Chapter 2: The Interview

“May I give you a blessing for your travels?” he said.

I was about to embark on quite possibly the most significant trip in the quarter century I’d been alive. I needed all the good graces I could get.

“Absolutely!” I replied.

So the young ex-marine-turned Catholic priest from the Order of St. Peter laid his hands upon me in Terminal B of Charlotte’s Douglas International Airport and asked the Lord to give me a safe and successful journey.

I spotted Fr. McCambridge hours earlier in his long black cassock while we were standing in line to board at O’Hare. I didn’t much care that I cut a few folks in line to seek him out. Etiquette be damned, I was on a mission.

I initially wanted to ask him about Thomas Merton, a Catholic Trappist Monk who’s writings I’d become especially fond of over the last few months. That quickly turned into a conversation about my nervousness and fears about moving away from my family in Chicago and to the great unknown wilderness of Northern Maine. I hadn’t even gotten the job offer yet and I was already worrying.

Fr. McCambridge calmed my nerves and cured my apprehensions better than any airport bar Bloody Mary could have. He gave me suggestions and tips, but ultimately he turned the tables back on me, as any profound guide should. He told me the answers lie not within some book, ritual or thinker’s teachings. Those were merely means. The meanings lie inside myself.

With that inspiring message in the back of my mind, I zipped through my play-by-play assignment of 27 games in four days in South Carolina and was ready for the interview.

I departed from Augusta at 8:00pm. Once in Atlanta, a 9:55pm flight to Boston then aboard a 9:35am propeller plain to Presque Isle Thursday morning.

Thank the Lord, and Patrick McGillen, I didn’t have to stay the night in Logan Airport. Patrick’s a guy I hadn’t seen since high school, but welcomed me with open arms and cold beer to his humble Boston abode for a 7-hour layover in Beantown. As I stepped out of the cab with my luggage in front of his Southie apartment at 2:05am, I was greeted with a greeting that never fails to warm my heart.

“Yo! Cheese-man!!!!”

If you don’t know how I earned the nickname Cheese-man, just ask Connor Kramer, or Mike Stephany, or Jimmy Tardella. They’ll tell you that story.

Realizing I didn’t have any cash the next morning, Patrick, being the guy that he is, gave me $2.25 for a Charlie ticket to the airport and I was on my way to Maine.

My first impression of Presque Isle, Maine was unassuming. I was taking in the landscape for what it was. There were dogs in the airport terminal, which itself was no bigger than a T.J. Maxx. The rolling hills surrounding the town were a countryside I was unfamiliar with. The Midwest is flat. The character is in the people, not necessarily the landscape.

Not two minutes with my feet on the ground in the state of Maine, I met my first character. It was an elderly woman smoking Marlboro Red’s on a bench outside the airport. She was simple, blunt, and told me I’d like things up here in Maine. What reason didn’t I have to believe her?

WAGM’s impending News Director Kelly O’Mara picked me up from the airport and took me to the station.

On my first drive through town I tabulated what the town had to offer in terms of logos I’d recognized. How commercial of me, I thought. Subway, Wal-Mart, McDonald’s. OK. Everytown, USA has those. J.C. Penny’s, Arby’s, Tim Horton’s, gift shops with mannequin Indian’s outside? OK, now we’re talking.

So came the interview. I didn’t prepare in any special way. I usually don’t for such occasions. If you’re going to ask me something I’ve never thought about before, then hey, thanks for bringing that to my attention.

One such question was what my least favorite job was. I didn’t really have one.

Right before, they asked my favorite job, and of course I said it was throwing hotdogs at the ballpark. Boy do I miss that. But my least favorite?

I said caddying, which I did for 6 long summers alongside my two brothers, because of the cumbersome golf bags, trivial routines, and tedious nature of walking the same 18 holes every morning.

After the formal interview, I hung around the station for a little while and watched some reporters do reporter things, caught the 5:30 and 6:00 newscasts on set, and smiled and smalltalked.

After that, Kelly dropped me off at my hotel so I could drop off my bags and then join her and two other higher-ups for dinner across the street at Presque Isle’s finest restaurant, Café Sopreso.

Dinner chit-chat was light. The salmon was terrific. After that, they encouraged me to walk around downtown and see the town and really get a feel for the place.

I walked from one end of downtown to the other. Four minutes later I walked back. It was 8:00pm and the only thing open was the movie theater and a Chinese restaurant called Mai Tai.

That was Presque Isle. Nothing like the gleaming, noisy, congested streets I was used to. There wasn’t even a bar with an Irish name in their downtown. How could I live in a place that didn’t have an Irish pub?

So I settled into the only pub I knew was open, and that was hotel bar inside the Northeastland. They’d given me a free drink coupon when I checked in, so I figured, hell, might as well use it.

So I slapped the ticket on the counter and said, “One Funky Cold Medina, please.”

And wouldn’t you know it, the bartender actually knew how to make one. Who’s the asshole now?

So I slugged my drink, had three or four more and went back up to my room to catch some rest. I had a big day ahead of me tomorrow.

I had an 11:50am flight to Boston, and from there a small layover in Detroit would deliver me to Chicago just in time to catch a 62H CTA bus from Midway Airport west to Nashville Ave. and my ultimate destination of St. Daniel the Prophet church. The rehearsal started at 7:00pm. My sister Genevieve was getting married the next day.

At least that’s the way we drew it up.

Tags: boston, Cheese-man, Funky Cold Medina, Maine, Presque Isle, Salmon, St. Peter