OPINION: On broken poles and more bad luck

Apr. 13—I must apologize to my colleagues, my bosses, the line crews for Tahlequah Public Works Authority, and especially to the good citizens of Tahlequah who were unable to access the area around Second and College last Friday.

That Poindexter luck — "always in, always bad," as Jordy Verrill of Stephen King's "Creepshow" fame put it — came calling again. Of course, I won't be paying for any damages. As luck would have it, I have little luck or money.

Early that morning, while I was trying to get in a quick swim at the NSU Fit, I learned from one of our reporters, Lee, that the power was out. It happens sometimes, especially if there's weather. This time, there wasn't. Someone — I think it was Cate Fritz — reported on Facebook that a line was down, or something. That, we later found out, was an understatement.

I gave up my swim, which I've had to do almost every day lately, to check on the situation. By then, the GM, Heather, was already on site. I went out the back door, and to use Facebook parlance, "OMG." There were two broken and splintered utility poles, wires everywhere, and a group of TPWA linemen already at work on the problem.

I asked them what happened, and one of them said a trash truck had hit the poles and knocked them down, pulling wires along the way. One advised that we'd better have a look at our roof; there were a few "scorched spots" on it, he said. (It later turned out the situation was the other way around; the trash truck got snared in some cables because the company that installed them hadn't done so properly.)

There was also water on the ground owing to recent precipitation, so I asked the friendly crew if I could step over one of those wires without risking electrocution. They gave the nod, and I carefully walked behind the dumpster to make a phone call to the publisher, Ed. Heather and I spent quite a bit of time thereafter on the phone, taking instructions from Ed, and trying to work out a plan of action.

I went back out to the TPWA crew and asked for an ETA on the repairs. "Hopefully by the time it's dark," one said. Added another: "Of course, it could be the weekend."

Well, that didn't help much; our deadline to print was 5 p.m., way before dark. So we needed an alternate plan of action, and that turned out to be my home. But there was a catch: The IT gurus told us that after they recalibrated everything, only one computer could be used to paginate. That meant the page designer, the sports editor, and I all had to share one piece of hardware. (Well, Abby was able to design the pages for the Claremore paper on another device, because that office still had power, and internet access.)

We weren't going to make that 5 p.m. deadline. Billy, the long-time production manager and humor hawker "across the bridge" at the Muskogee Phoenix, was understanding.

Abby got done with Claremore well before deadline, and I, meanwhile, was trying to design the Tahlequah pages from my embarrassingly messy home. Like TDP, I have the ultra-fast Lake Region internet. Abby is supposed to be doing most of Tahlequah's pages, but the disaster meant she got a late start to Claremore, so the ball was in my court. That's why I didn't have an editorial or column for the weekend paper. (This drew complaints from two readers, one of whom said she subscribes only for the obits and my column, and thus she felt "cheated," although that paper did have four obits in it.)

Right before I finished, Abby showed up, and the other reporter, Skyler, tagged along for the ride, though only God knows why. We all got hooked in and I was going to edit our staff-written copy while Abby finished up the deadline pages — and then, disaster struck again: Our modem went out. I suspected we fried its tiny mind by having too many people hooked up, but the friendly Lake Region tech said the thing had probably been going bad for some time, and looking bad, my husband and I had noticed some weird behavior. So, just a coincidence — and bad timing. Poindexter luck again.

Fortunately, owing to AT&T's installation of a cell tower some years back, we could all hotspot in. Well, not all of us; one didn't have that capability, so again, we were back to sharing. The wrench in the works was that my husband was trying to use my phone to talk to the Lake Region tech. But eventually, with the help of IT genius Jason, we were able to get past all the obstacles Mother Nature — and Poindexter luck — threw at us, and got the weekend edition out.

Some people don't understand the hurdles we often have to overcome to get their newspapers to them. Broken poles and downed power lines are the least of these. There are press problems, computer malfunctions, sick personnel, uncooperative sources, and a bevy of other roadblocks. So far, we've persevered. I can't think of a time yet, since I started working here in 1985, that we've been unable to produce an edition of TDP. I even remember that time we had 10 inches of snow over 3 inches of ice, and no one could get to work except, Brad, the publisher — and he drove slipping and sliding all over town to pick us up. Some of us rode in the back of the truck. That wasn't pleasant, but we did the job.

At least my bad luck didn't hold out long enough to prevent me from enjoying my brief vacation. More or less...