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I was called back to headquarters to investigate a mysterious beeping sound.
Scott Hollifield is editor/GM of The McDowell News in Marion, North Carolina, and a humor columnist. Contact him at rhollifield@mcdowellnews.com.
And by headquarters, I mean the two-story newspaper building a block off Main that was a state-of-the-art facility when constructed in the 1950s. Ink-stained pressmen, cigarettes dangling from their lips, kept the machinery churning out newspaper after newspaper. School kids waited by the back door for their copies to run their afternoon routes or to better yet snag a coveted spot near the cotton mill when the whistle blew.
Nickels and dimes went a long way back then.
Upstairs, grizzled newspaper veterans and cub reporters alike worked the phones and banged out copy on manual typewriters.
“I need the Rippers’ game in five minutes, see?”
“Somebody get the mayor on the horn!”
“Who ate my bologna sandwich? Marvin, when I get my hands on you…”
I wasn’t actually there for that, coming along a couple of decades later, but I imagine the building that’s been my workplace for 30-plus years was much like those newspaper films from the 1930s and ‘40s I watched on cable.
Today, the outside of the building remains much the same as when it opened. Inside has seen multiple renovations. The press was removed in the 1990s and printing moved east, then farther ease and then farther east.
Even though actual readership grew thanks to the Internet, the number of people working inside the building steadily dwindled as technology changed. Nearly 40 workers shrank to 20 and then down to less than 10 people selling ads, suffering through local government meetings, reporting on crime and covering ballgames.
Back to that mysterious sound at headquarters.
“There’s a beeping noise in the server room,” read the email. “I heard it when I was in the kitchen earlier this morning. It sounds like it’s coming from the black box inside (the) black metal cage thing. It may be nothing, but thought you should know since you’ll be gone out of town for a few days.”
In addition to watching a lot of old-time newspaper movies from the early 20th century, I have watched a ton of actions flicks. I know when there is a beeping noise, there is almost always a bomb attached to a digital clock that is counting down to an explosion.
And the person who is going on a much-needed vacation or, worse yet, retiring after his last day on the job, will be forced to disarm the bomb by cutting either the red wire or the blue wire. Those are the rules.
I rushed back to headquarters.
“I need everyone to clear out of this building on the double,” I said to no one since corporations had cleared out newspaper buildings long before the beeping began. “We’ve got a situation on our hands.”
I contacted our IT guy, who in the movies sits in a darkened room surrounded by flashing computer screens, running data and writing code and doing other things action heroes don’t understand.
“I’ve got a beeping in the old server room,” I said. “Repeat, a beeping. I’m pretty sure it’s a bomb planted by Russian operatives intent on disrupting U.S. elections by targeting small-town newspaper buildings where people no longer work. Should I cut the red wire or the blue wire to disarm it?
“I think that’s the battery backup for the server equipment that’s no longer in there,” came the reply.
“I didn’t ask you what you thought, Einstein, I asked you RED WIRE OR BLUE WIRE!”
“Just unplug it and it should eventually stop beeping,” he said.
I took a deep breath, steadied my hand and reached for the cord.
Slowly, I cut the power from the battery backup and/or bomb. A bead of sweat ran down my forehead. The beeping stopped. There was no explosion.
“I’m getting too old for this,” I said to the empty building.
Scott Hollifield is editor of The McDowell News in Marion, North Carolina, and a humor columnist. Contact him at rhollifield@mcdowellnews.com.
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Scott Hollifield is editor/GM of The McDowell News in Marion, North Carolina, and a humor columnist. Contact him at rhollifield@mcdowellnews.com.
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