Farmworkers on Strike

Labor Day got me to thinking about this photo of farm workers on strike in Immokalee, Florida. I spent a lot of time covering migrant farm workers in South Florida and had gotten to know this crew well enough that I talked them into taking a reporter and me into the fields with them.

I spent the day shooting photos and trying to avoid being shot by the farm owner (fortunately for me, the guy’s wife liked me well enough to intervene). My partner spent the day picking peppers. He was paid $18 for a day’s work: $17 of it in cash, and a buck withheld for Social Security by the crew chief. Whether that buck ever made it to Washington is a matter of conjecture. My buddy said, “When I retire, the very first dollar I spend is going to be the dollar I earned picking peppers.”

Not long after that, I went back to Immokalee to cover the workers striking for their pay to be raised from $18 a day to $22.50 a day. The strike was unsuccessful.

I am, if you haven’t guessed, the guy with a camera over his shoulder.

Flood Creates Big Thirst

A Florida Power & Light dike containing a cooling pond at a power plant in Indiantown, Fla., broke in the middle of the night in 1979, washing a railroad locomotive off its tracks and sending residents scrambling to their rooftops for rescue. At first light, I waded into this bar in Port Mayaca because I saw people coming and going from it.

Thigh-deep water didn’t keep them from serving drinks.

The photo moved on the Associated Press wire. This is the original print I transmitted, including the caption. Click on the image to make it larger.

Decoding the caption

WPB-9 – this was the ninth photo we had transmitted from our office in West Palm Beach that day. We might go weeks without moving a photo, so to have transmitted nine meant that it was a big deal.

(AP LASERPHOTO) – was a required slug.

(ps041645mbr) – I think this was some kind of time stamp. “mbr” meant we we a member newspaper, not an AP staffer or PR flack.

MO MO NOT FOR USE IN FT PIERCE, STUART, FT LAUDERDALE OR MIAMI. Local TV out. – This is where I wasn’t playing nicely with the Associated Press. MO Means Magazines Out. (If they wanted to use the photo, they had to negotiate with us directly.) We were in a highly competitive area, so we “embargoed” our photos from being used by any competing media. I got into quite a set-to with the head AP guy who complained after we expanded our embargo to read, “Florida Out; USA Today Out,” meaning that no paper in Florida nor USA Today could use our photos. The AP guy said, “USA Today is a national paper. They don’t compete with you.”

“They’ve got a paper box in front of my office. I consider that competition,” I retorted, standing my ground.

One of my gripes with the AP was that they were very demanding. They wanted the pictures right away, not caring if you had to meet your own newspaper’s deadlines or or you hadn’t eaten or slept for 36 hours. Oh, yeah, they paid you five bucks a picture and didn’t give the photographer a credit line until just a few years ago.

Why am I running this?

Why am I running this? It’s two in the morning, I don’t have the car packed and I’m supposed to pull out for Cape in the morning. It was this or nothing.

The photo won a couple of national awards. Maybe it was because some folks thought it was news that people around Lake Okeechobee COULD pour water out of a boot without having the directions written on the bottom.

Best Newspaper in State

Delta Delta Delta sorority sisters Janet Maurer. left, and Karen Totty embrace at the 1966 Greek Games at Capaha Park. The caption used one of those cliches that always causes my teeth to hurt, “Mid-afternoon rain didn’t dampen the spirits of the of the more than 700 college students who participated in the games and contests.” The Tri-Delts looked like they were going to post their fifth straight win in the annual contest, but the Alpha Chi Omegas won the Go-Go Disco Contest to overcome a two-point deficit.

I’ve got about 150 frames scanned from the Greek Games (including a wardrobe malfunction never noticed before). I’ll get around to posting them one of these days. (Click on any photo to make it larger. This, by the way is NOT the wardrobe malfunction photo, so don’t strain your eyes.)

This shot won first place in the Missouri Press Association contest in 1967 and helped The Missourian win the Golden Cup Award for Best Newspaper in the State.

Best Paper in the State

A window display gave the paper a chance to brag a bit. I still have some of the cool wood and ceramic plaques on my wall. Here’s the story that lists all the details.

Not bad for a college kid

In all, I won two first places (feature photography and news); a second place for sports, and honorable mentions in sports and features. The paper won second place for best use of local pictures. The Youth Page I edited won an honorable mention. My picture of  murderer Phillip Odel Clark emerging from a house with a whiskey bottle in one hand and a pistol in the other pointing at the head of newsboy he was holding hostage was judged best news picture of the year.

After that, I had to leave town because that was going to be a tough year to top.

Working on book proposal

I’m under the gun to get a book proposal to a publisher by Monday, so I may have to slack off a couple of days to make the deadline. Interestingly enough, they are less concerned with my ability to produce the content as they are worried that I don’t have enough local ties to Cape Girardeau.

So, does anyone want to stamp my Cape passport?

 

Girl Scouts Turn 100 Today

Happy Birthday, Girl Scouts! I understand you hit the Big 100 today. Want to hear something that will rock you back? These Brownies and Girl Scouts, who toured The Southeast Missourian in 1965 or 1966, weren’t too far off from having been around to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the organization. Now they’ll be able to light double the number of candles.

If you were a regular reader of the Saturday Youth Page, the photo above should look familiar to you. One of my jobs was to edit the weekly page, so I took a photo from the tour and made it into one of the standing page sigs. I always liked it because I knew it gave some of the bigots heartburn to see kids of different races “mixing.”

Newspaper tour groups

Cop reporter Dan D. Whittle is doing his best to look important and ignore the group standing around him.

A lot of newsroom folks hated the tour groups, but I enjoyed having them come back to the photo department at The Palm Beach Post.

If I wasn’t busy, I’d take them on a tour of the darkrooms, where the highlight was going through the revolving light trap that would let you go from the lighted hallway to the dark print room without interrupting any work that was going on. You’d revolve a cylinder until an opening showed up, you’d step inside and rotate it until the opening reached the darkroom, then you’d step out. With practice, you could do it without slowing down.

The farmer and the magic room

I’d tell the kids that the experience was a little like the farmer who saw his first elevator when he took his family on a visit to the big city.

He watched mystified as a door would open, people would enter a small room and the door would close. When the door opened again, the room would be empty. This went on for quite some time while he tried to figure out what was happening to the people.

Finally, an elderly woman entered the magic room. The door closed and a few seconds later a beautiful young woman stepped out. There was a brief pause, then the farmer turned and said in a hushed voice, “Son, quick. Go fetch your momma.”

Darkroom tricks

Once they made it through the revolving door, I’d usually have groups of them put their hands on a piece of photographic paper, then I’d turn the overhead room lights on and off to expose it. I’d toss the “blank” paper into the developer and let them see a reverse image of their hands pop up. Even high school kids were impressed, and it made for a nice souvenir to take home.

If we were lucky enough to catch a photographer with prints from an assignment that was going to run the next day, I’d introduce the shooter, have him or her show the kids the pictures, tell them a little about what how they were taken, then tell them to look for the shots in tomorrow’s paper.

I thought it was important for them to realize that real people produced the art that got pitched in a puddle in their front yard. It might encourage them to keep reading the paper. Based on what’s happening to newspapers today, I guess I must not have been too effective.

Earlier Girl Scout stories

 Tour group photo gallery

I tried to print as wide a variety of photos from the tour as possible (including the little girl picking her nose. I hope her kids spot it.). Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery. Happy Birthday, Girl Scouts of America.