Day 3: Pecan farming, Girls State

Earlier in the week, Derek emailed the weekly budget. A budget shows what stories plan to run on which days. He had me down for a Friday story about pecan farming, so I had a feeling I would be investigating that story when I got in on Thursday. If it was due the next day, I wondered if I could turn the story that fast– what if the people couldn’t talk to me until the following week? Derek was listed as the photographer for the story, so I knew he would probably be coming along with me. I thought about trying to contact Pape Pecan Co earlier in the week when I wasn’t at the internship (they were mentioned in the budget), to get something set-up immediately for Thursday, but then I didn’t want to mess Derek up if he had planned to set this up himself, so I opted to just wait and see what happened when I got in Thursday.

So Thursday, June 11, rolls around, and I make it into the office around 10:30a. I greet everyone and settle into my desk. Derek told me that the guy from the parvo story that I wrote the week before praised the article and might be calling to thank me. Ron and Jeff also said it was very well written, that made me feel really good. Although, I managed to annoy some Seguin residents with it. The newspaper put a link to the online story on their Facebook, but their articles are behind a paywall so readers can only read the first two paragraphs unless they subscribe. It was a feature, so I gave it a more story-like opening with a slight teaser as my lead. The Facebook readers who didn’t have a subscription complained about how they should be able to read the rest and not have to pay. On one hand, it felt a little depressing having people argue in the comments on a story I wrote, but on the other hand, I was happy that they were at least very interested in wanting to read the rest of something that I had written.

After a few minutes after settling in, Derek brought by a flier and asked if I could write a short advance type story on something called the Girls State, which is this week-long program where high-school girls create a mock legislature, pass bills, enforce laws and such. It sounds pretty cool! Some of the schools in Seguin were participating, which is why we were covering it. I called the program director and interviewed her over the phone.

After her interview, Derek had mentioned about contacting the Pape Pecan guy to see if we could come by for an interview and photos. I set up a 1p interview for us. It gave me about an hour and a half of “free” time, so I used it to write up my story on Girls State. I had a couple of follow-up questions for the director, but I think she might have accidentally muted her phone when she finished talking to me. I tried calling from my office phone and my cell phone, but both times as soon as I was transferred to her all I heard was “Hello? Hello? Helloooo?” She couldn’t hear me responding back. I was disappointed that I couldn’t get the extra info for my story, as it would have made it stronger, but my story was okay without it.

1p rolls around and Derek and I head out to the pecan guy. Derek seemed a bit embarrassed about his truck and asked if we could take my car. He mentioned that his truck’s AC was broken. I told him that I was totally cool with going in my car…but my AC was broken too. So we had to drive with the windows down.

We make it to the Pape Pecan’s office, and I meet the manager, John Pape. He led us through this huge nutcracker shop to get to a conference room. There must have been over a thousand different nutcrackers, all different shapes, sizes, costumes, it was incredible! The conference room was very cozy too. It had a big plastic table in the middle of the room, and along the walls were these wooden benches with large pillow-y cushions. Hung on the wall were various clippings of stories the Seguin Gazette and other newspapers had done on them over the years. The strangest thing though was a giant flat-screen TV that was mounted on the wall and played ballet recordings. John was this older, farmer type, it just seemed to contrast oddly with him.

I was slightly worried that the ballet music would overtake my recorder that I brought, but I had faith in it. My little recorder picks up sound exceptionally well, one time I ran an interview with one of those giant rideable lawn mowers going on right behind me and the person, and their sound came out flawless. I just pushed it closer to John to make sure it captured his voice better.

The interview went really well. John told me and Derek about the effects that the wet weather had on his crop and explained to us about pecan farming. It was a really interesting thing to learn about. I never knew there were so many different kinds of pecans, but apparently there’s hundreds of varieties. All of the variety trees are also specially created by nursery men, because all seeds become natural pecan trees on their own. For the most part, Derek let me lead the interview, but he did ask a few questions himself.

After the interview, we followed John in his truck to the Pape Pecan Ranch, which is where their farm was. On the way there, Derek asked me how I was liking the internship. I told him that I was really enjoying it and learning a lot. He praised my writing and said that it was very clean of errors. He mentioned that he thought I would be good at copy-writing and that later in the summer they’ll get me going on getting experience with that too. That was pretty exciting!

He said that they were looking to hire another journalist, because Ron would be leaving. Ron had worked for the newspaper for years, but came back to help out. It was only supposed to be temporary, but he ended up back there for a year. He was ready to leave again, and so Derek was trying to find a replacement. He mentioned that they had a lot of applicants from Texas Lutheran University, but their cover letters were full of errors and just plain terrible. I mentioned to him that he may want to look at Texas State to see if anyone is interested, because we have a lot of really good writers that just graduated or would be graduating. We talked about me possibly staying on after the summer too for another internship, and I said that I was interested. Although (and I didn’t tell him this), I’m not really sure yet if I can, I really would love to though. The only days I’ll have off next semester are Tuesday and Thursday, so I don’t know how much help that would be. I’d have to stay working at Texas State even if I did, because the university pays me $12/hr and I’d need to make that to make my bills, especially commuting from Austin to San Marcos and Seguin. I couldn’t make it on an intern salary of $7.25/hr alone. So, while I’m extremely interested, I just don’t know if it’s logistically possible. And yet, I desperately need the experience, so I’d really love to find a way to make it work.

Back on track…

We drove into the gated ranch and parked our cars in a clearing. Ahead of us looked a bit like a park with a bunch of tall trees everywhere. It took Derek and I a minute to realize we were there next to the pecan trees. I guess we thought the trees would look lined up, but they were scattered everywhere. Derek took a few pictures of the pecans and John. Then John talked some more about the trees and the effects of the weather. He told us that the rain makes the grass and weeds grow, which causes more work because they have to keep it trimmed. If they don’t, then animals, especially wild hogs, get brave and start walking around near the trees and rutting the ground, making it hard for John’s machines to harvest the trees. The hogs won’t come out into the clearing when the grass is cut short. While we were there, we spotted a fawn in the distance, it was so cute!

We thanked John, and then headed out and back to the office.

Back at the office, I finished up my story for the Girls State, mostly just polishing it for errors. Then I put it in the editorial drive and let Derek know. Derek looked it over and I heard him tell Megan, “Girls State is in,” which I think meant it was ready for her to lay it into the paper.

I called John back to get a number from him for another Pecan farmer, Charlie Willmann. I needed at least one other voice for my story. The number that John gave me had a strange area code, but he confirmed that it was the number that he had. I looked it up and it was for some company out in Oklahoma. I did a Google search for Charlie, and found a local Seguin number for him. I tried calling that one and the one in Oklahoma and left messages, so it was just a waiting game.

I was given a couple of pages to proof. I found a few errors and then handed them off to Derek. Derek asked how it was going with the Pecan story, so I explained that I didn’t think the number was right. He recommended that I try the Agricultural Extension Office for my other source, because they would probably know. It was nearing 5:00p at this point, and I had spent the last couple of hours transcribing the audio from John’s interview into a TextEdit page. I started writing the article, but my brain was turning to mush at this point and it was tough to keep focused. Derek had said that it was okay to go home, so I packed up and this ended my third day at Seguin Gazette.