Motel Hell

"If you don't move from this sidewalk, I will arrest you."  It was the sharp end to a surprisingly short and terse exchange with a Cocnino's Sheriff's Deputy.  The Officer had only engaged me for a matter of minutes, but it was enough time for him to threaten to put me and my photographer behind bars for standing on the sidewalk near the Coconino Municipal building.

Scott Curley

It was understandably a difficult evening for everyone in law enforcement, particularly in the southern part of Utah and the northern half of Arizona.  A man, Scott Curley, was on the run in the shrubby red rocks of Fredonia, Arizona in Coconino County.   One of their own, Kane County Utah Deputy Brian Harris had been shot and killed by Curley earlier that day.  Curley, after an afternoon crime spree, shot and killed Harris as the deputy tracked Curley into the rough terrain. The wanted man lay in wait under a Rocky Mountain Juniper and ambushed Harris as he trudged up over a rise.  When I encountered the deputy, Harris's widow was grieving, Curley was still on the run, and the Coconino Sheriff's building was filled with deputies, EMT's and fire fighters who were milling about, trying to find fellowship at Fredonia's multi-purpose maintenance building.

It was late, sometime after 11 when photographer Matt Michela and I rolled into Fredonia.  We had just checked into the Grand Canyon Motel.  A dusty brown plot of worn cottages off of highway 89.  The motel, wasn't for short vacation stops, it was an extended stay place that had been taken over by weary, dew rag wearing oil workers doing itinerant, back-breaking work in the surrounding oil fields.  The worn-out men in their early 40's look like they are in their late 60's and stand, or more likely slump on the broken wooden porches of their worn-out cottages, pull drags from cigarettes held by their oil pocked hands, and quietly morn the lonely life they live.   Our assignment desk had called ahead to make reservation, which, I am told surprised the motel's owners, since there hadn't been a reservation made at the faded pit stop in years.

Courtesy Matt Michela

As we park our news vehicle, the shine of the headlights pulsate off of the eyes of about a dozen cats, who slink, sleep and casually lick their paws as we unload our equipment after a long day on the road.  As I fumble for my room key, I notice the name of the motel, accompanied by the address: PO Box 456, Predonia, Az.  Of course being in "Fredonia," I wondered if the owners, never saw the typo, or just didn't care.

As I enter my wood paneled room, the thick stink of cat urine overpowers the shabby space.  As I drop my bags, I noticed the stench is not leaving, so I prop open my door, which is a reminder to about 3 cats that they enjoy peeing inside, and they marched in, giving me a look as if to say, "What, exactly, are you doing in our litter box?"

Matt and I decided to forgo more time inhaling cat urine and jumped in our news vehicle to scope out the town in which we will live for the next several days.

As we cruise down the main portion of town, a woman, suggests that an employee at the gas station across from the municipal building might be able to help us.  I speak with the young woman, who nervously admits she is friends with Curley, and knows he's been having some mental health issues lately, she agrees to speak to us, but only after she is off the clock, in about 15 minutes. Matt and I set up across the street to wait.

Kane Co. Deputy Brian Harris

That's when we met the deputy.  He approaches us quickly, as if he is marching up on a band of protesters, cloaked in masks, hoodies, and armed with rocks.  He downshifts into "There's nothing to see here" mode. "Ok fellas, the press briefing is tomorrow morning, so head on back to your room," he announces, pointing with his right hand in the direction he supposes is the location of our hotel, and, oddly, begins waving us on with his left, as if he is directing traffic.  "Ok," I respond pleasantly, "we look forward to that," and I continue standing on the sidewalk, turning from the deputy to the Sinclair gas station across the street.   After a brief pause, and no movement from us, the officer, again stretches his finger northbound, "well, there is nothing to get right now, and you are making the officers at the municipal building uncomfortable, so you need to get going." he says, this time more firmly than before.  Not interested in spending more time inhaling ammonia than I have to, I stay put, "Well, I understand, but we have no intention of bothering any officers right now, and we still have a little work to do, so we'll be headed back soon," I say, raising my level of annoyance to meet his, as I glance through the grimy gas station window pane at the woman who has agreed to talk to us.  She notices the officer  standing next to me, and I sense that she might back out of our interview, if she believes the police are involved.

The deputy, runs his tongue, from left to right, across the front of his bottom teeth, and begins speaking tersely into his shoulder mounted walkie-talkie.  "You are blocking our vehicles from coming and going!" he boils at me.  I sigh, and look up, and am, for a brief moment, distracted by a sky carpeted with a billion sparkling stars, but return my eyes to the deputy, "Look, you know as well as I do, that this is a public sidewalk, and we have every right to be here!"  I say, raising my voice and squinting as the two of us continue our standoff.  "Not if you are interfering with the easy transport of emergency vehicles!" his voice is, almost on cue, interrupted by the deep, distant howl of a prairie wolf, loud and pronounced, as I look from left to right, at a vacant, dust covered highway sleeping quietly under the bright shine of the moon.  Here comes my first mistake. Sarcasm, which I've learned over the years, is always my first mistake, "Yes, I can see, it looks like Los Angeles at rush hour." I laugh as I give a sideways glance at the woman across the street who is locking the doors to the convenience store and looks nervously over her shoulder, cloaked harshly under the sickly hue of buzzing neon lights.  "We are expecting more vehicles anytime now!"  He is fuming at this point, "and if you stand here, you're camera will distract the officers driving."  I press my chin towards my chest, and look at him in amazement, "Seriously.  You just said that?"

Grand Canyon Motel

"If you don't move from the sidewalk, I will arrest you!" the lawman says chest heaving, "Ok, look," I try, a few seconds too late, to diffuse the situation, "You see that woman over there?" I gesture to the nervous girl, her hands stuffed deep in her pockets, moths dancing and crashing into the harsh lights illuminating the gas pumps by which she stands. "We are tying to talk to her, and if you leave us alone, we will do just that and go."  The angry deputy steals a quick glance, and begins to breath normally, "Go!" he points at the girl, "Then go to your motel!"  As we gather up our gear and cross the street under the deputy's watchful eye, I say, again sarcastically, and again, mistakenly, "We'll try not to get hit by the SWAT team rumbling through town!"  Matt's eyes widen, and so do mine, but as we approach the girl, he stomps away towards the municipal building without arresting anyone.

That night as I settle in, laying, sleepless on top of the scratchy, army grade blankets, I breath in the nauseating smell of cat waste, and listen to felines howl and rustle outside.  I blink and watch the ancient digital clock tick off time, from 3:32 to 3:33, and as I spot a small roach dance across the ceiling, I think, "perhaps a night in jail wouldn't have been so bad."

The Sound Of Silence

"So, what do you think?"  I say after a prolonged explanation, to which I hear...Nothing, silence, static.  then after the most pregnant of pregnant pauses, so pregnant in fact, that you might describe it as, "with twins," pregnant, I pull my cell phone away from my ear, and squint questioningly into the screen, and return it, as I whisper, "hello?  "Oh yeees!" comes the plucky, perky response from Carrie Jenkins, the long time head of public relations for Brigham Young University.

Carrie Jenkins, BYU PR

I just asked Carrie to answer some questions about Kathyrn Skaggs,  a speaker scheduled to talk at The BYU Women's Conference.

Skaggs is the author of the wildly popular, and conversely, wildly panned blog, "A Well-Behaved Mormon Woman."  Skaggs recently penned a scorcher of a post, that claims, in no uncertain terms, that the Disney animated movie, "Frozen." is a shrill anthem shoving the gay agenda down the throats of American children.  She says the title song of the movie, "Let it go," is pretty gay.  Her controversial blog post has received praise in some circles, and ridicule in many others.  Kendall Wilcox, a documentary film maker and founder of the group, "Mormon's Building Bridges," wonders if Skaggs is the best person to speak at the conference given her controversial views on gays, and same-sex marriage, so I decided to ask Jenkins about it.

Kathyrn Skaggs, Blogger

"Weeell" says Jenkins, who has an amusing way of turning truncated words into rubber bands, "I juuuuuust think you should chaaaaat with her," she responds elastically.  "Yes, but she is speaking at your event." I suggest,  "Would you like to talk about why she was invited?" I say.  Again, I'm greeted with the uncomfortably loud echo of silence.  This time I'm determined to wait her out.  Which I do, for an agonizing 30 seconds, but, like most people ensconced in uncomfortable silence, I break and blurt, "What do you think?!"  "Oooooh," says Jenkins, "I just thiiiiiink you should taaaaaalk to her!"  She chimes happily into her landline.

Jenkins, is likely a hero in the public relations world.  She is supremely disciplined, she is never rattled no matter the controversy, and she is always, without exception, smiling.

Over the past 15 years, I've sat in her office on numerous occasions and watched as she smiles gently into the lens and masterfully and methodically chants hypnotically, her message for the camera.

I remember many years ago, asking her about an issue related to gay rights on BYU's campus.

"Weeeeeell, we certainly do respect aaaaaall students on campus, but that has aaaaaaalways been our policy," she repeated for the third time, with the corners of her mouth turned up gently towards the sky, and her eyes happily agreeing with her lips.

It would be the sentence she would parrot, 5 more times throughout our videotaped conversation.  No matter what the question might be, she returns eagerly to that singular, simple sentence, never once getting upset with the different iterations of essentially the same question I would pose.  

I could have asked: "Is the sky blue?"  and the response would have likely been: "Weeeeeeell, we certainly do respect aaaaaaall students buuuuuut,..."

Jenkins knows, the best way to avoid controversy is to remain silent, or if the controversy already has legs, to speak, but to stick to your guns.  She likely learned years ago, that if you try to give a fresh answer to the same question, you might say something you regret.  She also knows getting mad is a sure way to have a grimace, or snappy answer, end up edited into a finished piece, so that smile, that omnipresent smile, never fades. 

To her credit, Jenkins will, on many occasions, graciously invite you to her office on the BYU Campus to recite her formulaic answer to you.  That's pretty good, when you consider what her counterparts at many Federal agencies will do.  The FBI and Transportation Safety Administration for example,  appear to employ public information officers, who I believe are officers who neither talk to the public or provide any information.

In fact the spokesperson for the FBI doesn't even have a phone number to give the media.  Reporters are required to Email if they have questions.  Last week while acting on a tip about a case being worked on by the Salt Lake City office of the FBI, I wrote several Emails to the spokesperson, but as far as I can tell, she never even opened them.  

I have images in my mind of an office in the Salt Lake City FBI building marked PR, with the lights out, and cobwebs draped across a bank of dusty blinking and, buzzing, 50's style telephones.

The Email policy appears to have been enacted while the office was in the hands of a former reporter.   Reporters-turned-PR people are traditionally, in my opinion, the most difficult PR people with whom to work.

I'll never forget a former colleague of mine.  He was one of the toughest reporters in the business, he would seldom allow a PR "flack" to get away without answering a question.  He was particularly prickly when a public relations officer would chastise him for doing a story the PR guy didn't' like, "That's not a story," the media handler would say, to which my friend would always respond, "You don't get to name the stories."  Many years later, my friend went to work for a Utah politician.   Literally days after taking the job, I remember him bleating into his phone, as I discussed a controversial issue involving his boss, he said, without an ounce of irony, "that's not a story!" 

I was stunned into silence when he blurted that out, and I've learned over the years that Silence is something, you will often get from the office of public relations.   

Hard Candy and Puppies

"Hard Candy?" came the high pitched offer from Curtis Mullins Sr. who poked me with his elbow and held open his hand with 3 pieces of butterscotch placed carefully in his open palm.  I looked at the portly Southern gentleman in his boxy black suit with bewilderment.  "Hard candy?"  He insisted his already comically high voice climbing a few octave higher, as he thrust the cellophane wrapped treats into my fist.  A funeral seemed like a strange place to get offers of candy from strangers, but after this emotional, long, and difficult week, Curtis, and the small, peculiar and isolated Virginia town of Grundy seemed in a way, like home.

The Mullins, Junior back left

Ethan Stacy

More than three years ago, in the soggy foothills of the South, 4 year old Ethan Stacy was buried.  Just this week, his stepfather, Nathan Sloop was sentenced to 25 to life in prison for the brutal death of his step-son.  I'll spare you the details.

Ethan's dad, Joe, is from a town near Grundy, and wanted to bring his boy home to this battered, nearly abandoned enclave.  Grundy, is a grubby coal town that has endured bad luck.  Since 1929, the burg has been afflicted with 9 major floods, that have all but killed the once proud city, turning it into a zombie town, that wanders, unaware that it is mostly dead.

In 2001, the state undertook a major relocation project, carving out a new existence on higher ground. The "new" Grundy.  Like an empty-nester who downsizes from a large 3000 square foot home into a small 2 room apartment, but refuses to get rid of any of the furniture, is crammed into 13 long acres scratched into the rocky mountains across from the unpredictable Levisa Fork River along State Route 83.

Grundy, flooded 9 times since 1929

Every morning Curtis Mullins Sr. and his extended family, who all live in a house connected to the Grundy Funeral Home, which they run, wake up, and peer across the Levisa into the hollow husk of their old life, a once bustling coal town, that is now filled with abandoned shops, homes and farms.

Curtis had a stroke a few years back, and that has made his voice a high, raspy shrill.  At first his tenor makes you chuckle a bit until you learn the circumstances.  Despite his new voice, Curtis retains his old, authentic Southern hospitality, as he invites me into his home, so his son, Curtis Mullins Jr, "who knows the computer," can burn me copies of pictures of Ethan.  "Do ya wan't some biscuits?" says Junior, a heavier, younger, carbon copy of his father, as his pleasant wife thrusts a pan  into the oven, next to a refrigerator, covered from top to bottom with pictures of grand kids, announcements from the baptist church, and fliers about dances at the high school.

"We'll we hope ya'll have a good visit here," says Junior, as he hands us a CD filled with Jpeg images, and stuffs a biscuit in my hand, "now take this," he insists, "it's chilly out there."

On the day of Ethan's funeral, the already impossible parking situation in Grundy is even more difficult as hundreds of mostly strangers and journalists make their way to the funeral home.  Old men with creased faces and hands blacked by the coal, "visit" and laugh, and tell jokes almost as weathered as their paws, "I'm so broke I can't even pay attention." quips an old vet sporting a 25 year old seersucker suit, and a baseball cap emblazoned with an insignia from the USS Saratoga.

Funeral for Ethan Stacy

I wasn't the only person to whom Senior had offered that "hard candy,"  I smiled gently listening to the eulogy for Ethan, as Mullins bounce from reporter to photographer, in town to cover the funeral, nudging each, and offering them a butterscotch.  The photojournalist from Rueters News Service, a notoriously prickly character, was noticeably annoyed by Senior as the gentle man tapped the journalist on the shoulder, "hard candy,"  Nick, frowned violently and shook his head vigorously.  Senior jabbed him again, "hard candy!" he said his tenor climbing higher, "No!" Nick seethed under his breath to the old man.  Senior jabbed the butterscotch into the photographers breast pocket with a smile, "hard candy," he mouthed triumphantly, and happily moved onto the next guest.  Nick shot an angry glance at his pocket, and a guffaw, then returned to snapping pictures.  After the funeral I noticed Nick editing his photos in his rented SUV.  He pulled a pen out of his breast pocket and with it, that little "hard candy," without noticing the irony, he popped the butterscotch into his mouth, and for a brief second, I saw the jaded journalist grin, before his perpetual scowl returned.

At the cemetery where Ethan was laid to rest, I sucked on a butterscotch as I sat in our large satellite truck waiting for the burial to begin.  With a start, a small dog, some kind of a terrier, chihuahua mix, bolted into our truck, and greeted me with tail wagging.  The pooch took a quick look around or truck then jumped out to greet others who were trudging somberly towards the burial plot.

"Who owns that dog?" I asked a Buchanan County Deputy perched near us, "I dunno," he said, petting the puppy's ears vigorously, "he's always here for some reason."

Joe Stacy at son's funeral, with the puppy in tow

I watched as Ethan's father Joe, made the long walk from his car to the final resting place of his son, that little dog sauntered up to his side, tail wagging and smiling as the broken father dragged himself. Joe glanced down for a moment at the happy doggy, and grinned, letting a  subtle laugh escape his mouth for a moment, a temporary reprieve from his darkness, before being enveloped again by the unimaginable fog of sorrow.

The next morning as I purchased a cup of coffee at a convenience story, I pulled out another butterscotch from my suit pocket, and noticed the front page of the local paper, on it a picture of Joe, surrounded by family, and to his side, that ridiculous, amazing puppy trailing along.

It has been several years, and hundreds of stories ago, since I was in Grundy, but I think about it often, and how the town was able to conjure bits of happiness out of tragedy. Happiness, like you might find in a piece of hard candy at a flood, or a puppy at a funeral.

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