Apocalypse Denied

It's a fact too few people know: In 1961 a crippled B-52 dropped two megaton nuclear weapons on the farm community of Faro, North Carolina. I grew up a few miles from where those bombs landed and I always heard rumors about the night Wayne County was nearly erased. Recently, Bob Buckley and I caught up with survivors, witnesses and an author of a new book on the matter, who helped us piece together this anatomy of a (near) disaster...

More on the Making of the Goldsboro Broken Arrow

When retired Air Force officer Joel Dobson contacted me with news he'd written a book about the near annihilation, I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. All my life, I'd heard vague claims of fire in the sky; I wanted facts and figures. On that, The Goldsboro Broken Arrow delivers. Dobson's SAC credentials shows through as he lists the risks of nuclear brinkmanship with a war planner's dead-eyed detachment. That's what a story like this requires. This is by far the definitive account of the incident and among those diagrams, charts and photos lie the bones of a blockbuster. Hear me, Hollywood: King Kong ain't got nuthin on the likes of Scott Tulloch, Jack ReVelle and Adam Mattocks.

That's Lieutenant Adam Mattocks, thank you very much. He was aboard the B-52 Stratofortress when it developed a fuel leak, as a back-up pilot withOUT an ejection seat. When the aircraft began to break apart he dove through an opening in the crumbling behemoth. Miraculously, he made it safely to the ground, where a rural family didn't know what to make of the tall black man with a parachute on his back standing on their front porch. Fifty one years later, Mattocks welcomed Bob Buckley and I up their own porch as we dragged lights and tripod inside. His lovely wife held the family dachshund as the man who fell to Earth recounted every inch of his descent.    

Of course, much of what Mattocks described would be hard to imagine without any visual proof. Luckily for those of us in the eyeball business, a treasure trove of evidence has slowly been unearthed. Author Joel Dobson deserves endless credit for compiling what does exist and his enthusiasm for the project didn't end when his book hit the presses. The wreckage, the crew, the area of impact: seeing leads to believing. Among the many photos he provided, this one proved to be the most iconic. Hey, I don't care how shrewd a wordsmith you are, nothing conveys the idea of global disaster averted like a picture of an eleven foot long thermonuclear bomb hanging from a neighborhood tree.     

One person who doesn't need a picture album to remember that white hot winter night is Billy Reeves. He was eighteen years old when parts of the B-52 and its deadly payload struck the Faro farmland across from his home. Reeves saw it all and even helped the Air Force with the extraordinary search that followed. For half a century he's assured anyone who doubted this story's veracity that the sky did indeed turn red that night. When Bob and I met Reeves in that fabled field, he surprised me by reeling off names of the many Pittmans we both knew. Then he told me what his own family thought the night vessels of death rained down from above. "Mama thought it was End Times." he said.

She was almost right.

Daze of Chunder

Just so you don't think Viewfinder BLUES has gone all Ken Burns on ya, here's a modern day screen-grab of a cutting-edge journalist in action. Okay, so it's just a random snapshot of my friend Eric daydreaming. Maybe he was pondering one of life's great mysteries, I dunno. See, some news shooters mentally calibrate disc space during press conferences. Others merely hallucinate. Me, I whip out the ole digital and photograph my cohorts. Sure, they roll their eyes, hide behind their tripods, even shoot me the occasional bird ... but deep down inside their crusty little hearts, I believe they like it.

Though that would explain all the brake problems I've had with Unit Four.

There Goes My Hero...

Ever since television  engineers stitched together the first test pattern out of stolen horse blankets, lenslingers like me have been expected to ride side-saddle. Case in point: this extraordinary find by broadcast archivist Amanda Emily. That's Harry Truman in the upper right. Known for his two mile hikes before breakfast, here the ex-President pounds the San Diego pavement with cronies in tow. It must have been a celebrated troll, for why else would KOGO-TV plant their finest photog in a Radio Flyer? It had to be a bumpy ride - even with a suited cohort at the helm, er, handle... Ya know, this is the part of the post where I usually make fun of the shooter's wardrobe, heap scorn on the retro-tech or just generally disrespect the mission at hand. I was all about to go down that road when Amanda hepped me to the man in the wagon... 

That's George Potter, a man who had lived several lifetimes before he ever plopped down in that child's toy. In World War II, he was a member of the famed 'Easy Company' - the group of soldiers immortalized in the book and mini-series Band of Brothers. Potter parachuted into Normandy, lost his rifle in mid-flight and landed on a rooftop. Later, he received the Bronze Star and at one point broke his leg. But when he heard E Company was about to jump into Holland, he removed his cast, fled the hospital rejoined his unit in time. George Potter survived the war, but he didn't come home completely intact. He didn't talk much about what he saw there, but he did once tell his sons about pulling the boots off a dead soldier to appease his own frostbitten feet. Surely, there were even darker moments overseas and while Potter was clearly tortured by many of them, he wasn't the kind to foist that on his family. Instead, he went to work - eventually landing as TV News photographer for KOGO-TV (now KGTV). What George Potter saw during (and after) the war could no doubt fill a book, but much of it has been lost in the dustbin of history. One thing is for sure: there's often more to that man behind the camera than you see at first glance.

But you knew that.

Bright Passenger

Hey kids, what do serial killers and TV news photogs have in common? Their wardrobe, of course! That and their habit of driving around with 'kits' in the trunk. You know, the kind of thing everyone keeps handy: bleach, jumpsuits, a few tarps.  Hey, you never know when you're gonna have to go cover a mudslide, wash up after a bloodbath, profile a panhandler or simply off a hobo. Either way, you're gonna want to be prepared, so I suggest staying up late at night categorizing your supplies. Hmm? No, hanging upside down in your closet while you sleep should be optional, though it may help some of those sorer torsos out there. What you really want to do is learn the location of the nearest sorority house, er Radio Shack. Look, the urge to feel the thrum of a fresh nine volt could strike at any moment. You don't wanna be circling some dark parking lot, waiting for some hero type to start ogling your logos. So know when to blend, how to hide and where to find the exits. Master that and you'll go as far as your heart of darkness or fanny-pack full of pork rinds will take you. Just keep you head about you. Hell, you may even wanna cover it up altogether. OOH, I know! Go to your local tractor-pull and see if they're still giving away bright orange ski-masks as door prizes. That way, you'll always be in style -- whether you're bum-rushing ribbon-cuttings or working on your earlobe collection.

Same thing, really.

Diagnosis: Lifer

What is Viewfinder BLUES?

It's that feeling you get while freshening up a widow's porch, rearranging the rocking chairs so that sunlight will glint off the tears you're about to capture.

It's that sudden knowledge that you're gonna spend the rest of the day camped out in an electrified dumpster with promises printed on it.

It's the sensation you get when the woman who called your station demanding something be done about the problem in her neighborhood tells you she doesn't want to talk about it on camera.

It's that deep-seeded realization that no matter how many heartfelt epics you serve up night after night, the viewers just want to watch the hot chick wiggle through her stand-up.

It's that dull throb you feel behind your temples as a young colleague who's yet to master the fundamentals wonders how long it will be before he wins his first Emmy.

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But it is so much more. It's a self diagnosis, the kind of thing you come down with while spinning your wheels at the intersection of Pixels and Grit. It's also an excuse: "Hey I'd like to help with your telethon and all, but I got a wicked case of Viewfinder BLUES. Doc says the only cure is warm beer and a few 'WKRP in Cincinnati' episodes." And for better or worse, it's become a bit of a lifestyle. Don't believe me? Look around your newsroom. Surely you'll find an aging photog or two bitching about how the free ice cream at that last ribbon-cutting was too cold.

I get that guy. Hell, some days, I AM that guy. But by twisting grist into pithy epistles, I've found a way to live with this affliction. It's no cure, mind you. I still lapse into torpor on a regular basis; feel sorry for myself 'cause I stayed at the party too long. That's my hang up, not yours. And while I still have no good answer whenever someone asks me why I haven't written that book yet, know that I haven't given up on the idea of starting it one day. For now I'll forge ahead, knowing that, if nothing else - I got a title that says it all....

Besides, 'Live Shot Miasma' just didn't sound right.

Legends of the Maw

Bonfires, lock-downs, cockfights ... you never know where you'll run into (or over) a colleague.  And since it's chaos we seek, we never let it stop us from catching up. Just ask David R. Busse, a Senior Fellow with the Lenslinger Institute. Busse has seen it all, all right, but he hasn't done so alone. And when he spots a colleague across the maw, he doesn't let said bedlam interrupt his visit. Such was the case the other day, when protesters stormed the campus of the University of California-Riverside...

"Your correspondent, now 55 and proud of the fact that he recently shed knee braces and takes ibuprofen only on really busy days, jumped in the fray and moved up the stairs with the mob, certainly the only person on this campus at the moment wearing a Cabela’s baseball cap. As crowd turned the corner near the top landing, they were met by a brace of helmeted University police in full riot gear. The upward mobility of the group quickly stopped.

In younger days, your correspondent would have pushed his way to the 18-inches or so of tense air that separated youths from hickory batons. About the time he began to ponder that move, and among drum-beating, chanting and loud discussion of the moment, there was a tap on the shoulder, and someone muttering “Hey, Busse…” (pronounced bus-eee in case you were wondering).

It was the familiar voice of Kurt Miller, veteran news photographer of the Riverside Press-Enterprise newspaper, and a person with whom this correspondent had covered fire, flood and, now, insurrection, for more than three decades.

The chanting continued, but among the shoving, jostling and drumming, two veterans managed to catch up on the goings-on among respective places of employment, family stuff, retirement plans and other such weighty matters…cocktail party conversation among the jetsam and flotsam...

Ten minutes later, the protesters retreated, cops held their ground and peace returned to that side of the building. Your correspondent began to think of deadlines and image ingestion issues. A packed lunch also awaited in the back seat of Minicam Unit 51 and somewhere in that lunch bag were a couple of ibuprofen tablets."

With friends like that, who needs painkillers?

Schmuck Alert: Get a Leg Up!

Okay, show of hands... Who here hasn't fantasized about ripping off a tripod leg and going all Billy Jack on somebody? I myself have concocted whole action sequences in my head while pacing about some deserted sallyport (look it up). But to actually do it? In broad daylight? As cameras rolled? Gentility forbids! Besides, you know what kind of tensile strength it takes to wrench a limb off a modern-day camera stand? I'm w-a-a-y too lazy for that. Plus, I got CLASS - a mental condition not shared by the crazy bitch, er, distraught family member who - in under sixty seconds - brought more shame to Detroit City than any twenty members of the Kiss Army combined. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to step away from this paragraph and collect my thoughts.

Ahem.

You know, we've seen a lot of savagery here at Schmuck Alert Central. Handcuff tantrums, slow-motion moonshiner spit, a veritable parade of ill-advised dropkicks... But in all our days of screening rash of acts of video, we've never before witnessed the kind of tripod atrocity as the wanton utensil sacrifice depicted in the clip below.  As with many crimes against the camera, it happened outside a courthouse. That's where the families of both the victim and defendant in a murder case left an arraignment Saturday afternoon. Free from the supervision of the courtroom's drowsy bailiffs, the relatives waste no time cursing each other and the predictable collision ensues.

Third verse, same as the first.

Or so we think, for after a few moments of rampant apoplexy, one young lady sheds her pink jacket and does something wholly unexpected. She makes a beeline for the nearest tripod, body-slams the damn thing, then throttles that weak-kneed beast in front of God and everybody. This is a new maneuver in the annals of news crew abuse and quite possibly, a sign of the apocalypse. I can only wonder what's going through the photog's mind as he pans from the general chaos around him to the methodical dismemberment of the three-legged creature he takes with him everywhere he goes. The mind reels. Worse yet, the woman manages to separate said leg, no easy feat I assure you. She then brandishes it a bit before finally following her family down the street, all the while twirling the broken leg like some demented drum majorette from Hell and leaving the rest of civilization speechless...

Schmuck!