A Journalistic Journey

 Although this column isn't about Sharpsburg, it is written by a Sharpsburg girl. I had lots of fun during my time spent as a journalist, something this small town girl never dreamed she would get to do.

I reckon I should add my first jobs, that will make this column about Sharpsburg for sure.

My very first job was picking peppers for, ugg their names escape me right now! 

They never picked me to go back the next morning so I must have been a terrible worker.

Then there was the time Mrs. Glennie McQuithy hired me and Claudia to wash the basement windows in her and Mr. Stanley's new house.  I remember she brought us a galvanized bucket and some rubbing alcohol and seems like some vinegar to clean the windows.

A few years later, Dwayne would let us help him pull tobacco plants for Omar Ratliff and put in hay. 

In the fall we got to help Dwayne strip Mr. Omar's tobacco, and back then we tied hands and I had a terrible time tying mine, so my hands were always an ugly mess!! 

One time Mrs.Polly, Omar's wife, hired me and Dwayne to put up a swing in one of the back yard trees. We were working along pretty good and about had the job done when Mrs.Polly came to check on us and she decided we needed to pull the rope up a little more. As she was showing us where the rope needed to be we realized she had dog poop on her hands and was getting it all over the rope. Well, me and my brother started cracking up laughing. Low and behold if Mrs. Polly just decided to fire us right then and there.

Sometimes daddy would take us down Flat Creek to gather walnuts and I probably drove him nuts and my siblings too because I spent the entire time singing at the top of my lungs, this tune,  Daddy Frank played the guitar and French Harp, sister played the ringing tambourine, mama couldn't hear our pretty music, but she read our lips and helped the family sing. That's all the words I could remember and I sang those lines over and over and over again. I bet if you listen carefully on a windy day you can still hear my echoes, hahaha.

When April and I were in our teens, Ed Catchings, my sister Claudia's father in-law, hired us to help them work in their tobacco. We sure had a lot of fun working for the Catchings family. I was not very good at following the setter or dropping plants from the setter, matter of fact I was horrible at those two jobs. I also hated to pull plants, and didn't really care much for topping or chopping out the fields. But I loved housing season!! I have many fond memories of being in the stripping room and can almost smell the tobacco leaves and the wood smoke. Those were the good old days I tell ya!

As the years went by I held too many jobs to tell about before Tisha hired me to work for the Messenger.

A Journalistic Journey

Being a journalist allows for some fun and exciting opportunities, most of which would never come my way if I wasn't working for a newspaper.

One event I can recall is when Tisha and I got to take a hot-air balloon ride.

We floated almost 3000 feet up in the air, over the Ewing-Fleming County Fairgrounds while the fair was in full swing.

Afterwards we both admitted that we were scared, but it was an amazing experience.

One year Debbie and I, and my oldest daughter Natalie, went out to watch a country music video being shot at the Goddard Bridge. Mark Brown, lead singer of Sawyer Brown, had written a new song was making video inside the bridge.

It took an entire day to shoot just a few seconds of live video, and if you weren't there you would never know that split second scene in the finished product was from the Goddard bridge.

We were allowed on the singers bus for an interview, and Debbie still laughs at me to this day because, when we sat down to talk, I was at a complete loss for words!

A year or so later, the Messenger Crew met up with the legendary John Anderson at the Poppy Mountain Festival and got to chat with him back stage.

When former President Bill Clinton was on the campaign trail for Hilary, he and their daughter Chelsea were in Maysville. I was granted an interview with the former first daughter at Capronis’ on the River but there were just too many folks rallied around Bill at the Mason County High School for me to talk to him, but i did get some cool pictures that day.

On my drive home, Clinton’s Secret Service men were in a black SUV directly behind me and I saw them turn to the right towards the Flemingsburg McDonald s. We had gotten news that Clinton would make an appearance at our local Dairy Queen so I headed to the DQ, but when I got there a couple other media outlets told me Bill Clinton had decided to make his next stop in Rowan County.

So,with that news I drove back to the office and dropped off some papers and took the back road that runs behind the dairy queen.

Just as I drove passed the little road that turns into the back lot of DQ, I spied two Sheriffs cars blocking the road and low and behold if I didn't spot Bill Clinton himself coming out the back door of the restaurant!

I was ticked off, but should have known competition had played a trick on me and I fell for it.

Tisha and I also attended the special humane society benefit dinner at Caproni’s where Mason County Native Cindy from Survivor was the special guest.

Kentucky Joe was another nice person I had the opportunity to chat with when he was a guest at the Fleming County High School.

Now, what is sad, is we didn't get to attend the special screening of George Clooney’s movie Leatherheads and George along with Renee Zellweger were the guest of honor.

But, that was probably a blessing in disguise since I would have been so star struck that I would have not been able to utter a word.

As a journalist, I have had the chance to be in the same room with a few celebrities, and it is exciting to see and watch famous people, but what makes the journey more interesting, is all the stories told to us by local folks.  March 24, 2016