Re: Emergency Preparations

[mwaters@mail.wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

>Chuck Igo wrote:
<snip>
> and the best newsrooms always had some extra AP ribbons around.
>And Bill O'Neill wrote:
>The black ink under the nails was a sure sign of a caring broadcast
>professional.  Deaf as wood, but caring.

        Probably the most *fun* was waiting for the wire to be sending
something you knew you didn't need before you would go ahead and change the
ribbon. Otherwise, you figured for sure you'd miss a bulletin about an
atomic bomb blast or something. Meanwhile, you were trying to read copy
that gradually got so bad over an hour or so that it basically got to be
nothing but slight indentations in the paper from the keys hitting it, with
just about no ink. Holding the paper sideways to the light helped <g>.
        Then, when you saw the start of the Midwest grain report or the
Block Island forecast (and your station was 100 miles from the ocean),
you'd do another warm-up for the Olympic tryouts, so you'd be ready just in
case they added fastest changing of an AP ribbon as an event in the next
summer games.
        Then, of course, you could end up like me, in ribbon-changing hell,
working for the AP, with about six machines pounding away in a room in the
back.
        Computer-shahmoooter. Kids in radio have it so easy these days.
Never get their hands dirty. Don't have to walk five miles each way, in a
blizzard, uphill both ways, to check the meter readings at the transmitter
site anymore, either.