 I don't remember which summer it was, probably the summer of 1980 or 1981. But I do remember it was the third week of June. Maybe June the 19th, now known as Juneteenth. I was working at KATV channel 7 in Little Rock as a photojournalist. KATV was a local television station but was associated or affiliated with the ABC television network. Like all TV stations, our revenues were based on advertising, and the advertising revenue was based on audience ratings. Great strategy and effort were put into programming and content creation during those times of the year deemed more important than other times of the year because that's when the ratings were measured. Nowadays, ratings are measured every day. At the time, four months out of the year, the ratings were measured of how many people were watching what, and we called it the Sweeps.  During Sweeps months the news director, the assignment editors, and much of the newsroom staff, would all gather and try to figure out some way to present news stories that would be compelling and interesting enough that somebody would want to come back to see the next part, the next day. One of the ways that they did this was to have a series of reports on one topic. Sometimes it was harder news, sometimes it was more feature like, but almost always a five-part series, starting on a Monday and continuing through the following Friday. I was assigned to be the photojournalist on a series of stories on little known, and fun vacation spots, maybe day trips to various places in Arkansas. Assigned to this story was a young female reporter, for the sake of anonymity I’m going to call her Mary Jane. Mary Jane did most of the research to find out where we could go and what tourism sites for which we could report. I mentioned a couple of things that were good ideas, and she went with them. We made our list of five different places that we were going to talk about to the audience in Arkansas. One of the places was the Murfreesboro, Arkansas, the Crater of Diamonds State Park. It was a state managed park that you could literally go there and dig for diamonds out of a mound of dirt. If you found one, it was yours to keep. A lot of people come every season and pay an entry fee to be able to dig in the dirt for diamonds. Every day somebody found something of value, albeit not much. Occasionally somebody would find a big one. It was a great story. Another of our stories was in western Arkansas in the city or town of Mena, Arkansas. The small town was near Mount Magazine that included the Queen Wilhelmina State Park. The park is surrounded by the Ouachita National Forest, so more hiking and outdoor adventures can be enjoyed within the national forest. The Ouachita National Recreation Trail, which can be accessed from the park, is a major attraction that stretches 223 miles through the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas and the Winding Stair Mountains in Oklahoma. This premier trail location is enjoyed by hikers, backpackers, mountain bikers, and hunters. It is a non-motorized, singletrack trail open to foot traffic, with only partial mountain bike opportunities. The trail is primarily within the Ouachita National Forest which is administered by the U.S. Forest Service. Shelters for camping are spaced along the trail. We set out for Mena, which was about a two-hour drive from where we were. In Mena, we had hotel reservations (a room for each of us). The plan was to go to dinner, go visit the state park for just checking-out what there was to photograph the next day, get up the next morning do our story and head back to Little Rock, (about a three-hour drive). But first things first, we were hungry, so we headed to a local diner to eat before finding our hotel. We walked into a small diner where the coffee was hot, and the cream pies were homemade and piled high! We looked around to the sparsely populated restaurant full of what looked like locals and relatives. Soon a middle-aged waitress that looked like she was strait out of a movie about a small town in the south came up to our booth and asked if we were hungry, as he handed us menus and took our drink orders. As the waitress walked away, I noticed that one of the men from another table got up, meandered over our way then stopped at looked at us, first me, then her. At first I thought he may have recognized Mary Jane from being a news reporter on their local TV station out of Little Rock. He proceeded to take a chair from the table behind us, turned it around, mounted it like a saddle with his arms leaning across the chair back as he continued looking at me then her, me then her. I couldn't help but notice that he might be a local towns person, dressed in jeans, a plaid shirt and cowboy boots. He tipped his hat back a bit as he looked down. His voice came out rather rough and said, “What are y'all doing in town, do you have business here?” I was a little taken aback because I didn't think he needed to know that. But as kept looking back-and-forth at us, I started to introduce ourselves. First, I said, my name is Steve Shaner this is Mary Jane. We work for channel 7 in Little Rock. And we're here to shoot record some stories for our newscast.” As I mentioned Mary Jane’s name I looked at over at her. The menu she was holding was shaken as she gripped it tight to try to stay calm. But I saw fear in her eyes. Oh, and did I say that Mary Jan was a young, pretty, colored, black, African-American woman? It was then I realized, he was asking us about why we were there together? He was asking, “why are you, a young white man with this young, very pretty African-American woman who was rarely seen in this parts of the South! There was no doubt that we were in the deep south. And in many towns and counties there was still a lot of racial prejudice. This man did not like us coming to his town as a racially different color working people and having dinner together. When I realized that I simply said again, “We're here to do a story for the TV station in Little Rock sir and we mean no harm or offense to anybody, please. He looked back at both of us again and he said in a low volume deep voice, “Well I suggest you do your business and get out of town.” The local yokel then got up, turned that chair back around set it back under the table behind him, and walked away. As he did, I looked at Mary Jane and said, “Listen it's five o'clock in the afternoon. it's the middle of June. It's one of the longest days of the year. We should have daylight till about 9 o'clock tonight. I say we get up to Queen Willa Mena, do that story and get back on the road by around 9 PM. We can stop for someth8ing to eat when we get back to the Interstate. I think we could be back in Little Rock by about 11 o'clock or midnight. What do you say?” Mary Jane finally put down that menu and glass of water and said, I don’t feel comfortable here. I wanna go! I said, “Then let's get the Hell-out-of-here! And we did we got up to the Queen Wilhelmina State Park we did the story about the train going around the mountain we did all the interviews we needed to and we got out of there as quickly as we could When we got back in the car and back to interstate 40 and I stepped on it going about 80 miles an hour. When I was 20 or 30 miles down the road I probably let up on the gas we both exhaled. I hate the fact that we don't have racial unity in our country I'm delighted for the fact that there's now a day in June, called Juneteenth that we can celebrate the freedom and independence of Black people in our country. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of Black people who suffer these kinds of indignities every day, and there are a lot of people like me, a naïve, white, young man who simply didn't recognize or experience it the same way Mary Jane did. Today as I write this, the third week of June, Junteenth, some 45 years later, our country is still struggling with this issue way more than we should be. In the words of Rodney King, “Why can’t we just all get along?” - 30 -
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