Wow.
I mean, there truly is no other word except wow.
After work I decide I'm not cooking tonight. I order myself a pizza, tell the pizza parlor
I will be there in twenty minutes, and head for home. I actually have to pass my own house to get
to the pizza parlor because my street cuts over to the safest roadside parking
available. I could walk, but I have a
car full of work stuff.
There is a camera crew from WHDH TV parked almost directly
in front of my house. They are here to
get footage of the church attended by a family who recently suffered a horrid
tragedy. The camera crew members may
only be doing their job, but they descend like vultures in search of meat
scraps.
Immediately after parking my car in the driveway, before I
even enter my house, I march myself down to the van to speak with whomever I
find. Turns out to be a lone camera
man. I ask him what he's doing, knowing
full-well what his answer will be, and remind him that some people really
deserve privacy and that's all the family asked for. Yes, yes, he agrees, but I doubt that's how it
will go. I head into my house with my
work stuff and my pizza.
The camera crew and van are still there hours later. But so are a bunch of cops. And so is an entire crew of workers. And the railroad crew. And a huge flatbed truck. There are flashing lights everywhere.
A friend of ours works at the pizza place right on the
tracks. He posts on Facebook that a
train and car have collided. I am
certain this is an old post because this happened not too long ago. Nope, this is the real deal. So I grab my camera, my cell phone, my keys,
and I haul ass down to the crossing at the end of my street.
Now, by haul ass, I mean I am running so damn fast that I
almost topple down the street as I go.
That would be hilarious because I would do so in front of police and
rescue personnel as well as the channel 7 news team.
When I get to the scene of the accident, the SUV is still
partially under the train, the crossing sign has been annihilated, and a few maintenance
people are milling around. The camera
crew is mysteriously missing. This is
strange because the Lawrence Eagle Tribune (aka The Lawrence Evil Rag) is only
miles away and has a direct association with WHDH television. I decide they must've already been there as
the accident happened about thirty minutes earlier.
Wow, talk about timing! How often is a news crew right
there, I mean, like seriously right
frigging there when a train and car collide at a crossing? Just wow.
I get my pictures, the SUV is eventually hauled away, and I
hear the screaming whistle of an approaching train. It's amazing to me that the tracks could be
clear after what I have seen, so I haul ass one more time down the street. I see the new train stopped. I see the news van door open. Yet still the camera man has not
reappeared. I peek my head toward the
open van and see a different guy, a tech, who is not the same camera man I
spoke to earlier.
"Talk about being in the right place at the right
time," I say to him.
"Yeah, what's going on down there?" he asks me.
Wow. I mean,
dude. Really? You're about 150 yards from the scene. Might you, oh, I don't know, walk down there
and see why there are multiple police cars blocking the road? Some frigging news crew you people are. Just wow.
So I tell him what I know, what I have discovered on the
local website in the time between taking the pictures, loading them onto my
computer, and hearing the approaching commuter rail coming upon the accident
scene. I tell him that some idiot woman
in an SUV drove straight into the train as it slowed and stopped at the
crossing while pulling up to the platform.
Camera Man looks at me funny. "I didn't see anything. Down this street here?"
I reply, "No, the one on the other side of the pizza
parlor."
With this, his eyes grow large as tennis balls and he asks
incredulously, "There's a pizza parlor over there?"
Mother of god. These guys are professionals? There are three people in the van, they have
a second vehicle with them that they have been driving presumably around town
to film the high school and the family's home that they're here to get footage
of, and they must've passed the pizza place at least twice. I can even see the pizza parlor through the
leafless trees. How can they not see it?
Wow.
So, let's see what we have here. You're paid news people here to do one story
when another story falls right into your lap, and you miss it? Some insane middle-aged lady running like a
banshee to the crossing by the pizza place didn't clue you in? I mean, do you normally film in a quiet town
and think nothing of a person with a camera blowing by you on foot doing about
15 mph toward all the blue flashing lights?
Do I look like a Kmart Blue-Light Special shopper to you?!
I'm sorry to say I believe it takes amazing talent to be at
the scene of a breaking news story when and as it breaks … and you still manage
to miss it even an hour later.
There's only one word.
Just one.
Wow.
