'We all lived to write again,' Wally says on recent conference for newspaper columnists

I had never been to Cincinnati and had no desire to go there.

Still I found myself headed down Interstate 64, toward Interstate 71 during the five-hour drive to the Queen City last week. The occasion was the 2018 conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. The group began in 1977 as an excuse for some guys to get together and drink.

Somehow it has survived and grown, in numbers and in scope, and now it has just as many women members and not quite as much drinking. There are speakers and seminars with big names like Jerry Springer, who apologized for ruining the culture, and names I didn’t know, like Nick Clooney, father of George and a respected newsman and commentator on his own, although he said his fame was relative.

The heart of the meeting remains the camaraderie. You talk to people with the same cares and problems as you have. These are good people.

If you’ve never been to Cincinnati, think St. Louis, only with a whole lot more restored three and four-story stone buildings on narrow streets. Their regional favorite food is chili – a highly spiced chili which is spread over spaghetti noodles.

They think of themselves as the largest small town in America.

We spent an afternoon and an evening at their zoo where the feature is a baby hippopotamus, Fiona, child of a St. Louis hippo, Bibi, by the way. To get to the zoo we walked a ways down a long hill. Cincinnati has what seems to me like a disproportionate number of hills. And we always seemed to be walking up one. Except this time. But the trip back to the hotel uphill was another story.

While we were awaiting our evening banquet at the zoo, storm clouds gathered. But these days everyone can check the weather on smart phones, so we were assured that it would all pass harmlessly to the north.

Until rain began to fall and didn’t quit. That left 50 or 60 people holed up in a meeting room clear across the zoo from the main entrance where we were assured shuttles from the hotel serving as the conference center would be to pick us up.

The means of getting to the shuttles was a golf cart, covered, but holding only six or seven people at a time. My wife and I decided to brave the light rain and just walk back to the entrance, maybe a quarter of a mile away. So did some others. But others waited for a ride, so the group became pretty spread out.

As we got to the entrance the shuttle was just leaving. So we waited, and waited and waited. More people came from the meeting room and we huddled under the stairway roof, still waiting.

Our organizer kept calling to check on the shuttle. It was only about a half mile away to the hotel and except for the, by now, heavy rain and the lightning, we could have walked back. In fact that was the original plan. But we had enough experience in walking around really hilly Cincinnati to know that you spent a lot of time and energy walking uphill.

The shuttle finally arrived. We all rushed to board. Since it was a seven passenger van, only seven people got on board. The rest of us, thoroughly soaked by now, rushed back to the stairway creating the very first NSNC wet shirt contest. No prizes were awarded.

It got darker. The wind kicked up. It was cold.

Some people tried calling a ride on Uber. They had one booked, but apparently he couldn’t get into the zoo parking lot because it was after closing time. They tried another. Same result. So much for modern technology.

The shuttle came back. Unfortunately there still were about 10 people left.

We had waited for the people who had trouble walking, and the people with walkers and other more important passengers, and sent them ahead. But people were starting to feel a little desperate. Good nature had morphed to surliness. By now we were getting on that next shuttle if it meant maiming someone. I was willing to ride lying on the floor with everyone’s feet on me if necessary.

We actually did leave a couple of people behind but someone else gave them a ride. Our shuttle went back to make sure.

Someone said the organizer said it felt like Dunkirk with everyone longing for a way back. There was no shelling and no strafing, just lightning, and no one died. We all lived to write again.

It seems that every year there is at least one event where things don’t go just right, like the long, dusty ride on the non—air conditioned bus at the Columbus, Ohio conference when we went to visit the Bull Semen Hall of Fame and Museum.

Wonder what it will be next year at Buffalo?

This story was originally published June 15, 2018 at 11:56 AM with the headline "'We all lived to write again,' Wally says on recent conference for newspaper columnists."