‘Godfrey News’ was reporter’s first gig

I grew up in Godfrey, a little community in Morgan County that consisted of one store and three churches.

About the biggest thing to happen in Godfrey when I lived there is that comedian Richard Pryor once came to film a scene from “Greased Lightning.”

Also, when Lester Maddox was running for governor, he came and delivered a speech at the store while standing on a tractor. It was the first time I’d ever heard a politician talk, and it’s probably the only time someone running for statewide office visited Godfrey.

Other than those two things I can’t recall anything happening in Godfrey while I was living there that would be newsworthy by The Telegraph’s standards. There was no crime to speak of. I don’t think we even had a burglary. Yet, The Madisonian ran a weekly feature called “The Godfrey News.”

It was written by a nice lady there who would call people and find out what they had done that week. It would say things like “Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Smith visited Mr. and Mrs. Joe Jones on Saturday. They had barbecue.” A big scoop would be something like, “Sam Brown went fishing at Carl Ford’s pond Sunday and caught an 8-pound bass.”

When I was in high school, the lady who wrote The Godfrey News for many years was getting on in years and gave it up. No one else volunteered to do it, so I did it for a little while.

I didn’t think of myself as a reporter then, but really I was. Even though it’s pretty funny to me that what I wrote was considered news, it’s not that different from what I do now. I still call people and try to find out what’s going on.

I just hope to find out something with wider appeal than what someone had for dinner.

This story was originally published March 1, 2017 at 5:05 PM with the headline "‘Godfrey News’ was reporter’s first gig."