Newspapers don't leave you hanging

© Josh Young 2006

Like most red-blooded Americans, when I come in at night I leap into the arms of my old easy chair and promptly fall asleep in front of the television.

I have every intention of making productive use of my time. I am told my ancestors worked from sunup to sundown, and then sat mending harness or whittling spigots by the light of oil lamps.

But my ancestors did not have televisions or recliners, so it is up to me to forge a new way into the 21st Century.

So I sit, perhaps with a pile of unopened mail, and I gradually fall sleep in front of the tube.

Oh, I can make it through the 7 o'clock shows, and the 7:30 garbage, clicking the remote to keep myself awake, until I begin to worry the little twinge in my wrist might be the start of carpal tunnel syndrome.

So I lay down the remote, with the mail I was going to open, and I begin to doze. I'll wake up once in a while for a loud commercial, or if the dog barks to tell me she is on the wrong side of a door. But I'm pretty much down for the count.

I tell snobbish friends back East the main cultural reason I moved to the Ozarks was to be able to get the late night news at 10 o'clock instead of 11 p.m., without cable, but that is just to keep them from visiting me.

In fact, on a "home night," without company to eat and converse with, I'm lucky if I stay awake long enough to hear the early teasers for the late night news.

"Nixa politicians lock horns over budget. Details at 10," is not enough to keep me up past my bedtime. But the other night, one of the chirpy local news announcers came up with a teaser for the news which startled me awake.

She gushed, "There's an escaped criminal out there, and authorities say he is armed and dangerous. You should be on the lookout for this man. We'll have the complete story, with the rest of the news, weather, and sports in a little more than an hour from now." She smiled and tapped her sheaf of papers on the desk (the one with the teleprompter, which makes paper obsolete) and Camera 2 panned out. Cutaway to the end of some stupid sitcom.

I was now considerably wider awake and left wondering, along with residents from Nevada to West Plains, just where this allegedly dangerous individual had escaped from, perhaps when, and maybe just a tad about what his appearance might be. Is that too much to ask?

Don't get me wrong, I live in the country by choice, and I certainly feel safer out here than in any city. But I remember one, week-long search for a killer which focused on a circle centered just a few miles from my farm. I have no desire to be left in the dark regarding any future manhunts, or criminals on the loose.

During that last big manhunt authorities were deputizing everybody's cousin. As I was making my way through a roadblock out on Highway 65, I saw a Barney Fife type with his shotgun leveled at the open trunk of an Oldsmobile. He was making the elderly female owner show him there were no evil doers hiding in her matched set of Samsonites.

I'd like to not have another one of those events around here, for all kinds of reasons.

But what communities were possibly undergoing such searches while the sitcom finished and the fictional law enforcement drama got underway?

I wasn't, in the end, willing to keep from going to bed before the news to find out, but I'm sure nurses about to leave for work on a night shift might have liked to know. Restaurant servers, who were just finishing up their shifts and who might have caught that bit of news at work, probably would have also liked the pithy part of the story without waiting an hour and ten minutes more.

If the television station was going to say that much, live, about the story of an armed and dangerous man, would it be too much trouble to be a bit more specific? Oh, but then we might not stay up for the whole news program, and help build their ratings.

I laughed, in spite of the potentially dangerous situation, as I thought of what might come next, with these new, news standards.

"We interrupt this program to tell you the National Weather Service has just issued a tornado warning for somewhere in our listening area. Persons in the path of this storm should seek shelter immediately. More on this important weather alert after these messages from our sponsors."

I shook my head. I went to bed. I didn't go out to get my keys or lock the car. I didn't want some homicidal maniac pounding on my door, waking me up, just because he couldn't steal a vehicle for his getaway.

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