12-16-01, Voice in the Crowd, 924 words

I never did know why they called him Barney.  His real name was Chester A. Martin.  If I had to guess, I would say the A stood for Arthur.  But the main thing is we all called him Barney and the name fit, as a name should.

He was a big man with a belly that could easily fill a Santa Claus suit.  His fair complexion went along with that gentleman from the far north.  His laugh matched the jolly tone and he laughed often.

At one time, Barney was in the higher echelon of that special fraternity known as the Internal Revenue Service auditors.  He was good at it, I was told.  He always had other interests, especially sports.  Competition at pistol shooting was a specialty.  He had a method.  Before a match he would take two aspirin, he said, to calm his nerves.  When he lined his pistol up on a target, he kept both eyes open, not shutting one eye in the traditional fashion.  He lined the sight up where it was centered in the 3-D vision of both eyes.

His future was assured—until he fell off a train.  Barney never said why.  He was know to favor a taste of the grape and maybe he had one too many.  He also favored fair ladies and it could have been a jealous husband.  More likely, he was just preoccupied with some other thought and got careless.

As a result of the fall, though, Barney had trouble concentrating.  A long line of figures frustrated him.  He had to resign from the service.  Still full of energy, he decided to go back to his hometown of Hamlet, NC, and—of all things—buy a newspaper.  He bought the weekly Hamlet News-Messenger.

That’s about the time I met Barney.  I was a 20-year-old sports editor, in a department of one, with the Sanford (NC) Daily Herald.  At football games I would prowl the sidelines with my Speed Graphic.  Barney did too.  We became friends and he invited me to come down to Hamlet on a Sunday, my one day off, to see his operation.

Since Sanford was a dry town, not even permitting beer sales, I took him up on the invitation.

Full of the dreams and energy of youth, I listened to Barney as if he were the Pied Piper.

He owned a bunch of small weekly newspapers near the state line between North and South Carolina.  One he had started with money from the whisky industry.  The county around Wadesboro, NC, was voting to become a wet county and the established weekly there was pro-dry.  The whisky folks paid Barney for a lot of advertising—in advance.  Hence, the Wadesboro Record.

I don’t know how he got them all, probably with similar manipulations.  The bank he dealt with had cobwebs on its money vault.  When Barney paid off one loan, the banker commented that before long he would be out of debt.

“I hope not,” Barney replied, “because if I’m out of debt I’m not doing anything.”

Barney proceed to talk to a banker friend named MacLean in Laurinburg into opening a branch in Hamlet.

One of the newspapers Barney acquired was in Camden, SC, where there was a large Dupont plant.  A young Dupont heir who received a large chunk of his inheritance every three years had decided he wanted to be a small town Horace Greeley.  He outfitted a print shop and began the Camden Citizen.  With the intention of giving the small southern town a first class newspaper with a New York Times flavor, he spent freely for talent, columns, equipment.  He bought new cars for his staff.  Someone came to him with a sideline venture of investing in a rat poison formula.  He put money in that too.

I didn’t take long before the young heir had depleted his inheritance and would have to wait another three years for his next paycheck.  To make matters worse, he was in debt to Uncle Sam.  The IRS wanted money he had already spent.  Barney came to the rescue.  He offered to take the newspaper and equipment off his hands by assuming the tax obligation—a talent of Barney’s.  He moved the equipment to Hamlet, but owned an idle newspaper.

Seeing my young ambition, Barney offered me a partnership in either the Lumberton Post or the Camden Citizen.  After I saw the two towns, I fell in love with the beauty of Camden.  My poor wife had faith in my dreams and backed me up without complaints, leaving the security of a paying job to a challenge.  To make it harder on her, she was expecting.  Our daughter Cathy was born there.

It’s harder to rebuild a failed business than to start a new one.  After six months, I told Barney I had to call it quits and go to work for another paper—for a paycheck.

It was a tough decision, because Barney was ever the Pied Piper.  I weakened, but thought of my wife and young baby.  My dreams would have to be put on hold.

Several times I saw Barney over the years, either his visiting me or my going to see him.  Then we drifted apart.

He was the kind of person who makes life interesting.  A little salt and pepper on the meat of daily activity.  He was one of a kind and I feel privileged to know him.

I only regret that now I’ll never know why we called him Barney.

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