Covering West (Part Four)

News vans stretched as far as the eye could see in the parking lot of the auction barn. I climbed on top of Travis' car to get this shot.

That day, too, passed. 

After hours in the auction barn, Travis and I trooped to a donation site we'd discovered through word of mouth. We dropped off the bags containing my pantry. What they really needed was money, they told us, so that people could start to rebuild the lives that had fallen down around them. 

There wasn't much we could do. We asked them what they needed the most and sent word via social media, emailing the staff in the newsroom to update them. Then, back to the auction barn. It was getting late. We were in-between press conferences, so everyone was milling around, some socializing, some hanging out in their news van. One man came to talk to us. He worked for CBS, he said. He was from LA, and he was a producer. He talked. I was rather star-struck and not terribly clever because of that. He gave me his business card (which I never used because sometimes I'm almost unbearably dumb). He also introduced us to Randall Pinkston. Then I was really starstruck.  

Pinkston had probably the most gravity of any reporter I had ever met. He had a deep, slow voice and was carefully articulate. It was the kind of voice I would want to lead me through a crisis. 

The producer asked me if I had a number for the population of West. No one else seemed to have one. I repeated the number I had seen and recorded carefully on the sign delineating the city limits driving into town. So if you heard a population figure for the city of West on any of those news reports, it came from me. 

Those things stand out in my memory. 

We were told to wait for a press conference with Mayor Tommy Muska, to start at 6 p.m. We waited until 7. No mayor. Travis and I decided to head out  and find him, on a hunch. Other reporters stayed behind, but some left with us. 

"What are we looking for?" Travis asked. Good question, I thought. I had no clue. My best guess was to look for anything out of the ordinary. 

Little did we know we weren't done with our encounters with big-name journalists for the day.