Sarah Allen

About five to seven years into my almost 10-year career at the mighty Mezz, a reporter named Sarah Allen was hired.
Sarah was tall and thin and fairly attractive, and probably in her late 20s, which means I was old enough to be her grandfather.
Sarah was hired to be backup Police Reporter.
Our Police Reporter was Anne Johnston (“AJ”), and was a fabulous Police Reporter.
She reflected the dedication of all long-time Messenger employees, people driven to do a good job.
She kept a scanner at home, and if something came on it, she’d get up and go cover it.
Car accidents, fires, whatever; she was the reporter. She also covered criminal court-cases.
What made her good was her cultivating good working relationships with her sources; so her reporting could be exceptional.
AJ also had a daily duty to the newspaper: the “Police Beat;” daily reportage of local police blotters.
Like most Messenger employees she was stretched way too thin.
“Police Beat” was culled from a blizzard of faxes; usually one fax per incident.
“Police Beat” might only run eight column-inches, but it could be an entire half-page.
So AJ needed help, and that was Sarah Allen.
I remember AJ’s insistence we not hire some slacker. The hire had to pinch-hit.
Sarah was also a reporter; often filing a touchy-feely front-page story.
I remember her covering a local school language program to teach English to children of Vietnamese immigrants.
The head of that program was Karin Morgan (“CAR-in”), who we went to college with.
“I went to college with that girl,” I said to Sarah.
“‘Girl?’” Sarah asked. “Seemed more like a grown woman to me.”
Well yes, Class of ‘67 — that makes her in her late 50s; not Sarah’s age.
The Messenger had four regular columns each week, and it fell to me to process them, since I could.
—1) Was “Johnny B” (John Barrington), our Seniors Columnist. JB (in his 80s) was ‘pyooter-challenged. All he could do was crank out his column on his old Royal typewriter, the one he used cranking out sports coverage for some news service in the ‘50s.
I tried to show him e-mail, but he was lost.
I could OCR-scan his column, but it was a mess. Too many misreads — JB had penciled in corrections.
Finally I turned it over to a typist; we had a girl that was really fast.
It was faster for her to type JB’s column, so that was what we did.
—2) Was “Green Thumb,” by Doc and Katy Abraham of nearby Naples, our gardening column. “Green Thumb” was nationally syndicated; not just the Messenger. They also had a radio-program.
We’d get Word printouts snail-mail, so I could OCR-scan them.
Doc and Katy were in their 90s — I’m sure the Word printouts were their son.
They could have been attached in e-mails, but a hard-copy Word printout was better than nothing.
What I’d do is OCR-scan their column, fiddle it, and then file the result.
That is what got published — pretty much what they filed. I didn’t alterate anything.
—3) Was a weekly column by the Ontario County Cooperative Extension; first Pam Chiverton (“CHIV-rrr-tin”), and then Pat Pavelsky (“pa-VEL-skee”).
Both were the head-honchos of the Ontario County Cooperative Extension; first Pammy then Pat.
Pavelsky began e-mailing her column to me after I suggested it.
That was a slam-dunk.
About all I had to do was delete her Word hot-links. Her hot-links were the web-address listed a second time, and I couldn’t have that address appear twice in the newspaper.
I found it interesting that about every column she wrote had “peace of mind” in it.
But it was her column; so I never changed it.
The Ontario County Cooperative Extension column was advice for Ontario County residents. Not just gardening, but also retirement and credit and house advice.
—4) Was our Sunday Investing column by local financial advisors.
This was a slew of people, and ran the gamut of New York City boiler-plate to locally written copy.
-a) We tried to avoid boiler-plate.
A local financial advisor was Brent Ascroft (“AS-croft”), and every once-in-a-while I’d get a snail-mail from him containing two or more columns.
Earlier he was mailing to page-editor Bill Robinson, but once the newspaper miss-spelled his name as “Ashcroft.” —So Brent wrote Robinson a nasty letter, but also miss-spelled Robinson’s name or something, so Robinson gave him the third degree.
From then on the snail-mails came to me.
But they’d be written in New York City (“boiler-plate”); they even had the web-address.
Doing them was a slam-dunk; just copy the web-address into my browser, copy/paste, and VIOLA; a ready-to-run business column.
But it was boiler-plate.
Every once in a while Ascroft would call, wondering when were gonna run “his stuff.”
“Well eventually,” we’d say. But we’d run his stuff only if we didn’t have a locally written alternative.
-b) Was Jim Rulison (“Rew-luh-sin”) — although that was before I was doing the biz-columns.
We ran Rulison a lot, but then he got arrested for taking financial advantage of the elderly.
So much for Rulison!
-c) There were a bunch of others; namely “Rocco,” some ski guy, and another. Rocco was an e-mailer, and so was the ski guy. The other guy was a Word printout I’d OCR-scan, but it sounded like boiler-plate. That guy was associated with MetLife, and it sounded like MetLife boiler-plate.
He came to visit me once. Utter confusion. Here this poor guy was trying to interact with a stroke-survivor who could hardly talk.
-d) Was Jim Terwilliger (“ter-will-EE-grrr”), a Canandaigua city councilman, and financial advisor at Canandaigua National Bank.
Terwilliger e-mailed his columns to me as Word attachments, but all I had was 6.1. What Terwilliger had was a more recent version of Word.
Back-and-forth we’d go about bullets and indents, which my 6.1 couldn’t do. Terwilliger would call up Fearless-Leader: “When ya gonna get that poor guy a more recent version of Word?”
Finally I started forwarding his e-mails to here at home, where I could open his columns with my Word-98.
End of bullet problem.
I could process here at home, and e-mail back to the Messenger.

I didn’t do much actual editing.
I’d print out what I’d done, and hand over to a reporter to be my second set of eyes.
Once I handed a Pavelsky column to Sarah Allen, and I got it back with a bunch of suggestions.
They all made sense, and I did every one.
I was impressed, so I started handing everything to Sarah to proof.
One time we got a Doc and Katy column with the word “hiarrhea.”
“Ever heard of that?” I penciled in. “I Google ‘hiarrhea’ and get no hits.”
“Absolutely not!” she fired back. “It should be ‘diarrhea.’”
It got so I was throwing so much stuff at her, I worried about it.
I e-mailed BossMan, and copied her in, if it was fair for me to be lobbing so much stuff at her.
“Keep it coming,” she said. “This stuff is more rewarding than the other stuff I do.”
“If Sarah wants to proof that,” BossMan said; “let her.”
Sarah finally quit; finished her requirements for an elementary education degree at a nearby college.
It was a sad day for both of us. “Who do I get to proof this stuff now?” I asked. “I kept throwing it at you because you were doing a superior job.”

The “mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired almost three years ago. Best job I ever had.

The college was Houghton College in western New York, from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I’ve never regretted it, although I didn’t graduate with their approval. Houghton is a religious liberal-arts college.

“OCR-scan” is Optical-Character-Recognition scan, to scan a typewritten or printed document and produce computer text.

“Naples,” NY.

RE: “Alterate......” —I was once driving a Transit bus (I drove transit-bus for Regional Transit Service, the transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY, for 16&1/2 years) down a main highway, and passed a dry-cleaner that had a sign out front that said it “alterated” clothes.

RE: “New York City boiler-plate (versus) locally written copy.......” —“New York City boiler-plate” is financial advice written by someone at the headquarters in New York City. Our goal was to publish advice written by a local financial advisor.

I had a stroke October 26, 1993, and it slightly compromised my speech.

“Word-6.1” is a fairly early version of Microsoft Word — installed on my ‘pyooter at the mighty Mezz with eight floppies, after much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. My version at home was Word-98.

“Fearless-Leader” was my nickname for George Ewing (“You-ing”) Jr., the head-honcho at the Messenger.

“BossMan” is Robert Matson (“MATT-sin”), Executive Editor at the Messenger. —A person I thought the world of. Also a Houghton grad (1980), like me.