What’s on Tonight?

By Jacqueline McDonald

The sun set in the winter of 1968 on my part-time job as the uncredited TV reporter for the Lowell Sun.  The unsupervised job was to copy licensed show summaries and format them for the paper’s TV section. Not much fun in that. Instead, using poetic license, I wrote original commentary on the shows that I wanted to feature based on the blurbs and studio glossies provided by ABC, NBC and CBS. I didn’t mess with the TV Guide listings because my Dad followed them like a Viking tracked constellations.

I arrived at the imposing Lowell Sun building after school at about three in the afternoon and generally worked until 5:30 PM or so. The newsroom was cavernous and filled with smoky, stale air. Overflowing ashtrays and black and gray Remington Rand typewriters dotted cafeteria-style, wooden tables. I always picked the typewriter that sat nearest a large, multi-pane, wood-frame window that maximized natural light and warned of night fall. Normally, I had the entire room to myself which was welcome but a bit scary. When I’d finished my work, I placed it in an in-box on the only proper desk in the room.

On my way out, a male voice rose to reach my ears from the back of the room. Startled, I only got the gist of Mr. Costello’s words…something about how I seemed to connect disparate TV show blurbs into one, long continuing story. “Not sure how you do that,” were his only words I’d clearly heard.

Feeling chastised, I wondered, did he say long and boring? Offering no reply, I hurried down the stairs. Believing that Mr. Costello’s words meant that the jig was up, I worried that the gig might also be. St. Louis Academy, my alma mater, had recommended me for this volunteer, i.e. unpaid intern position, and would not be pleased to learn that I had squandered the opportunity. Nor, would they be surprised by the predictable reason for my dismissal.  As I walked alone across the Bridge Street Bridge toward my Centralville home, I resolved not to be fired. But, if I couldn’t do the job my way, I’d cross the highway, the VFW highway, to be specific, back to my house never to return to TV “reporting”.

Looking back, I wish I’d had the maturity and self-confidence to engage Mr. Costello. In retrospect, perhaps he actually even liked my work. But, more likely, he didn’t and intended to fire me.

Driven by insecurity and immaturity, I decided I’d quit rather than be fired. The following day at schooI, I subjected Sister Germaine to a hypothetical account of the perils of walking home alone in the cold and dark winter’s night. It was an unarguably effective fire prevention position. Sister Germaine sent the Lowell Sun a senior to replace me. I thought I didn’t have anything to lose but I was wrong.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “…never regret what you don’t write; it is what you do write that you are often called upon to feel sorry for.”

It was my loss, Mr. Costello, rest in peace, Sir.

****

Lowell-native Jacqueline McDonald is the author of the award-winning Lowell Trilogy featuring The Paper Route, Humming Bridge, and Epiphany, all set in the French-Canadian neighborhood of her youth. Before turning to fiction, Jacqueline worked as a TV reporter at the Lowell Sun and as a free-lance magazine article writer.