legs sticking out from underneath the full skirt plumped with some kind of stiff crinoline fabric. Wearing a Sunday dress created by my mother on her old treadle Singer sewing machine, sometimes trimmed with lace carefully salvaged from clothing that had been someone else's.

White Jesus with the flowing brown hair, the Sunday School Jesus who loves me, who wants me for a sunbeam. Listen to the echoes of our feet tromping to the basement, down those winding stairs to the concrete floor in the space that always smelled a little musty except when it was steamy from the cooking for congregational dinners, those elaborate meals served on the plates that still rest in the cupboards down there - at least one hundred of them.

The father - that God enlisted as a battering ram these days. Much like the battering rams employed against the outraged in Minneapolis. The battering rams and guns used against the humans, the Christians and Jews and Muslins and Agnostics and Atheists standing against the masked thugs sent by our government - a government supposed to be of the people, by the people, for the people.

Much like the battering rams carried by the thugs who waved the Appeal To Heaven flag on January 6. That same flag that hangs outside Mike Johnson's office and flaps in the breeze at Samuel Alito's beach house.  This God , they tell me, has chosen this man, this Donald J. Trump. And Donald J. Trump - the golden idol  from the top of his golden hair to his gold burnished skin, sitting in a gilded office, shitting in a golden toilet, building a golden temple onto the people's house. That god is a dead father.

The dead father commanding that the males are in charge. With the women waiting for them, and on them, following their bidding, offering up their little girls to pleasure them, plumping their breasts and their lips to command attention. Their lips like machine guns, he says.  All in the name of their dead father.

I am so sad, so very sad but there are no flowers for the dead father in this cold, lonely, desolate, hopeless winter.

Quadrupeds

Tamias Striatus in the Nine Mile Valley.

Recorded in the summer of 2022, and perhaps a descendant of Golly's long ago furry friends

My brother Steven J. Heimel, commented on a recent post in which I featured our grandfather's musings about mice in his Nine Mile camp. Steve writes:. "It is worthy to note that Golly spent much time enjoying the chipmunks that lived in the woodpile. I am sure he wrote about them. A really cool thing about chipmunks is that if you hold very still they will run right on you sometimes. I think he would try to feed them by hand."

Here's a selection of chipmunk posts from the Golly column.

1943

Chipmunks! For a long time just one frisked about the shack in the wilds. A second one appeared. He - or she - was very welcome, but ...

Holy Moses, last weekend we counted five at one time feasting on the surplus pancakes and the corn from the garden that grew too big for green corn.

Last spring we planted plenty of sunflowers in the corn patch intending to take the large seed heads to the wilds for the chipmunks and squirrels and birds, but we must exercise some care and judgment else we build a Frankenstein monster.

1944

After roaming the woods for years and years, what we DO NOT know of the flora and fauna of Potter County would make a tremendous volume if all assembled in one huge book. If we could live to be one thousand years of age, and we were studious all the time, we would know something, sometime.

We have only recently learned that the scientific name of our Nine Mile chipmunk is "tamias striatus." (You pronounce it – we stutter).

The western section of the U.S.A. has a larger 'munk and his handle is "etamias minimus."

1951

The Golly guy took to the deep woods and communed with the birds and animals. Chipmunks frisked about the woodpile and dined on the waste popcorn material from Popcorn Joe's stand in the theatre building. They loved the stuff. They ate it up.

1958

A couple of bushels of black walnuts for the chipmunks! Golly assumes authority to speak for the inarticulate denizens of the picturesque Nine Mile Valley and to express most profuse thanks for the contribution. Betcha it will mean nice rounded bellies and sleek smooth fur for Golly's wards, along with sweet dreams when Old Mother Nature turns off the gas and sends the winds howling through the valley and over the mountains.

September 1964

When Golly built Folly in the Nine Mile Valley – long time ago, 1930 – there were plenty of chipmunks in the vicinity. By giving them a variety of food – bread, sunflower and other seeds – they became very tame. They were more than welcome.

It was a pleasure to watch them take the seeds from a large sunflower head hung in a nearby tree. There was a boss in the group. He would get to the source of supply and take his time, shelling the seeds and filling his pouches. When he could hold no more he had to go to his cache to make a deposit.

Then the rank and file made for the head and they did no shucking. They filled their pouches as quickly as possible and woe to the tardy ones when the big boss appeared.

For a long time the cute little striped fellows furnished amusement. Then something happened but we could never understand it. The flock became small for a year or two and then no chipmunks at all.

For a long time Golly has mourned the loss of those pleasing little quadrupeds but no matter how tempting the offered food there are no chipmunks at Golly's Folly.

By the summer of 1965, Golly's Folly had been sold and, with advancing age, he was content to make the acquaintance of chipmunks on North Main Street.

From 1968 

Golly played a lot of baseball Saturday while sitting on the patio. It is a question which was more interesting - the ball games or the antics of our pet chipmunk. Golly gives his vote to the little quadruped. He carried away scores of peanuts and hickory nuts.

This was the first time this summer we have had so much time to observe the little pet so closely. He must have a big cache of food hidden away.

It was interesting to watch the chipmunk wrestle with a large ear of corn twice as big as the ground squirrel. He had to work hard to loosen even one kernel. Then we would give him a helping hand and do some shelling. The little fellow would fill both pouches and make off only to gather more kernels.

Before the close of the second afternoon we became better acquainted. Dozens of times he ran over Golly's feet.

Later that summer –

Golly's pet chipmunk, Bright Eyes, made the mistake of grabbing this scribe's finger instead of a peanut. The cute little fellow climbed on Golly's lap for the nut. It was a small nut and the small creature made a mistake in his haste. The tiny but sharp teeth started a bit of blood.

Golly was more at fault than Bright Eyes as he was hanging to the nut and the little fellow was anxious to win the nut.

No stitches were required to close the wound.

A Candidate For The Nut Factory?

 

The softer side of "Golly" from 1943.

The writer has a sense of guilt. He has had that feeling since along in the fall.

Maybe, when you have read the "why," you will think he is really possessed of a sense of justice, or maybe you will think him a well-qualified candidate for a nut factory. Judge him as you see fit.

Last fall - probably in November - we made a trip to the shack in the Nine Mile. Sort of a farewell trip until such time as the snow and ice melt and the buds begin to swell.

A cupboard door was slightly open, enough so mice could get inside. When the door was opened wide, down came a shower of black cherry pits.

The pits were scraped out (fully three quarts of them) and dumped in the fireplace. Never had we seen such a store of pits although we had often seen the halves of the pits scattered around

Later we were thinking about the family of white footed mice or deer mice. It was then we were troubled - still are.

Here was a family that had worked long and faithfully to lay aside a food store for winter. How many hundred trips had been made from the black cherry trees just outside to the storehouse, one could not even guess, but many hours must have been spent in the work.

No doubt the White Foots were proud of their labors and felt secure against the time when snow and ice would hide what pits might still be left on the ground, when food of any kind would be hard to find.

Suddenly, when the family was dreaming of peace and plenty for the long winter months, along comes a giant – a monster – an ogre. He scrapes up all that food and destroys it, almost in the twinkling of an eye. The more we thought of that act of thoughtlessness the more it has troubled us.

Suppose for a moment we had made a garden and worked hard to plant, to cultivate and harvest the food crops. Suppose we had stored the potatoes and turnips, and canned the beets and beans and corn. Suppose suddenly a giant appears, scoops the whole supply and wantonly destroys it!

To our mind the cases are parallel. We regret deeply having robbed so insignificant a living creature as a tiny white foot mouse.

No trial do we ask. We plead guilty and throw ourselves on the mercy of the court.

Little Mechanical Bandits

National Public Radio had a piece on the air over the weekend about parking meters and it reminded me of these snippets I've collected from my grandfather's "Golly" column over the years.

January 1947, Week One:

Parking meters in Coudersport  – horse feathers!
Now let's build a subway for two or three blocks!

January 1947, Week Two:

Paying $79.50 for a parking meter worth at the most only $14.50 is the height of damphoolishness. If you buy 125 of the pesky things that would make a grand total of $8,125 thrown down the sewer.  

P.T. Barnum was right when he said there was one born every minute

.January 1947, Week Three:

Think of it – $10,000 worth of meters! The Council proposes to have 125 (approximately) of the meters installed. The cost is $79.50 each.
The meter consists of a little machine, less complicated than a cheap alarm clock, a piece of iron pipe four or five feet long and a box of cement on the lower end. The whole cost of supplying and installing should not be over $14.50.
But the price is $79.50 each.
Why $65 profit for the meter concern on each machine – even if the blooming things were needed at all which we seriously doubt.

It just doesn't make sense regardless of how many cities and towns have been suckers.

The fact that so many municipalities have installed meters is evidence of quantity production and makes the outlandish price just that much more ridiculous.

May 1947

The parking meters are working in Coudersport. They were particularly conspicuous Monday morning. The town looked like a deserted village, but there were plenty of parking meters visible.

Later May 1947

The meters are installed and operating. Most people cuss 'em. Occasionally a ticket is handed out by Officer Paul Richert. One of the first tickets went to Street Commissioner Chilson. He had gathered up the collected coins and was making a count. The meter at the stall where his car was parked showed red. He received a ticket.

Officer Richert is off to the right start. If Coudersport is to have meters – and i sure does have them – the regulations should be enforced to all alike.

There must be no favoritism shown to a borough employee or any official regardless of his rank.

January 1948

Parking meters exit from Coudersport. Golly is glad the borough council has acted and settled the matter. It has been a controversial subject for some eight months. That's long enough!

February 1948

The heads of the parking meters have been removed. You no longer have to pay for parking a car in Coudersport. As soon as the weather condition permit, the iron pipes that held the meters will be removed and parking meters in Coudersport will be only a memory.
Golly cannot have sympathy for those who champion those little mechanical bandits.

August 1952

Like 'em or not, looks like the borough council is going to stuff parking meters down the throats of the public even though 78 percent have indicated they do not want them.
Who says this is a glorious country where the majority rules?
Of all the nerve! Pure unadulterated nerve! Members of Coudersport's borough council have it.
In face of the fact that 78 percent of the people in and near Coudersport are opposed to parking meters, the council voted to install them.

It takes guts to do a trick like that. It should also be remembered that parking meters were installed here some years ago on a trial basis and, after a few weeks, the public arose in righteous indignation, attended a council meeting and demanded the meters be removed.

THEY WERE REMOVED.

How can men in the right minds, servants of the public go so strongly against the wishes of the people who had sufficient confidence in their honesty to elect them to office, act as the council members acted Tuesday evening.
Can you answer that question? We cannot.

April 1953

Parking meters! That troublesome old subject keeps popping up to give a headache to at least 75 percent of the people of Coudersport and vicinity.
Right now some 60 businessmen have signed a petition protesting the installation of the pesky things. It will be presented to borough council at its next meeting.
Something like a year ago the Enterprise carried a survey with coupons published in this paper. The returns were 78 to 22 percent opposed to meters.
A parking meter salesman  stated to this writer: "Coudersport has no parking problem and does not need meters. However, if the town wants them, I'll be glad to sell them."
In the face of all this the old problem keeps showing its ugly head. It should also be remembered that meters were installed here at one time and when the trial period expired they were taken out.

The people do not want them. Why must we be plagued with the same old problem?

July 1954

Had to laugh a little at a Genesee man who had his troubles with parking meters Monday. He deposited a dime. Nothing happened. He produced another with the same result.
The man was worried. He did not want to violate the law.
At long last he found the meters work only with pennies or nickels. he could put dimes in the pesky things all day and they would be like water in a sieve.

And finally, this published in December 1956

Golly fought parking meters in Coudersport . They came after a while and Golly later made up his mnd that he had been wrong – as usual.

You see, our own people were at fault for their being installed. Merchant, clerks and office workers all had to park their cars on the main business streets. They left no space for shoppers.
The meters came. All those business people, clerks and what have you, could then find parking space in side streets or back of their places of business.
Now there is room for shoppers and strangers. The parking cost is negligible.

I fed a a quarter into a mechanical bandit in downtown Coudersport and smiled!