That Waco Summer

I read this week about how the Waco Tribune-Herald newspaper building was rcently bought by Chip and Joanna Gaines, of Fixer Upper/Magnolia home renovation fame.

The newspaper’s going to relocate to a much smaller space in a shopping center near the Brazos River, while the Gaines are going to make the newspaper building their new corporate headquarters.

It got me thinking back to newspaper memories I hadn’t thought about in long time, dating back to the summer I spent interning at the Waco newspaper in 1999 before my junior year at Sam Houston State.

Before getting that internship I could count on one hand the number of times I’d been paid to write something before.

But the Waco deal promised a summer of steady paychecks and a scholarship when I was done.

Every Sunday afternoon that summer I drove my old pickup the 120 miles or so up Highway 77 from La Grange through the cornfields around Cameron and slowly through the speed traps of Rosebud and Lott and into Waco.

I paid a weekly rate to stay Sunday-Thursday nights at the Oak Lodge Motor Inn, a couple of blocks from the newspaper office.

It was not a great place, but affordable. I didn’t really know how bad it’s reputation was until I started meeting people in the newsroom, and they asked where I was staying.

When I told them I was staying at the Oak Lodge, no one could believe it.

It was a rough place.

I searched it up on the internet this week just to see if it was still around, and it is.

Here is an actual Google review of the place, posted just 11 months ago, and it seems the place hasn’t changed since I was there:

The review said: “I wouldn’t want to stay there, but it’s there for people who are transitioning in there life. It’s between homeless and a home. Is it pretty? No, but it’s a roof over the heads for people who need it. Not everyone who stays there sells or does drugs. Some of them are just going through a tough time in their life and sometimes you just need a place to stay and a roof over your head. So if that’s all you need, you can get that there.”

I fit right in.

I remember my mom giving me a little pot to boil water that made a pretty good bowl of ramen. There was a Church’s Chicken nearby that had a really good $1.99 special, too.

Some evenings I’d sit out front of my room, and chat with one of the neighbors - a grizzled old guy. I’ve long since forgotten his name, but we’d have a beer and spit sunflower seeds into the parking lot. One time my room got flooded from some mishap with the upstairs tenant’s water pipes.

But the work at the newspaper was amazing, everything from crime to business stories to baseball.

I worked for a news editor three days a week and in the sports department the other two days.

They even gave me an electronic media badge with my picture on it to get in and out of the doors of the building now owned by the Gaines’ empire.

The Tribune-Herald is a great newspaper, and at least two really sharp guys I worked for are still there, a community news editor Ken Sury (who hails from Fayetteville) and Brice Cherry, an assistant sports editor. I bought a spiral notebook and cut out every single story I wrote that summer and taped it into the notebook. I planned to do that with every story I wrote over my whole career.

That aspiration didn’t last. It’s probably for the best, there’s not enough storage space on Lane Pool Road to hold the boxes of notebooks I’d have now.

When I wasn’t working I enjoyed walking around the beautiful banks of the Brazos River and the old suspension bridge there. I watched the fourth of July Fireworks that summer from that bridge.

Right next to that river was the Hilton Hotel, which had a great outdoor swimming pool that I realized wasn’t watched all that closely.

My accommodations at the Oak Lodge didn’t have a pool, so I snuck over to the Hilton pool quite a bit during that hot summer to cool off.

I left that Waco summer with two valuable things:

1. A letter of recommendation from the main editor I’d use for years.

2. The knowledge that as long as I was OK with not having a pool of my own, I could make a living from working at newspapers.

I hope the Gaines’ time in that building will be as rewarding as mine was.