My night at the prison

Looking back, what was my most exciting reporting adventure? A showgirls’ strike? One of John Kennedy’s last speeches? Something to do with Watergate? No, it was a prison riot in Oregon. It’s a wonder I wasn’t taken hostage.

Just before I was transferred to Las Vegas in March, 1968, I got a call from the Associated Press bureau chief in Portland. “The prisoners have taken over the Oregon State Penitentiary. The Salem reporter needs a break. I need you to spend the night there.” (Better than a six-month prison term, I guess.)

So I drove the 50 miles to the large prison, which was in complete chaos.

The 700 prisoners had taken over the facility and one section was on fire. Forty guards and other employees were taken hostage. Inexplicably, the management recruited reporters to take a tour of the prison, I guess to make us think things were under control.

We went through smoke-filled halls with prisoners running loose. The pharmacy was raided. The inmates were swallowing handfuls of pills. Too bad they didn’t get to the Valium.

Somehow we got back to a safe area. A truce was reached. The warden called a press conference, where prisoners’ leaders were allowed to speak.

As I sat down, I noticed that the floors were an inch deep in water from the fire fighting. A TV crew tried to drape wires to their cameras over my lap. “No, no!” I shouted.

Finally, just before sunrise, prison officials tried to talk holdouts who had taken over a wing of the prison into giving up. They called on Ann Sullivan, a reporter from the Oregonian newspaper, to talk to them. She had written articles seeking prison reform and was respected by the inmates

Just like a scene from the movies, she was given a megaphone and appealed to them to give up. They yielded and the strike was over.

I was one of only two pool reporters there. I had a scoop and ran to a nearby house to call in my story at 7 a.m. It was Sunday and no newspaper in the country was publishing at that time. I’m surprised the people let me in. I guess I didn’t look like an escapee.

My next duty was to call my Army Reserve unit to explain why I was going to miss the day’s meeting. If you missed five or more, you were supposedly sent to. Vietnam.

I had to bargain pretty hard. I guess they wouldn’t have given me such a rough time if I had been taken hostage!

Top 10 Forecasts for 2050

I got the Kiplinger Letter to publish the top 10 forecasts for the year, which appeared every January. It is still continuing, as far as I know. I wrote a few months ago that I don’t believe in forecasts, but, hey, this is a new year! Here are my Southside forecasts for 2025:

1.  The Prizery will continue as a successful artistic center in South Boston, despite a change of board and management. Halifax County Little Theater will carry most of the weight of the county’s live musicals

2.  The University of North Carolina football team will have a record year for attendance because of the greatest coach in the history of pro football, Bill Belichick. He’ll have trouble adjusting to college football at first, but his experience with the New England Patriots dynasty will eventually carry him to success.

3.  The Clarksville Community Players will have another blockbuster season in their 52nd  year. “Fiddler on the Roof” on March 28-29 and April 4-6  will be a big hit.

4.  Now that all of those businesses moved out of Riverdale, it won’t flood. (After we had to shovel deep snow at our house in Arlington, we moved to an apartment. It never snowed like that again.)

5.  Despite their misgivings, more people will turn to AI to get information, threatening Google’s search engine. News media and other content providers will fight it to no avail. They’ll eventually join, as musicians and writers did to iTunes and Spotify.

6.  The public will reduce its resistance to self-driving cars, just as they stopped worrying so much about  ordering online with a credit card. Tesla’s early breakthrough will catch on with other vehicles, especially among older people when the car can see and think better than they can.

7.  Danville’s new casino will have a great year, drawing tourists from all over. But expectations of its impact on the city’s economy may be too optimistic.

8.  The new Halifax County High School will open this summer with a lot of fanfare.

9.  Cable and network TV audiences will keep dwindling as streaming grows. More shows will be on a la carte services rather than free or than all-you-can-watch networks. And expect more ads.

10. The sun will come up on Jan. 1, 2026, and we will survive the ups and downs of government and politics regardless of our feelings. I expect to be here in full health, and I hope you are too.

Learning to love my spam

What’s this? My “junk mail” file? I don’t usually look at it.

Hey, why does Yahoo label all of this junk? Who is Yahoo to separate the good mail from the bad? Freedom of speech, Censorship. Let me take a look at what is being withheld from me.

The first one is from Cheech & Chong. I remember them from the movies. Weren’t they into drugs? Well, look at this promotion to sell their gummy bears: “Join the legendary duo on a flight to relaxation and good vibes.”

 

Isn’t that sweet! They have gotten off drugs and are selling candy now. Bless them! And stop calling me naïve!

 

And here is another. It is from McAfee, the antivirus company. They have just charged me $268 on my credit card, it says, for a one-year subscription. I don’t remember doing that, but how nice of them to take care of me that way. That will keep the bad guys out. It says, “If you have questions, call this number for service.” Well, I’ll have to do that and thank them!

 

Oh, and here is a message from someone named Cecelia Lambert. “I have no heirs and want to transfer $7.5 million into your account for humanitarian work. Send me your details now. I await your reply.”

 

Well, how thoughtful! I don’t even know Cecelia. Her English isn’t very good—maybe she is a foreigner. But she sounded so polite.  I will call her to help her save humanity. I could make some money off this too!

 

Here’s a good one:  “My name is Adele. You'll meet  your perfect girl  to be with when you match with me on the dating website. I would be glad to be  conversing with you there.”

 

But Adele, I’m married! Why are you sending me this? Do you know something I don’t?

 

OMG! Look at this. It is from a friend who died a year ago. How can that be? An email? Speaking from the grave?

 

This person lived a good life, but you never know: She might be influenced here by the devil. I wonder if I should take her advice.

 

Oh, all it says is: “Look at these great pictures.” Well, sure. They must have been taken at that last party where I saw her.  Click. Crash.

 

Yes, the devil! My computer’s dead. I’d better call those nice people from McAfee!

Yes, there is room at the inn!

 

As a child in the California suburbs, I certainly never dreamed of helping to operate a bed & breakfast in Southside Virginia.

But things just happen. When I was living in Washington, D.C., I met this great woman, Pickett Craddock, who had a farmhouse with 400 acres in in Cluster Springs. She had no intention of ever moving to California.

I first visited the place in summer, 1981. I was itching from bugs all the time. An engineering friend told us the old building was a “bottomless pit” of future repairs.

But slowly, over time, she found the right people to help her fix it up, including Joe, a former preschool student, now in his 50s.

She had always wanted to open a B&B but was dissuaded on our honeymoon in 1985, when she saw how much work was involved at the Mainstay B&B in Cape May, N.J.

But she persisted and opened a summer-only B&B, Oak Grove Plantation Bed & Breakfast, in 1988. She even took the  Mainstay’s recipe for California Egg Puff and made it into her signature dish, Cluster Springs Egg Puff. The B&B was open year-around (without the plantation name) when we moved to Cluster Springs permanently in 2021.

When I travel, I am more prone to stay at a Marriott or a Motel 6, but I went along with the idea and have found numerous benefits.

We don’t have to travel as much: people come here instead. Some of them were great news sources for articles. I savored talking to a guy who rode his bike across Virginia, stopping at inns along the way. There was an emergency room doctor, a race car driver, a musician who jammed with me as I played piano.

There have been a few bad experiences along the way. We warned a couple not to go into the attic, but of course they went anyway. It used to be a children’s school over 100 years ago, and it had weird drawings on the wall. Terrified, the couple fled during the night, figuring the house was haunted. They even demanded a refund.

One woman had very stricct dietary guidelines in a two-page sheet of paper. Any Parmesan cheese had to be from either Italy or France. When Pickett was gone for a few days, I met this lady’s requirements for breakfast, but her sister didn’t like this food and wanted something different. So I made her French toast, which was awful. And I spilled a glass of water on her friend. We got a terrible review. “Fried bread” is what she called my dish. I have not been asked to cook breakfast since.

Apart from such disasters, there are heartwarming moments when you feel good about hosting guests. Two in the last week, in fact!

A couple driving a Hyundai electric car from South Carolina called on Saturday night asking to use our Tesla destination charger. The wife, in tears, said the Christmas parade blocked the route to the Microsoft charger, and they had trouble using the Tesla supercharger at Sheetz.  They were going to miss their grandson’s concert in Farmville. “We have called a tow truck. Can we charge at your B&B and spend the night?”

We were busy with a big event the next day at our house. Normally we have a two-night minimum, but hey…this is the Christmas season!

So we had a nice conversation with them later about the benefits and drawbacks of electric cars. People we never would have met.

Then, just yesterday, a lady called and said she was having trouble finding a room because of the opening of the casino Danville. Pickett scrambled to clean a room, and the lady is sleeping upstairs.

We don’t have a manger, but yes, there was room at the inn!

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Reasons for the visits vary all over the map: Weddings, funerals, reunions, genealogy searches, house hunting, car racing. Pickett does all of the cooking but she has someone help clean once a week and others to mow the yard. Me? Well, I help clean up after  breakfast but can’t do much besides write press releases.

Pickett likes to talk endlessly with the guests, but I have much less patience. Usually I will clear the table once they have stopped eating and begin washing dishes and then leave. If I stay and chat, take that as a real compliment.

Business is better now that we are operating year around, with a lot of guests in the spring and fall (but not winter.)

What happens when we are too old to run this place? Your guess is as good as ours.

Remorse over missed chances

  

“Regrets, I’ve had a few. But then again too few to mention.”—from the song “My Way.”

Admit it. We all have regrets. Things we wish we had done or not done. What are some of my biggest regrets? A failed romance? A terrible investment? Someone I have badly wronged?

No. Right now I regret failing to write an article after interviewing the Grateful Dead. A friend told me I should write a column about it.

In 1971, a photographer for The Associated Press saw my car in downtown San Francisco blaring loud rock music full blast on the radio. Probably Crosby Stills & Nash.

“Hey, you should write something about the rock groups around here. This is the big time,” said Richard Drew,

The city was turning out great pop music from the likes of Santana, Neil Young, the Jefferson Airplaneand the Grateful Dead.

So I got ahold of the Grateful Dead’s manager and was granted an interview. At the time, the Dead was in decline after a few hits before it became a legend with enormous following.

I arrived at the Dead’s house and headquarters in San Rafael and sat down with Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir. I think the two must have been feuding. I would ask Garcia a question and he would complain how dumb it was and Weir would respond back with an intelligent answer.

Garcia was quite unfriendly to me. Weir was uplifting and complimentary. “Good interview,” he said as it ended.

I wasn’t sure what kind of a story I had and frankly I don’t remember. I no longer have my notes. I went to see one of their concerts at the huge Winterland Arena. Despite my experience covering entertainment in Las Vegas, I had never thought to ask the Dead for tickets. When I got there, it was sold out, and I could not talk my way in.

I still had a story, but in the meantime, I had just been transferred to Washington. The Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers, political scandals. Who has time for failing rock groups?

My boss gave me a lot of other assignments before I left for the nation’s capital. “I know you will finish the Grateful Dead story,” he said. Ha! I’ll fix him. I won’t write it! I never did. Take that, Mr. Boss!
Well, as the Dead grew in stature and fame, I  had nagging doubts about my omission. They say it isn’t what you do that you regret. It is what you don’t do.

But let’s face it: I just wasn’t a fan. They did give me a record album, which they probably signed but I no longer have. (Sigh.) If their music really grabbed me, I would have rushed to put out a story, like I did after interviews with Hoagy Carmichael, Little Richard and Dionne Warwick.

So I was proved wrong. I mean, they even named an ice cream flavor after one of the people I interviewed.

About 30 years later, I was having lunch with Austin Kiplinger, my boss, the kind, dignified, stately gentleman whose family ran the Kiplinger Letter for generations.

Somehow our conversation turned to the Grateful Dead. “Why were they so popular?” He asked.

“Drugs, I think” was all I said. There was a long pause and he changed the subject to the Gross National Product, the federal funds rate  or something more boring.

Note to Mike: If a spiked story is one of your biggest regrets, you must have had a pretty easy life.

2nd Note to Mike: You know, maybe I’m glad I didn’t write the article. I have since learned that the Dead’s  strength wasn’t their music, it was the experience of the live shows. Since I never saw one, I would have been left with a bunch of meaningless quotes.

Dumb questions for smart dead people

A Polish radio station recently fired its announcer and replaced him with AI-generated content. The station drew protests when it used AI to interview famous dead people.

Well, what’s the matter with that? AI could probably find great historical quotes from these figures to turn into good listening.

So I have decided to try it. However, my first efforts turned into boring pronouncements about life. To make it more interesting, I asked Chat GPT for snarky, irreverent questions that you would never dare to ask when the subject was alive. I even asked fictional subjects questions. Here are some, but I and some friends ended up making most of them oursevles.

Marie Antoinette: Did you really say, “Let them eat cake?” Answer: “Not my fault. My uncle, a baker, put me up to it.”

Ludwig van Beethoven: What is the secret to writing a great symphony? Answer: “What?”

Elvis Presley: Why did you become so fat and use so many drugs? “C,mon, man, don’t be cruel.”

Smokey the Bear: In this dense forest, I really miss my cigarettes. What can I do? “Here, let me give you a light. Whoops! Oh, no!”

Richard Nixon: Why didn’t you just destroy the tapes? “Technology wasn’t my strong suit. I can’t even find the delete button.”

Jerry Garcia: Are you gratefully dead? “No, there is no cannabis where I am now.”

Wolfgang Mozart: What will be your legacy after you are gone? “Well, I’ll de-compose.”

Santa Claus: How can you deliver so many presents in one night? “I give my elves a lifetime supply of cookies—but I keep the milk for myself.”

Michelangelo: Why would you paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? “I was tired of painting walls.”

Jack the Ripper: Did you ever consider therapy? “Why bother? I had a handy knife to work through my issues.”

Cleopatra: What was it with all of those snakes? “You don’t care. You are just including a woman to make this column seem inclusive.”

Albert Einstein: Why did you do poorly in school? “I was figuring out how to increase the speed of light. Why worry about a stupid spelling test?”

Superman: Were you having an affair with Lois Lane?  “I couldn’t help it. She threatened me with kryptonite if I ignored her.”

Dorothy (Wizard of Oz): Why didn’t you and Toto go to a tornado shelter? “If I did, you wouldn’t have seen that great movie.”

Luke Skywalker (Star Wars): Why did you go on such space adventures? “if your father was Darth Vader, you would want to leave town too.”

William Shakespeare: Did you really write all of those plays? “No, smart guy, I stole them off the Internet!”

Lucy (Peanuts): Why do you keep pulling the football away when Charlie Brown tries to kick it? “I will keep doing that until women are admitted to the NFL.”

Carole King (who is alive): When can we see the show “Beautiful?” “It’s too late, baby, it’s too late.”

You’ve heard this one before:

Abraham Lincoln: Before the unfortunate  incident at Ford’s Theater, how was the play? “The worst thing was missing the second act.”

Mike (Who is Alive): Why are you writing these stupid quotes? “I am tired of writing real ones.”

All of the world’s information in your pocket

Having trouble keeping up with the latest technology? Just look back at the changes in computers over the years.

—Grand monstrosities:  My first introduction to computers came in college when an engineering friend took me to a huge building that housed an enormous mainframe computer. I’ll bet my phone has more power today than that contraption.

—IBM Cards: As a reservist trainee in an Army supply terminal, I worked with a big machine sorting the paper into slots for some very simple application like listing names alphabetically.

—Desktop computers. In the 1980s. I remember a K-Pro in which you had to type a full command at the bottom of the screen just to insert a word. In one job we were allowed to take a baseball bat to our clunky Q-office-powered computers when they were replaced by personal computers.

Computer networks:  When I worked at The Associated Press in Washington, our computers often crashed when there was a power failure in New York.

—Dial-up online services. America Online, Prodigy and CompuServe allowed you to connect on the Internet. But they were terribly s-l-o-w! You tied up the family’s phone line for hours.

—Search engines. Yahoo classified everything by category but soon it learned: People don’t all think alike. Google seemed like the kind, simple service to help the world until it became a greedy monopoly.

—Smart phones: Who would have thought you could take a photo or see a movie  with a phone you could put in your pocket?

—Social media:  You can stay friends forever with people you left behind years ago. You can also fight with them over politics and live to regret what you said.

—Artificial Intelligence: All of the world’s information is at your fingertips. How tall is the Eiffel tower? Who won the 1933 World Series? That is, when it’s not wrong.

   What’s next? Brains interconnected over thousands of miles?  Computers that can repair themselves? How about one you don’t have to plug in? Wait and see!