From the stack of newspapers resting on one of our kitchen counter chairs I pulled out last Sunday’s Opinion section of The New York Times. A teaser on the front page intrigued me: “They let their children cross the street to walk to the supermarket. Now they’re felons.”
Upon opening the section I was immediately drawn into the story by its dateline—Gastonia, NC (this post is not about the sad story which I urge you to read but rather a personal reflection on my experience in Gastonia. Here’s the link—https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/opinion/children-traffic-death-parents.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ek8.K_Aq.FymwxQNgL8-A&smid=url-share).
Just under half a century ago Gastonia almost became part of my professional career and family life.
After spending four years reporting for The New Haven Register I left to be press secretary to a congressional candidate in a campaign I knew would be unsuccessful. Sometimes the experience is worth the detour.
Weeks of unemployment turned into months as jobs in late 1976-early 1977 proved elusive.
In early January 1977 I was invited to spend a week at the Gastonia Gazette. The paper needed two general assignment reporters. I flew down to Charlotte, rented a car and booked a room at a Motel 6 along a strip of road populated by fast food joints foreign to most Northerners.
My only prior exposure to North Carolina came in the middle of a night in March 1972 during a bus ride from Syracuse to Miami Beach as part of a journalism school field trip covering the Florida presidential primary. I slept most of the way but for an unknown reason woke up as we passed the Virginia state line into North Carolina. Welcoming us to the Tar Heel State was a massive billboard depicting a horseback-riding robed Ku Klux Klansman holding a flaming cross.
Gastonia was not yet a desired suburban community feeding off Charlotte’s financial services, energy and healthcare industries. I had covered small towns outside New Haven during my four years at The Register. Heck, there even was a rumor I could never verify that the Connecticut town I had lived in and covered had a KKK chapter.
Gastonia felt different. It was the type of Southern town all too often depicted in movies, with miles and miles of winding two lane roadways, often with shanty homes set back on uncut plots of grass, and, most cruelly, factories no longer in operation as textile production shifted to cheaper, overseas operations. In its heyday Gastonia earned its nickname as Spindle City.
Today, Gastonia has about 84,000 residents. Back when I was there, just 47,000.
Nothing eventful transpired during my tryout week. Neither the town, nor I, distinguished ourselves. I wasn’t surprised when the managing editor offered me a job. $200 a week. That was my salary when I left The Register. I wanted more. The editor countered with $250 a week, and a membership in the town’s country club (I never discerned whether he knew I was Jewish and if the country club had any membership restrictions). Significantly, instead of hiring two reporters he expected me to do the work of both vacancies.
It required little contemplation for me to graciously reject the opportunity.
***No A.I. was used in the writing and editing of this post. The only intelligence employed was my own.***
