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.