A TIP OF THE HAT

I just received the news that my buddy Shawn Patrick is headed to Denver.

When I first started working at KTAL, I was lost and clueless. Some engineers at KTAL were lost and clueless, too, so the microwave transmitter between Texarkana and Shreveport was broken for about two months. That meant I had to drive my stories 80 miles down to Shreveport every night.

(When you figure out how much money they spent in gas and overtime during those two months, it probably cost more than the entire repair. But if I start down that road, I'll be ranting for hours. So I'll get back to the story.)

The drive was awful. It was on a twisty, two lane road with trees right up to the pavement and fatal accidents every night. On the way, there was a city called Fouke. Every night, the entire population of Fouke died in auto wrecks on that road. Needless to say, I hated making the drive down, and was terrified of the drive back up late at night.

But there was a bright spot to be found in all this gas guzzling and unsafe driving (note to KTAL management: yes, I drove a company car unsafely. You should know that there isn't some magic time warp on US 71 that allows you to travel between Texarkana and Shreveport in an hour. When you needed it there that fast, I sped. So there.)

Where was I? Oh yes, the bright spots. Like I mentioned in paragraph #2, I was pretty clueless when I started working at KTAL. It was my first professional TV job and I was probably more qualified to mop the floor at Burger King. But they hired me anyway, and I had to drive from the bureau to the station just about every day for a while. Despite my cluenessness, some people down in Shreveport took me under their wings.

One was Jake Corbell, and he's a lovely man and a great producer. But he's not moving to Denver, so we'll move on.

Another was Dave Schwartz. But he's in sports... and... I shouldn't say more.

And then there was Shawn Patrick. He was the anchor, and anchors are supposed to be total pricks. But instead, he was nice to me... said I was a good writer... helped me tighten up some of my stories.

KTAL eventually fixed the microwave and my trips to Shreveport pretty much came to a halt. But I kept in touch with Shawn and eventually we'd occasionally meet for lunches and complain about work and life and the hazards of being a Yankee in the south. It was big fun.

Some time in the middle of all this, a pair of hurricanes nailed Louisiana. During one marathon newscast, I was pressed into action running the teleprompter. The control room was nothing short of chaos. We had a series of reporters scattered across the south part of the state and satellite feeds were cutting in and out. Live shots weren't much more reliable. The rundown became nothing more than a wish list as stories were shuffled, created and killed at a blinding pace. My job running the prompter was pretty easy because almost nothing we were doing was on the prompter. It was all fly by the seat of your pants. But on the set, you would never know the chaos that existed just feet away. Shawn was cool as a cucumber, ad-libbing huge hunks of the newscast, rolling with the punches, and being as professional as anyone was during the storms. Give me ten years, and I could never muster that kind of composure.

(Note: Shannon Slatton was anchoring that newscast as well. She was equally impressive. But she isn't moving to Denver, so I'll move on)

When I decided I'd had enough of the Confederacy, my job, and everything that came with it, Shawn gave me advice on what stories to put on my audition reel. He even offered to be a reference.

Within three weeks of sending my tape out, I had a job in Oregon. It felt good to rid myself of my first job and Texarkana and all the baggage that came with it, but it's hard to leave a comrade behind in a place like Shreveport when you get to go to Oregon.

So it warms my heart to learn that Shawn has found his ticket out of the south as well. And to move from market #81 to market #18... well... it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

The South will be a poorer place at your departure.

Oh wait, the South already is a poor place. Never mind.