Odds and Ends on this Friday

Thousands of dead fish found floating in Portage County. That's the headline that's "reeling" in the viewers for tonight's newscast, but unfortunately, we can only show video of a few of the fish. Nearly all of the affected fish are in a part of the stream that is on private property, and the owner isn't around. So even though the ODNR investigators tell us there are "thousands of dead fish over there," we can't get video of them or we'd be trespassing. You'll just have to take our word for it.

Sounds like the Stow teachers union is making strides to avoid a strike. A union spokesperson told me that the group met for 12 hours yesterday with district leaders and that the discussions were going very, very well. Both sides will meet again Tuesday, but it looks like we're headed down a path that will keep the teachers in the classrooms and off the picket lines.

Not quite sure what to make of the idea to charge inmates for their stay at the Summit County jail. It seems to me that a great many of those in jail have little or no money to begin with. Taking their commissary cash and/or forcing them to pay additional funds seems like a tough sell. I fear we'd end up spending a lot on administrative costs trying to run down folks who haven't paid for their 24-hour stint. I understand that if you're acquitted in court, you get your money back. Still, I realize that corrections is an expensive business, so there needs to be creative ways to collect funds.

One of our stories tonight focused on a Wayne County man who is making cardboard cutouts of kids to place on your lawn (or Devilstrip as we call it in Akron) to slow down speeders. I think it's a great idea. Years ago, I tried pitching the idea of cardboard police cars. I thought that the state could line I-71 with them; just put them in the middle grassy sections on hinges and pop them up and down with remote controlled timers. Most folks slow down when they see a silhouette of a car in the distance. The fake police cruisers could be popping up and down for 24 hours at a time without paying an officer. Anyone wanna start a business? Hey, the military used cardboard tanks in WWII to fool the Germans into thinking we had a much bigger arsenal. Why not some fake police cars?

So Kenny Loften is back with the Tribe. I think that's pretty cool. When the tribe first traded Lofton during spring training of the 1997 season, my phone rang early in the morning. I was assigned to cover the big news in Florida and had to catch the next flight out of Hopkins. At 5 a.m., the producers told me I had to be live at noon at Winterhaven. Because of flight delays, I arrived at the Tribe's practice facility in Florida about three minutes before I was to go on air. I didn't even get a chance to talk to a single person from the Indians. I literally ran to the waiting sattelite truck, stood in front of the camera, and had to quote what I'd read about the trade in early morning newspaper articles I found in the airport. It was disheartening not to have anything new to add, but later in the day, David Justice showed up and gave me a great interview on being traded to the Tribe. I also remember Omar Visquel not wanting to talk with me yelling "they traded my buddy" across the parking lot.

I had to go live at 6 that night and then put together a taped segment for the 11 p.m. news. The satellite truck had problems, so I had to leave Winterhaven and drive to Tampa (about 90 minutes away) and feed my video from there. I arrived at the Tampa NBC station around 10:50 p.m. and the security guard wouldn't let me in. I pounded and pounded. Eventually a nice young man from the newsroom asked me why I was there. I spoke to him through an intercom and he let me in just in time to feed the story back to Cleveland. I found out later that he was an intern and got in big trouble for letting a stranger into the building. Oh well. I spent about two hours in a hotel before driving back across the state to catch a 6 a.m. flight from Orlando back to Cleveland. I remember returning from my 24-hour whirlwind trip thinking, "Kenny Loften better never come back to the Indians because he almost killed me this time."