I know exactly what I was doing fifty years ago today:  I wanted the astronauts to leave the moon after midnight.

That summer I was an intern at the Paris News.  Not the Paris in France but the one in Texas.  My job was to do whatever needed to be done—police beat, sports reporting, obituaries, if a lady called and said her dog could talk, I was the one they sent out to interview the dog.

My favorite duty was helping out on the wire desk.  Way back then each newspaper had a machine typing out news from the Associated Press.  At the beginning of each news cycle, morning and afternoon, the AP sent out a list of recommended top stories.  Some wire editors followed the list religiously while others struck out on their own and decided for themselves.  I decided the AP had a long history of getting it right, so I followed the list. The Paris wire editor follow AP’s list too.

I learned more from her about the nitty gritty of getting a newspaper out on time than I did from all the PhDs at my college.  She came in during the day and went through the list and asked the managing editor if there was any local news that needed to go on the front page.  She then, showed me what story would go where and what headline size to use.

She did allow me to make changes if something big broke right on the midnight deadline.  At nineteen years old I didn’t like to make that kind of decision.  The big sweaty guys in the print shop, press room and circulation department didn’t like when I missed the deadline.  I had never heard such language directed at me as when I made them work late.  I mean, it was really bad, car breaking down on the Dallas freeway at rush hour bad.

The situation this night fifty years ago was that she had already written the main headline in huge bold type:

Man Lands on Moon

She had never used that type size before.  She was saving it for the Second Coming, but she decided landing on the moon was close enough to being the biggest event she ever wrote a headline for.  All I had to do was keep up with the updates throughout the evening.

After she left for the day I was left at the wire desk watching out for the stories from the list she had selected.  When one came across, I carefully ripped it off, edited it(even the big pros at the Associated Press could misspell something from time to time), trimmed it to fit the space reserved for it on the layout, write the headline, stick it in an air tube and sent it on its way.

I loved the clickety-clack of the teletype machine typing out each word, one letter at a time.  I loved the suspense of waiting for each word to appear.  I even loved the smell of the lubricant squirted into the machine to keep it running.  The most heart throbbing experience was the ringing of the bell to announce a top-of-the-list story, updated leads to stories already sent or—most exciting of all—a totally new unexpected top story.  Those stories like that got multiple bells which sent everyone in the news room scrambling to the wire machine to see what had just happened.

The wire editor had laid things out very precisely for me so there should have been no worries.  But, being a nerdy, over-thinking type, something popped into my head as the AP gave regular updates on when Apollo 11 would leave the surface of the Moon.  Remember, now, that I was in journalism school which impressed on me to try to make each headline as accurate as possible.  What if the spaceship left the lunar surface before deadline?

The headline would not be accurate.  Yes, man landed on the moon; but, by the next morning when the readers got their papers, man would have already left the moon.  Remember, I was this wonky nerd and being completely accurate was very important to me.  If the departure occurred after deadline, then the decision had left my hands.

“Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding.”

Now why didn’t the AP editor decide to take a coffee break and eat a doughnut before sending out the updated lead that man, indeed, and left the moon?  Before I made a decision about the headline, I ripped the new lead paragraph and prepared it to go to the print shop and shot it down the air tube.  Next I checked the headline itself.  If the word ‘leaves’ made the headline too long, then I could justify to myself the change wasn’t worth the trouble.

My next thought was to call the wire editor herself, but I remembered she was going to be out all evening.  So I called the managing editor at home to let him make the call.

“Sure, why not?” he replied in a casual, devil-may-care manner.

I was not completely satisfied with his tacit agreement with my idea.  I don’t think he got as excited about putting out an accurate product as the wire editor and I.  He started out as a sports editor so he wasn’t as interested in the front page as the sports page.

When I delivered the new headline, the head of the print shop didn’t give me any arguments.  As long as it was before deadline he didn’t care.  So there it was, in Second Coming type”

Man Leaves Moon

The next time I came to work I checked the table where they kept the other papers.  All the others kept their Man Lands on Moon headlines.  I apologized to the wire editor, who was the closest I ever came to having a mentor, but she was very gracious about it.

“It’s all right.  It’s just I always wanted to see Man Lands on Moon in the paper.”

A few months later, another newsroom worker came to me and told me that the Texas State Archives had chosen my headline to be in the collection of Texas news coverage of the moon landing.  Here in my emeritus years I have considered that the wire editor put the other person up to telling me that about the archives just to make me feel better. It seems like something she would do.