Trash and treasures mix and mingle

Having spent more than 30 years in newspaper newsrooms I can say, with some authority, that journalists for the most part are not neat people. There certainly are exceptions, but most of us save too much and throw away too little.

I also can say with a certain amount of authority (and little expected argument) that I am among the worst.

It’s a lifetime characteristic. I’ve always kept too many things.

So it was no surprise on a recent trip to my mother’s rural home, while cleaning out a storage area, that I found boxes with my name on them. It’s a home I haven’t lived in for decades, but there’s still stuff there with my name on it.

I sorted through five boxes filled with lots of memories and lots of stuff, including my first journalistic endeavors while still a college student. I tossed most of it, ending up with less than half a box of stuff that I actually still wanted.

There were many treasures, many memories, but perhaps the most precious was an old autograph book – seriously – a relic of the '60s. I remember getting it and having all my friends sign it and smiled when I looked at the childish scrawls and remembered those now long-distant memories that represented my friends.

Then, on the last page, I found the thing that made decades of being stacked in a box worthwhile.

It was the mid-1960s and among my teachers at LaPorte Junior High was a larger-than-life woman named Mrs. Porter. She taught reading, and maybe English as well, but the specifics weren’t important. She was as much about theatrics as teaching. Her longest-running act was her fondness for all things Texas and all things large. She refused to acknowledge the existence of Alaska as a state and told wonderful (frequently embellished) tales of Texas’ legendary heroes.

One day we had a guest in Mrs. Porter’s class. His name was Leon Hale and he was, at the time, a columnist for the now-defunct Houston Post. He’s still a well-known author and columnist who now writes for the Houston Chronicle. He told his tall tales, talked about writing, and generally impressed and entertained us.

I chatted with him briefly discussing the similarities between his upbringing and my mother’s. And I got his autograph.

As I gazed at that faded autograph among my “treasures,” I had to smile, knowing how far Leon and I both had come since that afternoon in Mrs. Porter’s classroom and pondering the impact of that long-ago encounter.

Names enhance the value of the opinion

Imagine, if you would, that you put your name on everything you did, every day. Imagine if your screaming child with the jelly on his shirt and the dirty feet was wearing a shirt that said, “child of (mother’s name here).”

Imagine if that fast-food hamburger you got at the drive through that had mustard instead of mayonnaise and only one pickle instead of two said, “made with care (or lack thereof) by Bob Smith.”

Imagine, if the clothing you wore, instead of saying, “inspected by No. 9,” said, “inspected by Mary Lou Jones” along with her address and telephone number.

There are positives and negatives to that possibility. If your work was wonderful, you would be very proud. If your work was haphazard or even negligent, you might be less inclined to claim it.

We, at The Enterprise, claim our work every day. Stories carry bylines clearly sharing which reporter did the work and wrote the story. They also carry what we call “taglines” that give the reporter’s e-mail address and telephone number. It’s part of transparency. Even pages carry the names of the copy editors who produced them. We claim our work, good or bad, right or wrong, and we put ourselves on the line to do it.

That said, we also consider anonymity another word for cowardice.

We don’t accept anonymous letters for our Opinions page because we think no opinion expressed without the courage of a name deserves acknowledgement.

Anonymous phone calls get similar consideration.

So, it’s important to make this clear to anyone with a concern or criticism of anything in Enterprise: We’re happy to hear you out and even publish your comments on our pages --- if you own them.

No gutless, name-calling cowards need bother to respond.

My name is Sheila Friedeck, I am the Reader Representative at The Enterprise, my phone number is 409-880-0748 and my e-mail address is readerrep@beaumontenterprise.com – and I believe in good journalism.