Mathew Woolams

    Once or twice upon a time there was a little girl who grew up to be an amazing woman. She met a man who used to be a boy. She thought he was pretty amazing too. He thought she was pretty, well pretty everything. He followed her around where ever she went, a shadow, and she was good to him, feeding him from time to time, making sure he went to the doctor for his shots, took him for walks, cleaned up after him, and generally cared for him. He was content, except that he was still a man who used to be a boy, so he still did boyish things from time to time, which she thought funny at first, but annoying as he continued. She corrected him and he growled at her. She put him in the back yard. The rain came and he got all wet. He took on his best contrite look and stood at the back door, waiting for her to let him in, waiting for her to be amazing again. Faithful, always hopeful.

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Our

Story

by

Lawrence Abby Gauthier

ace reporter

The Westphalia Periodic News

Everybody has a story to tell. That’s something I learned when I was a reporter in Detroit in the late 70s. In addition to my regular reporter duties, I wrote a weekly column called “Faces in the Crowd.”

When I wasn’t working the police beat or covering political speeches by important people or following a lead in the Hoffa case, I’d bum around the city looking for the most “un-newsworthy” people I could find — the waitress with thick legs and a pretty face at the morning coffee shop… guys in bars where factory workers hung out. “Where you from,” I’d ask ‘em. And that’s how the “interviews” got started.

The “Faces in the Crowd” column caught on. When the newspaper owners in New York hired a public relations firm to conduct a survey of subscribers, my column came in first, ahead of sports, comics and obituaries.

After a few moments of small talk, when I told the waitress or the factory work that I wanted do their story, they’d look at me, bewildered. Then they’d said: “Wait a minute. Are you the one who write’s those ‘Faces in the Crowd’ columns?”

When I told them that I was, they would all always say the same thing to me: “But there’s nothing interesting about me. I’m just a ‘this or a that’.”

And they were always wrong.