From The Past
We had a new local blogger post a comment here two days ago http://tenasillahe.wordpress.com/ I went to their site and saw a post about the Daily Astorian is looking for readers memories of the visit of the Mighty Mo.. So Daily A staff, if you still are reading this blog every day like you used to, please feel free to publish the story below which first appeared on this blog in October of 2006 entitled "The Cutting Room Floor".
I suppose honesty often goes hand in hand with social ineptness. Maybe it’s the child like quality in us all that often makes us blurt things out that better judgment wouldn’t allow us to utter had we given a topic reasonable forethought.
I knew that traffic would be bad, and I promised someone a week before that I would meet them for coffee in town. It was a beautiful day so I rode my bicycle six or so miles into town knowing full well that traffic and parking would be nearly impossible.
The event was the Mighty Mo. The USS Missouri was visiting our fair city and it brought droves of people over the roads and bridges to Astoria. A bicycle was the only reasonable form of transportation if you needed to be anywhere on that day.
I was early, so I cycled around Smith point and I was easily able to get down to the port, where lines of people stood waiting to walk upon the teak decks of history. As I stood watching an historical event of all these people coming to Astoria, I found myself being scanned by a television news camera. A TV news reporter stepped beside me and asked one of those lame news questions like,” What do you think of the crowds coming to Astoria?”
I didn’t hesitate when I blurted out the answer. “It’s funny if you think of it, but every one of the people here will probably flush a toilet at least once during their stay. I’d hate to be at the sewer lagoon today.”
Needless to say, they had no follow-up questions for me after that. I watched the news that night and saw that I had ended up on the cutting room floor.
I suppose honesty often goes hand in hand with social ineptness. Maybe it’s the child like quality in us all that often makes us blurt things out that better judgment wouldn’t allow us to utter had we given a topic reasonable forethought.
I knew that traffic would be bad, and I promised someone a week before that I would meet them for coffee in town. It was a beautiful day so I rode my bicycle six or so miles into town knowing full well that traffic and parking would be nearly impossible.
The event was the Mighty Mo. The USS Missouri was visiting our fair city and it brought droves of people over the roads and bridges to Astoria. A bicycle was the only reasonable form of transportation if you needed to be anywhere on that day.
I was early, so I cycled around Smith point and I was easily able to get down to the port, where lines of people stood waiting to walk upon the teak decks of history. As I stood watching an historical event of all these people coming to Astoria, I found myself being scanned by a television news camera. A TV news reporter stepped beside me and asked one of those lame news questions like,” What do you think of the crowds coming to Astoria?”
I didn’t hesitate when I blurted out the answer. “It’s funny if you think of it, but every one of the people here will probably flush a toilet at least once during their stay. I’d hate to be at the sewer lagoon today.”
Needless to say, they had no follow-up questions for me after that. I watched the news that night and saw that I had ended up on the cutting room floor.
posted by The Guy Who Writes This at 5:28 AM
7 Comments:
Well, you were refreshingly honest - and that's why you ended up on the cutting room floor.
I have a recurring fantasy concerning news crews and stupid questions. It involves the shit being beaten out of them when they shove a camera in the face of a family member of a victim of violent crime and ask how that person feels ... followed by the person saying "THAT's how I feel, dickhead".
A great lesson in how not to be pestered by them again:)
I remember that post, and have to confess that since reading that I have the same thoughts every time one of those damn cruise ships docks. I don't know what's worse flooding our sewage system or flushing it out in the ocean the way they say they don't but are known to do. They are nothing but floating cesspools!
Question: what is currently newsworthy about memories of a battleship docking here? I don't get it--I couldn't care less about someone's memories of that.
Another memory I have of the Missouri is I got a damn failure to signal ticket as I was trying to get out of the lane that was turning down to the port. I remember that being a huge traffic hectic day.
My memory of the Mighty Mo's visit here were of course the crowds plugging Uniontown to get up close to her-and those drunken clowns who got caught at night trying to cut her loose from the pier...they managed to get either the bow or stern adrift and were working on the opposite end when they were caught red handed with the axe.....The real excitement with an Iowa Class Battleship at the river was, of course, the New Jersey's 1989 inbound trip to The Rose Festival..Just as she came even with the port docks some Greenpeacers rapelled off the bridge with a huge banner and stopped the ship in her tracks--they hung there for quite awhile-the cops couldnt do anything until the protestors ascended to the bridge where they were arrested-taken in custody and then immediately bailed out. That was about as wild as I've ever seen it get over a ship in front of town...there sure were a lot of pissed off people lining the river front when that dramatic confrontation went down
I guess there is only just so much news to go around and the Astorian needs to re-create news, even though it's ten years past. What they need to do is start reporting 10 years in the future...
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