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Drayton

It sounded like a good idea at the time, like a nice thing to do. It was simple: a group who had once worked at one or the other of the Denver daily newspapers would journey north to a small town in North Dakota there to put out the local newspaper for two weeks. The idea was to give the overworked and harried owner/editor of the newspaper two weeks of rest, something he is otherwise unlikely to get for the duration of his newspaper ownership.

This impulse of human kindness was the brainchild of Dick Johnson who discussed the notion with said editor. Larry Ritzo’s ready consent to allowing this group to take over his newspaper (and livelihood) for two weeks should have put me on alert. But, no, I was too far into the altruistic thing: harried editor of a small town paper, after a couple of years of the one-man-band, seven-days-a-week routine, no social life, nearing burnout, desperate to be relieved by a squad of bored semi-retired journalists who couldn’t resist the call of the ink heading north to give him the respite that would enable him to once again pick up the banner and run with it. It was the stuff of, if not epics, then at least soap opera. The deal was made in the spring of 2008. Now, in late spring of 2009, I find myself in Johnson’s Ford F250, his 30-foot Airstream trailing behind, about 400 miles into the 1,100-mile journey to Drayton, N.D. We had been driving for four hours out of Douglas, Wy. and hadn’t seen a living thing in all that time except for scattered herds of antelope.

It was in the third hour of looking out the window at the endless ribbon of road stretching before us and disappearing over the horizon that I began to question how good an idea this was. Of course, I should have had doubts when I realized that the redoubtable Richard Conway who now lives in Puget Townsend in Washington was the only other person on the list of about a dozen who had been invited to make a firm commitment. So, here we were, Johnson and I, accompanied by his son Tim who at the moment was driving the rig up what I was beginning to think of as the highway to nowhere munching chocolate covered raisins and checking my cell phone for a signal. Nothing.

Back to the mission at hand. How many years had it been since I had worked on a small town newspaper? Too many. It’s what newly hatched journalists do. They work on newspapers in small towns until they have made most of the mistakes they are likely to make and thus learn something about what the business of news gathering. The small weeklies are great laboratories for developing the baby reporter’s skill and discipline in the practice of his craft. And journalism is a craft. It’s not an art, not a science; it’s a craft. It’s more aptly compared to carpentry than to modern art: you get better the longer you do it and it is equally unforgiving of mistakes. What I was thinking about was how hard it was to find news in a small town. It had been a long time since I had been there but I still remembered that. What made me think I was going to find news any more easily in this small town I didn’t know at all?

Of course, we had Johnson. He knew the town. He grew up there. His father had been the banker and he had himself been a home town baseball hero when he was in high school. He was still in touch with people he had known since he was in school. In fact, I was to stay in the home of a close family friend whose house was conveniently available during our two-week stay. On the other hand, we had Johnson who might find it amusing to just throw me out there to sink or swim on my own.

Speaking of swimming, the Red River, which flows through Drayton, was still at flood stage and residents who lived north of town across the river still could not cross the bridge into the main village. Word was that the bridge would probably open again any day now. I could only hope this wasn’t a mere rumor.

W e plowed on. The day was getting late and we were looking for a place to stay. There was nothing in front of us but wide open country and the occasional small, as in very small, town. It seemed unlikely to me that any of these towns would have a motel where I could spend the night since the plan was for the guys to stay in the Airstream. Johnson insisted we would find a place and even a restaurant that would serve dinner. At this point I was taking great comfort in the presence of Tim who is a solid young man planning a career in statistics, a serious subject. Having a mathematician hanging out with a couple of journalists I thought added a certain amount of respectability to this expedition. Besides, his driving was very good and he was as eager to find food as I was to find shelter.

Johnson insisted that Bowman, N.D. was the place we would find both. Looking at the map, I saw that Bowman was spelled out in rather small letters surrounded by large amounts of white space leading me to believe this was not a metropolis and there was very little else in the way of human habitation for about 100 miles in every direction. How wrong I was. As we pulled in to Bowman at about 9:30, hungry enough I would have eaten tofu, we immediately spotted a motel at the south end of town. I went in to the office but there was no room available. In Bowman, N.D the motel was full! The proprietor called the other motel in town and they had a room. Then the search was on for food. There were about three places to eat in this town of maybe a thousand inhabitants but they all closed at 8 p.m. which is the time any respectable person would have finished dinner. Eventually, a pizza sign on the local bowling alley led us to food. There was pizza, hamburger and chicken and we just managed to get our orders in before the kitchen closed although the teenage server made it clear he was not happy about having his quitting time delayed by our order. I ate my chicken without complaint then was delivered back to my motel.