A Head Full of Ideas that were Driving Me Insane....

Two nights. Two memories. One very good. One very bad.

I will forever associate my daily newspaper days with the constant clickity-clacking sound of a teletype machine. (No idea what this sounds like? Go here and download the thing, or click this.) Our newsroom had two, next to each other in a little corner alcove, one always ready to switch to if the other jammed or ran out of the huge industrial rolls of newsprint which put out its vital world news content.

Thar war no Intrawebs in 1978, which is when this story begins, so one of the benefits of staying up past midnight most nights was we got the news and the ballscores and the juicy gossip off those newswires long before anyone else on campus. I was a late bloomer as a newswriter and didn't join the paper until my sophomore year. On my first night going up those stairs, the editors gave us "compets" the tour, including of the alcove with the teletype machines. They mentioned that the machines had a loud bell which would go off in the event of stop-the-presses breaking news, but not to worry, that never happened.

It happened that night.

For that night was Sunday, September 17, 1978, and President Carter had just brokered the landmark Egypt-Israeli peace accord. We were busier than usual that night and we learned an awful lot about the news business.

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For the next two-plus years, I evolved from a slackadasical trainee into a pretty decent, even respected, reporter and editor. By my senior fall, I was the one doing the training of the new kids coming up those stairs. I also worked on the side as the local part-time correspondent for the (then three) Syracuse newspapers. I'd seen it all, or mostly all, but in all that time, that bell had never gone off again. Not for Bucky Dent, not for Iran, not for Reagan's stunning election victory.

Not until twenty-five years ago tonight.

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We were a tough and cynical bunch. We went after the local DA with a story about him beating his wife. We had a prominent sign in the newsroom saying "Never believe a rumor until it's officially denied." I came close to a reprimand for putting a caption on a photo of a fire at the Ag College poultry barn that read "Chicken Fry."

But when the bell rang for the sudden and tragic death of John Lennon? We cried. We hugged. We screamed for the loss of a voice which had brought us through our childhoods, gone away for awhile, and only recently come back with a renewed strength and, yes, Imagine-ation.

And then we went back to work writing it all down.

I can't remember what I wrote, or even if I did. It was a Monday night; Sundays were my usual night to copy-edit, but I might have had something else in the paper that night and if I did anything, it was likely CE'ing someone else's reaction piece. But I'll never forget where I was, nor the new and blacker meaning of the ringing of that bell.