Ninth of December

We’re a long, long way from St. Marys Street. Literally, figuratively, and, most concerning, mentally.

After 25 years of covering news stories and travels which took me around the world, my beloved satellite truck business closed for good in July 2024. Unemployed and unable to get out of my own way, that summer saw police cars and ambulances at my dirty, bug-infested, one-room apartment on a regular basis. Severe depression and anxiety were getting the best of me. A mop felt like it weighed 1,000 pounds, and I’d go for days at a time without a shower.

The first responders who routinely showed up at my place were often the same. Some knew me by face and first name by the time late summer hit. I remember this one night I called 911 thinking I was having a heart attack. It took a lot for me to pick up the phone, but on this night the chest pain was just that bad. As I was being attended to by the EMTs, one of the police officers who had witnessed this scene once or twice before asked, “Hey, where’s your dog?” With IVs being inserted into my arms and blood pressure cuffs tightening, as the gurney was being raised, I began crying inconsolably and uncontrollably and responded, “He died.”

My 18-year-old Beagle, Peaches, one of the very few real names I’ll use in these writings, had passed the same week the doors to my over two-decade-old income stream had closed.

I continued to sob. The sides of the apparatus on which I was laying bumped against the frame of my apartment door, as the entire crew made its way into the heat of the hallway. A hot breeze was blowing down the corridor. I felt the wheels of the gurney come to a stop and listened to the EMTs discuss their plan for getting me down the stairs and into the cherry siren-lit box truck which was waiting to whisk me away, once again. Then, through the commotion, I heard a faint voice behind me, “Did you hear that?,” the voice asked.” I asked him where his dog was, and he said he died.”

What happened next? No, “I’m sorry to hear that,” nor any compassion. The officer and whoever he was talking to, they were laughing. I may have been in a mental fog, but I was cognizant enough to realize they weren’t cruel enough to laugh at my beloved Peaches’ passing; they were laughing at me. Having a snicker at my expense and at my mental state. I had become a joke to them, to the people who were supposed to be there to help me.

So, after a summer filled with emergency room visits, a voluntary stay in a mental health facility, and with the arrival of fall, I started to feel better. The authorities and the doctors stopped making appearances. Things were quiet. For the first time in a long time, there was no pressure. And I needed that, for just a little while, anyway.

Even though I was officially out of the satellite truck business, I still kept in touch with a certain few clients on a regular basis. The ones who I was able to establish a personal rapport with throughout the years. I missed dealing with those certain few, and I also missed the action which satellite trucks brought me. I longed for the days of the phone ringing, and I’d see a familiar client’s number pop up. Where was I going now? What happened in the world? It was usually stuff I could have never imagined. This was a drug which no chemical could produce.

December 31, 2024, New Year’s Eve, of course. I didn’t care to stay awake into the night to watch the festivities unfold on television. I didn’t want to think about the sat trucks which were there to transmit the revelry. I had operated one of those so many times. On this night, I had a clear and comfortable mindset and just didn’t want to revisit what used to be.

A few days into the new year, my phone rang. I almost never answered, not wanting the burden of being bothered, but always looked to see who was calling. I’d childishly imagine that this was going to be the call which would change my life.

On this afternoon, the caller ID read Sarah Matzoh.

Sarah worked for one of the big three American television networks and had a voice that was perhaps the most attractive I’ve ever heard through a phone line. She was strong, smart, confident, funny, attentive, attractive, and she routinely sent me on high-ticket assignments. Most of all, Sarah was no nonsense. She never wasted time and got right to the point.

It was Sarah who sent me on my first six-figure job ever – the Elian Gonzalez story. You remember, the little boy who floated over from Cuba and landed in South Florida. When I wanted to leave because I had enough, or when the weather was too hot and the hours were too long, she advised me to stay. I actually did leave for a few days at one point, and when I was ready to come back, Sarah had a spot for me. I was there for several weeks, sitting in my sat truck outside the Little Havana home where Elian was staying with relatives. I remember the somber feeling when the ATF, guns drawn, burst into the residence to scoop the child up and send him back to Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

Sarah sent me to nightclub shootings, church shootings, and countless hurricanes throughout the years. During the pandemic of 2020, when no sat trucks were working and the world had shut down, Sarah helped to send me to a late-night comics house where I set up shop on the guy’s front lawn and stayed for five long months. I received a Peabody Award for that one. Shortly after, Sarah sent me inside the gates of the White House to cover President Trump’s Republican National Convention. My final assignment for Ms. Matzoh was when she asked me to drive to San Antonio, Texas, to cover 2024’s solar eclipse. The spunky, high-spirited woman with a Jewish cracker-like last name seemingly trusted me. Sarah certainly took care of me, whether she realized it or not.

I was excited to see her name. So excited that I fumbled the phone during the transfer from the coffee table to my ear.

“Hey, Sarah, what’s goin’ on?,” I nervously asked with a big smile on my face which she probably could have felt through the phone. Like I said, Sarah was no nonsense all through the 25 years I’ve known her. She was calling with a purpose.

And, right on cue, “Are you looking for a job?……OK, great! Call this guy at this number. GOOD LUCK!” Quick, with no filter or pleasantries needed. Typical Sarah fashion, and I loved it.

So, what can I say? I called the guy immediately, and upon his answering, launched into a long-winded introduction of my abilities and experiences. Midway through my sales pitch, a thick New York City accent interrupts me, “You come highly recommended,” he says. “Do you know anything about Central New Jersey? Would you move there for the job?”

I didn’t take a pause for dramatic effect, nor did I tell this guy my life story. I accepted the job on the spot and thought about what I was doing after I hung up the phone. The company’s offices are 15 miles north of where I grew up. In New Jersey speak, one exit away on the New Jersey Turnpike.

After 30 years in Raleigh, North Carolina, three decades of love and heartbreak, now with two beautiful children to my credit and having covered countless news stories, it was time to go home. Home to the place with which I have had a love/hate relationship for most of my life. Home to the place which molded the beginnings of who I am, and who I became. For better, and for worse, it was time to go home now.