This commentary is by Eric Peterson, who was producing artistic director of Oldcastle Theatre Company in Bennington for 48 years. His columns have been published in the Bennington Banner, Berkshire Eagle and Albany Times Union.
Our mail delivery can be sporadic. Recently, after getting no deliveries for a couple of days, mail arrived quite unexpectedly on a Sunday. The delivery included the Friday and Saturday editions of the Bennington Banner. I’d read most of each online but still sat down and read through the printed edition. I prefer it. Old habits die hard.
My addiction to newspapers began in my junior year of high school when I took a journalism class. We got our pick each day of The New York Times and New York World Journal Tribune. Newspapers had been dying for a few years. The World Journal Tribune was a merger of the New York Telegram, the Journal and Herald Tribune. The city had already lost several other dailies, including the Brooklyn Eagle, the Mirror and The Sun. The same thing had happened in Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit — all across the country, newspapers were being murdered by the talking box that showed up in every family’s living room in the early 1950s.
Jimmy Breslin wrote a column for the World Journal Tribune, also known as WJT. I’d never read anything like his column before. He covered fires, murders, politics, the life of the city. His writing could capture the vocal rhythms of cops, thieves, political hacks, priests, rabbis, schoolteachers, subway mechanics — in other words, the voices of the city filled his columns.
When I went to the city for theater conservatory and then college, I continued reading Breslin, who switched to the New York Post when the WJT expired. The Post also had Pete Hamill, another brilliant Irish American writer. Breslin and Hamill both wrote novels and magazine pieces and even appeared on the box that kept killing their newspapers.
By then I was also reading The New York Times every day. During the Watergate scandals, it wasn’t unusual for me and my friends to buy two or even three editions of the Times whenever Haldeman or Ehrlichman or Mitchell had committed yet another crime. The Times had good columnists, too, although none like Hamill or Breslin (Hamill did write briefly for the Times years later). But the Times covered the world like no other American newspapers. The Washington Post was giving it some real competition thanks to young reporters named Woodward and Bernstein.
But I lived in New York City, not Washington. The Times became my hometown paper, so I forked over a couple of quarters for it and the Post every day. The Post was not the Murdoch-owned rag of today. It was a lively paper with Al Aronowitz writing about rock music, Larry Merchant on sports, and Murray Kempton.
My first newspaper byline came in the Banner, as the high school journalism class periodically got a page in the hometown paper. Seeing my name in print in an actual newspaper was exciting. Later I had the chance to have a byline on, not the school paper portion, but the actual Banner.
Bennington had two high schools at the time and the Banner had one sports reporter. Both schools played weekend football games and since they shared Alumni Field, when one had a home game, the other played an away game. I was asked to cover a Bennington High School away game in Brattleboro.
The sports editor gave me explicit instructions that this was a local newspaper; readers were interested in the local team. Therefore, I was to emphasize the Benn Hi players. That proved difficult when Brattleboro beat the Benn Hi Catamounts by a score of 72 to 6. The lone Catamount touchdown was scored against the opposition’s third string — but that touchdown run was my lead.
Years later I began writing a weekly column for the Banner. It appeared on the entertainment page, which made sense, as it was a general-interest column. But when the columns began dealing with a controversial local issue, the managing editor moved them to the editorial page.
In 1990, former Vermont governor Richard Snelling was running for his old seat after losing a U.S. Senate race to Patrick Leahy. He came to the Banner office to be interviewed by some of its reporters and I was invited to sit in.
Snelling was impressive, a smart, successful businessman who had won four terms as governor. He expected to be in charge, expected to get his way and did not suffer fools gladly. He had a successful record as governor and ran as if campaigning was beneath him. The mostly young reporters were understandably in awe of him.
The interview did not go well. Snelling thought some of the questions not worthy of his time or attention. He snapped back at questioners, telling them their questions were ignorant, and he was generally contemptuous.
My column didn’t run until a few days later and, since the reporters had covered the Q&A, I decided to write my column about Snelling’s demeanor. A friend of mine had been a member of his cabinet and once told me, “I thought I was the biggest SOB in the world, and then I worked for Dick Snelling.” That became the opening line of my column.
The day it appeared, someone from Snelling’s office called the then-publisher of the Banner, Kelton Miller, to complain. (That is putting it mildly). The caller demanded my work be banished from the pages of the Banner. Kelton wasn’t thrilled, but declined the suggestion.
A week or so later, Michael Bernhardt, who was running for lieutenant governor on the Republican ticket with Snelling, came to the Banner for an interview. I introduced myself to him and he said, “You’re the guy. The guy who wrote the column.”
He then guided me a few feet away from others and whispered, “You were absolutely right.”
One week later I was in Montpelier at a reception and shook hands with Mr. Snelling. He looked at me intently. I began sweating profusely and fearing for my life. Then he smiled and said, ”Good to see you again.”
The cantankerous Gov. Snelling was elected for a fifth term. Mr. Bernhardt lost to Dr. Howard Dean. Gov. Snelling, whose contributions to Vermont were many and who improved the state in numerous ways, died just eight months into his fifth term. He was succeeded by Lt. Gov. Dean.
