So I was on my way to interview with the news director at Channel 6, Larry Beaulieu, but wondered how a teenager like myself might be of value to a news team.
Turns out they recently had a guy that quit, and were in need of what was called a "news film processor". This was back in the days of 16mm acetate film, before the analog video cassettes had caught on in medium markets like Beaumont. Larry showed me the darkroom with the big cabinet-sized film processor used to develop the film that the reporters used to capture their stories. After the orientation he asked, could I do it? Sure, I said.
During my first few days a reporter named Olin Frazier was the guy that trained me on the processor - a big cabinet-sized contraption that took up most of the space in the tiny dark room with vats full of the chemicals necessary to develop the film. I was amazed that, after the stories were turned in by the reporters, he turned the lights off and worked totally in the dark, unloading each canister and spooling everyone's undeveloped stories onto a big reel, stapling them together as he reached the end of one and beginning of another. Then, still in the dark, he loaded the reel full of stories onto the machine and turned on a switch. A very long leader then served to thread the undeveloped stories through each chemical vat in the right order and for the correct amount of time (the more loops in the vat the more time it spent there). Once that started we could turn the lights on and monitor progress...it took about a half hour for a full reel to make it through the vats and the dryer section at the end. Once the day's film was done it was delivered into the newsroom where a sort of cattle call took place and the reporters all scrambled to get their stories, which had to be edited and spliced before air.
This was 1977, when Larry was News Director and principle anchor, Cecile Burandt was co-anchor, a guy named John Pronk covered the human interest side, Carl Pendley did the noon news, Olin Frezier did general reporting, Cy Hurst was on sports, and Gary Powers did the weather with Jim Lago doing the weather on weekends. There was also a short red-headed girl reporter whose name I've forgotten. Of course I'd seen them all on TV growing up and it was a kick hanging around watching them bustle around getting their stories ready for air on the 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. newscasts. And, as their new newsfilm processor, it all funneled through the little darkroom that had become my territory. A heady experience, but I didn't dwell on the importance of my role, just the mechanics of how to do it right. And most times I was successful, but on a few sad occasions it didn't turn out so well.
It was a bit tedious but not rocket science, and by the end of the first week I was handling everything on my own. It became my routine to arrive at about 2:30 in the afternoon, make sure the equipment was tuned and ready for the day's work, and otherwise busy myself before the stories came trickling in as the reporters returned to the station. If I got things done early and there was a little time, I sat on a stool outside the dark room door and watched whatever was happening in the news room.
It was on that stool when, one day, something caught my ear that caused me to perk up and listen very intently...
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