This column originally ran Sept.29, 1998.
Hooray, I thought, when AAA in Wilmington, N.C. let me borrow a telephone line to e-mail a story back to The Citizen. After an embarrassing failed attempt at the local newspaper office, I was in business now.
But when I was ready to send, I got the same perplexing message: No Dial Tone. I switched a telephone to the jack I was using and got a dandy dial tone — just not with the computer.
Stay calm, I told myself, clammy with frustration — not to mention dread of telling Dave he had been waiting in the parking lot for nothing.
I could fax it. Of course! That was it! There was a Mail Room back across the highway from the AAA office. Faxing is not the preferred way to file a story, but at least it would be in before deadline.
To say Dave was not pleased is an understatement. He was even less pleased an hour later when I emerged, defeated, from the Mail Room. First I had to wait while the manager and his teen-aged son finished boxing up what looked like a life-sized full-length portrait, to be shipped who-knows-where in a veritable coffin filled with plastic-foam peanuts.
When I finally presented my problem there was much scratching of heads over what to charge me to hook up to their telephone line and send a fax. At this point I’d have paid anything, and told them so.
They made room for me on a nearby counter and I went through all the steps necessary to fax my copy — and nothing happened. Nothing at all. No little explanatory note. Just nothing.
I was near tears. Then I thought of printing my story out on their printer and faxing it the conventional way.
“Won’t work,” said the teen, with the exasperating confidence of a youth who knows ‘way more about technology than his elders. “You’d need to install the software for our printer, and I don’t have it here.”
Later, with more time to reflect, I realized that young Techie probably knew less than I did, or he’d have suggested I make a text-copy of my story onto a floppy and use his computer to print it out.
Neither of us, however, thought of it then and so I dragged back to the motor home, confessed to Dave that he had wasted his entire afternoon for naught. We were back on the road, in icy silence, as my deadline passed.
I called in before the office closed, assuring my editor that the promised story would be in by Monday morning at the latest, if it meant I had to drive all night to Fayette County.
New to the job, she was pleasantly acquiescent; maybe it takes a few years of newspapering before editors learn to strike terror in the hearts of reporters who mealy-mouth excuses.
Saturday dawned. We completed the tedious drive up the North Carolina coast. You remember, of course, that we were going to see what would surely be Our Next Boat, and now (after getting lost twice in New Bern) we were in the parking lot, poised at the end of the dock, nearly trembling with anticipation.
And there she was. And our reaction was — well, no reaction. She was a dear little trawler, nicely kept, everything we wanted, but she simply wasn’t Our Next Boat. Don’t ask us why. We still don’t know. She simply wasn’t.
Disappointed, but determined to salvage the trip, we came home via Rincon, near Savannah, stopping to visit friends there. This was my last chance to file my story by Monday morning, and the defective modem refused again to cooperate.
Somebody told me later we should have been able to make their Mac read my PC floppy, but at the time, this was just one more thing I didn’t think to try. Ah, technology and the AARP generation!
So I did the only thing I knew to do: I hand-copied almost 2,500 words — two main stories and a sidebar — into my friends’ Macintosh.
It took hours. Our hosts went to bed, leaving me to depend upon another teen to save my bacon. After spell-checking, proofing, and proofing again, I turned my precious document over to her and watched it disappear as she cut and pasted it to AOL.
She clicked “Send,” the whirling icon began its spin — and nothing happened. Is this story doomed? I began to scream inside my head.
Instead, I murmured calmly, “Katie. I’m going to get washed up for bed. Do whatever you have to do. I can’t watch. Please. Please — don’t let…” and I choked up and left the study.
When I came back, Katie was chatting on-line with a friend. “Did it…? Did you…?” I began.
“Sure,” she shrugged. “No problem. What did you expect?”
After all that story had been through, what indeed?
Oh, and the irony I promised? Have you been wondering what the story was about?
Downscaling: How To Simplify Your Life.
[Sallie Satterthwaite of Peachtree City has been writing for The Citizen since our first issue Feb. 10, 1993. Before that she had served as a city councilwoman and as a volunteer emergency medical technician. She is the only columnist we know who has a fire station named for her. Her email is SallieS@Juno.com.]
