On assignment - weird places you have filed from

In a pissed off HS AD's office that was about half the size of a college dorm room at like 10:55 one night.
It was a stupid state soccer tourney, he was supposed to have wifi setup, but he didn't. So I swindled him into letting me go into his office, while he stood over my shoulder and asked me how much longer I was going to be about every 45 seconds. I wrote about 18 inches in around seven minutes. Good times.

 

I filed my murder trial verdict story from the local university's library. But that was only because I didn't want to deal with the distractions of my 90-year-old publisher, his 70-year-old wife and their 16-year-old dog that poops on everything.

 

This is incredibly recent, but I'll tell this story for its difficulty and to pat myself on my back again.

At a state championship game two weeks ago when the goons come and decide to kick me out of the gym. No, that won't do, I have to file my story. Just give me five minutes. No dice. Rather than argue, I knew that I'd waste valuable time and went back to my car.

I had to type up a two-paragraph brief for the web, which I did entirely on my phone as I walked. As soon as I got to my car, I plopped myself down in the backseat, started typing away, then used the wireless signal from the phone to send the story off. No problems at all.

Somewhere, all those who remember the Trash-80s are slapping their heads. To think, 20 years later, there'd be a constant connection in our pockets.

 

All three of these came at the same paper, which had an atrocious deadline (9:30 p.m. Central drop dead, only one edition). I barely even got to cover high school hoops until the playoffs, when all three of these incidents occured in less than a month's time

1. The one time I tried to file from a gas station, I found the one outfit in the entire Florida Panhandle that had a freaking digital line. Clerk was already cool, but then took it up a notch when he suggested I unplug the ATM machine and try that line ...

2. Had a girls' game in Jacksonville and the Times-Union was nice enough to let me come back across town and file. What I didn't count on was having to detour all over downtown in a city I'd never been to before ... thanks to a multi-block fire within spitting distance of the paper ...

3. Had an opening-round girls game in Quincy, Fla., where the football coach/AD agreed to let me file from his office (and insisted on walking me to my car afterwards for my own safety.) As I'm sending my story, he starts asking about the football coach at the main school in my coverage area. Turns out the fb coach was accepting a job that night just across the state line, unbeknownst to me (or any of the other three dailies in our area). As soon as I make it back to the office and get the final paper proofed, I call up coach, get confirmation, and get the story in time to avoid being scooped.

 

A few years ago, before I had wireless and had to send from a phone line, I sent from behind the counter of an ABC store near Myrtle Beach. The beach condo we were at didn't have a land line, and a bunch of different hotel people were pricks about it.

 

Got plenty of those stories. Some of Birdscribe's Greatest TRS-80 Hits...

From the side of the 14 Freeway, outside of Canyon Country, writing my story from a playoff basketball game and calling it in as I waited for AAA to come and fix my flat tire.

From a Bob's Big Boy in Palm Springs, where I had to bribe one of the local gangbangers $10 to get off the phone, so I could file with those wacky acoustic couplers.

From College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, where the janitor left me alone (a rarity) -- but locked me in the stadium. This forced my then-34-year-old ass to scale a 12-foot, barbed-wire-tipped fence to get myself out.

From the Santa Monica apartment of this would-be actress (Hi Backyardigan!), who saved me after a JC playoff game because I wouldn't have been able to file from the digital phone lines. We got to talking about something or other at this game (I can't remember the context) and I told her I had to file my story after the game. She said "I don't know if you're a serial killer or what, but for some reason, I trust you." Wrote, filed and left.

There are several other adventures, but a bit more mundane than the above.

 

I have two good stories.

The first, AD won't let me use his office, but it's not a small town so I figure I'll go the gas station route. So I go into this gas station as ask the lady working if I can use the phone to send a story. Sure. So I go back into their stock room, where this fat, nasty bitch is standing, arms on her hips, glaring at me.

"What are you doing back here?"

I explain.

"We don't get the internet here."

I explain that I really just need a phone line for a 1-800 number. No charge.

"We don't get the internet!"

Uh, could I just see your phone?

Sure enough. Their phone was screwed to the wall over the phone jack, so I couldn't get to the jack to plug in. That stupid, fat, ugly bitch was right. They didn't get the internet.

So the nicer lady at the front desk told me about the only motel in town, and how it might still be open. So I hauled ass to it. No one home. At all. Abandoned. Suddenly, a car pulled up, and some guy comes up, apparently having been called and told I was on the way to his motel. He let me in and let me file from the dusty ass office of this all but abandoned motel.

It. Sucked.


Another time I stopped in a bar to ask to use the phone. Sadly, the bar didn't have a phone. This was in like 2002, not 1902. A barfly walked me down to his car repair shop on the other side of town and let me send from his office, though. He earned himself a nice $5 tip for the effort.

 

* A darkened Dairy Queen parking lot near the tiny town of Tarkington, Texas.
* Just off the big navy pier in Brest, France.
* Floating off the tides heading into Normandy Beach, France.
* From one of the world's most massive piers, in the Persian Gulf (I believe it was near Manama, Bahrain, although my memory is a bit fuzzy...might have been the UAE).

 

Covering a college game at the Jones Dome in STL, and they kicked us out. Met a guy form the Dispatch, and he said he would give us a lift to send there. I finished the story but couldnt find a good phone line and the computer locked up. I finally sent after consulting the paper’s IT department.

I also sent from a very sketchy convenience store in Tulsa.

 

Using a U.S. dial-up number from a hotel office in Saltillo, Mexico. They didn't even make me pay for the call.

 

The snack bar at a Little League field.

 

The beautiful Glades Inn in Moore Haven, Fla. Made us pay $35 for the pleasure of using the "room" for the 10 minutes it took me to file. All you need to know: the roaches were about as big as my foot and under the Gideon bible in the drawer? A pack of condoms and a crack pipe.