Death in the Chair, Step by Remorseless Step

SOMBER SCENE People opposed to the death penalty outside
the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution
in Nashville before the execution of Daryl Holton.

By DAN BARRY

Published: September 16, 2007

NASHVILLE

The window blinds to the execution chamber are raised shortly after 1 in the morning, in accordance with the Procedures for Electrocution in the State of Tennessee. And the condemned man is revealed.

He looks almost like a young child buckled into a car seat, with his closed eyes and freshly shaved head, with the way the black restraints of the electric chair crisscross at his torso. He yawns a wide-mouthed yawn, as though just stirring from an interrupted dream, and opens his eyes.

He is moments from dying.

The cause of death will be cardiac arrest. Every step toward that end will follow those written state procedures, which strive to lend a kind of clinical dignity to the electrocution of a human being, yet read like instructions for jump-starting a car engine. Remember: “A fire extinguisher is located in the building and is near the electric chair as a precaution.”

Behold Daryl Holton. He is 45. Ten years ago he shot his four young children in his uncle’s auto-repair garage, two at a time, through the heart. He used their very innocence to kill them, telling them not to peek, Daddy has a surprise. After he was done he turned himself in, saying he wanted to report a “homicide times four.”

In seeking the execution of this Army veteran, now blinking in the cold, bright room, the state argued that Mr. Holton committed premeditated murder, times four, to punish his ex-wife for obtaining an order of protection and for moving away. He killed his children, so he must be killed.

In defending the life of this man — now pursing his lips, about all that he can move — his advocates argued that he believed his children were better off dead than to live in a profoundly troubled home; that he actually felt relief after pulling a tarpaulin over those four small bodies. He killed his children, so he must be mentally ill.

All the while, Mr. Holton adhered to a peculiar code of conduct that vexed all sides. Those fighting for his life often did so against his will. Those seeking his remorse were unrewarded.

Just days ago he said the crimes for which he was convicted warranted the death penalty, but he pointedly removed himself from that equation. Perhaps to suggest the killings were justified; perhaps to keep things theoretical. No matter. Now, at 1:09 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2007, at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, it is about to happen.

The warden, Ricky J. Bell, stands before him, supervising the first electrocution in Tennessee since 1960. Prison officials had hoped that Mr. Holton would choose to die by lethal injection, and had been gently reminding him of this option. But he maintained that since electrocution was the only form of capital punishment at the time of his crimes, then electrocution it should be.

Before the raising of those window blinds, Mr. Holton had started to hyperventilate, and Mr. Bell had sought to calm him by slightly loosening the straps. But now it is 1:10, the blinds are up, the clock is running. In accordance with procedures, the warden asks if the condemned has something to say.

The inmate’s response is so slurred by his hyperventilating that he is asked to repeat what he has been planning to say for a long time. He says again, “Two words: I do.”

This could be a joke of some kind, a cosmic conundrum, or maybe Mr. Holton’s acceptance into whatever awaits him after life. It could be the use of his marital vow as a parting shot at his ex-wife, or perhaps a twisted re-affirmation of his belief in the sanctity of marriage and family.

The warden asks, “That it?” The inmate nods.

Two corrections officers step forward to place a sponge soaked in salted water on Mr. Holton’s bald scalp to enhance conductivity. Next comes the headpiece, which the procedures describe as a “leather cranial cap lined with copper mesh inside.” Finally, a power cable, not unlike the cable to your television, is attached to the headpiece.

The copper mesh pressing wet sponge sends salty water streaming down the inmate’s ashen face, soaking his white cotton shirt to the pale skin beneath. When officers try to blot him dry with white towels, Mr. Holton says not to worry about it, “ain’t gonna matter anyway.”

After the white towels comes a black shroud to be attached to the headpiece. It is intended in part to protect the dignity of the inmate, now strapped, soaked and about to die before witnesses. His final expression, then, will be his own.

Time.

With the push of a button on a console labeled Electric Chair Control, 1,750 volts bolt through Mr. Holton’s body, jerking it up and dropping it like a sack of earth. The black shroud offers the slightest flutter, and witnesses cannot tell whether they have just heard a machine’s whoosh or a man’s sigh.

Fifteen seconds later, another bolt, and Mr. Holton’s body rises even higher, slumps even lower. His reddened hands remain gripped to the arms of the chair, whose oaken pieces are said to have once belonged to the old electric chair, and before that, to the gallows.

It is 1:17. Procedures require a five-minute pause at this point. A prison official off to the side watches a digital clock on the wall while chewing something, perhaps gum, perhaps to calm his nerves. Two minutes, three, four, the only things moving in the room are his eyes and his jaw, five. The window blinds drop, and a physician begins a private examination.

Later, in the foggy darkness outside the prison, someone will read a statement from the ex-wife, Crystal Holton, in which she says that all the anger and hatred can finally leave her, to be replaced by a child’s innocent love — “love times four.”

Later, well after sunrise, Kelly Gleason, one of the lawyers who fought to keep Mr. Holton alive, will set aside her mourning for a friend and give in to fitful sleep.

Later, in the hot afternoon some 50 miles to the south, four polished tombstones will again cast shadows toward a playground at the bottom of a cemetery’s hill. Arranged in order of age, the stones bear the names of the four Holton children: Stephen, 12, Brent, 10, Eric, 6, and Kayla, 4.

But first confirmation, in accordance with procedures. And now the disembodied voice of Tennessee: “Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the legal execution of Daryl Holton. The time of death, 1:25. Please exit.”

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Taking the Guilt Out of the Death Penalty

"As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a job. They’re just a bunch of guys
trying to pay their rent.” --Daryl Holdon

Photo: Ángel Franco/The New York Times

By DAN BARRY

Published: September 9, 2007

NASHVILLE

Daryl Holton shaved his head clean a couple of months ago. He thought he could retain some control in this small way. But he also wanted to save the corrections officers the trouble.

“I wouldn’t want them to leave with a feeling of guilt,” he says, speaking from the other side with his hands and feet shackled. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a job. They’re just a bunch of guys trying to pay their rent.”

His head needs to be shaven; his legs, too. That is because, not long ago, he marked an ‘X’ beside a sentence on a document handed to him here at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. That sentence read: “I waive the right to have my execution carried out by lethal injection and choose to be executed by electrocution.”

The crimes that Mr. Holton committed 10 years ago are so horrible and sad that it hurts to read even the most dispassionate description: he shot and killed his four children, ages 4, 6, 10 and 12. Two at a time, through the heart, after having them cover their eyes and asking them not to peek.

Was he punishing his ex-wife for obtaining an order of protection against him, as the state suggests? Or, as his defenders argue, was he depressed and temporarily insane, reasoning that his children were better off dead than to be raised by a mother with a history of alcoholism and abandonment?

Wouldn’t you have to be mentally ill to kill your own children?

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“In his mind, he killed his children
out of the highest possible moral reasons,
as odd as that might sound,”
says Kelly Gleason, a defense lawyer.

Now, after all the motions filed in his behalf, often against his will and without his participation, and after the years of speculation about why he did what he did and does what he does, Daryl Keith Holton, 45, of sound body and court-determined competence — a supporter of the death penalty, by the way — is scheduled to be killed by the State of Tennessee on Wednesday morning, one o’clock.

To be electrocuted, by choice: this slender man sitting now in a room as small and stark as a confessional, his darkened teeth in need of repair, his voice raised to be heard through the Plexiglas that separates the free from the condemned. Articulate and wry, he speaks with a deference — If I could; If you don’t mind — that masks the slight condescension of someone experiencing what few can imagine.

The preferred method of execution in this country is lethal injection, based on the educated guess that it is more humane — at least when properly administered. In that context, the electric chair seems a gruesome relic from the last century, an incremental step up from the noose. Old Sparky. Throw the switch and the lights flicker, as warning to us all.

Ten states still permit its use, depending on the circumstances, although Nebraska alone provides for no other option. Here in Tennessee, where the electric chair has not been used since 1960, the law says that if you are sentenced to death for a crime committed before Jan. 1, 1999, you may choose to die sitting up, or die lying down.

“You have a lot of argument nowadays that lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment, by a number of my neighbors in here on death row — at least by their attorneys,” Mr. Holton says. “To be honest with you, they are both probably effective and painless methods of execution.”

He smiles the small smile of someone sharing an inside joke; it is not a smirk. “I’m using the word ‘probably’ because any evidence regarding that is going to be hearsay,” he says, then adds, “It’s rare that someone lives to tell about” — here a chuckle escapes — “how an execution felt.”

Point taken. But why the electric chair?

“It’s not very intellectual,” he says. “At the time of the commission of the offense, that’s the punishment that was in place. That was the law.”

His answer reflects the strangely ethical code by which he lives, one that may reflect his many years in the Army, or perhaps the external order he needs to corral some internal chaos. He abhors frivolous appeals, and refuses to accept the privileges he has earned as a model inmate. When he came close to being executed last year, he declined a special last meal, and ate what other inmates ate that night: a turkey-and-cheese hoagie.

Kelly Gleason, a lawyer with the state’s Office of the Post-Conviction Defender, sees a sad consistency in his thought process. Ms. Gleason has visited Mr. Holton two dozen times and considers him a friend, even though he counts her among the “well-intentioned do-gooders” who have waged, and lost, various legal battles to save his life.

“I would describe him as a highly ethical, moral person with a rigid moral code, who acts in accordance with that code,” she says. “In his mind, he killed his children out of the highest possible moral reasons, as odd as that might sound.”

Robert Blecker, a professor at New York Law School who supports the death penalty in some cases, disagrees. He has met and spoken with Mr. Holton several times as part of a self-appointed mission to extract remorse from the condemned man. So far his mission, videotaped and audiotaped for posterity, has failed.

“I think he’s not ceding, or seeing, that he committed a monstrously despicable crime,” Mr. Blecker says.

Time is nearly up. Corrections officers begin to hover. Hurriedly, Mr. Holton is asked whether he believes that he deserves to die for what he did. He answers in a way that continues to keep imminent things in the abstract.

“I’m taking myself out of the equation,” he says. “What I would say to you is that someone convicted of four counts of first-degree murder, with the aggravators that were found in my case, the aggravating circumstances — yes, that conviction is worthy of the death penalty.”

As Mr. Holton rises, his shackles chime. He says as he goes, “And good luck in your future endeavors.”

Audio excerpts from Dan Barry’s interview with a death row inmate:
nytimes.com/danbarry.

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A Rough Script of Life, if Ever There Was One

The lives of the 5,600 residents of Chadron, Neb., unfold item by item,
week after week, in the police log of the local newspaper.
photo by Angel Franco/The New York Times

By DAN BARRY

Published: September 2, 2007

CHADRON, Neb.

Item from the blotter of the Chadron Police Department: Caller from the 900 block of Morehead Street reported that someone had taken three garden gnomes from her location sometime during the night. She described them as plastic, “with chubby cheeks and red hats.”

When you reach Chadron you’re glad for it, because this Nebraska town is a long way from anywhere. Drive north on Main Street, past the Police Department, and you hit prairie; drive south, past the state college, and you hit prairie. In between, 5,600 people embrace, avoid and endure one another in a compact place that began more than a century ago as a remote railroad town.

Here, as anywhere, the specifics of most encounters between residents evaporate with the moment, leaving only those precious, fleeting bits, snatched from the ether and pinned by some dispatcher sitting at a desk behind the Police Department’s service window. A call comes in, the dispatcher types and another brief paragraph is added to the continuing Chadron epic.

Caller from the 200 block of Morehead Street advised a man was in front of their shop yelling and yodeling. Subject was told to stop yodeling until Oktoberfest.

It is in this regard that Chadron is blessed. For here, life’s gradual unfolding is measured and honored by Police Beat, a longstanding feature in The Chadron Record, the weekly newspaper. It records those small, true moments lost in the shadows of the large — moments that may not rise to the Olympian heights of newsworthiness, yet still say something about who we are and how we create this thing called community.

Caller from the 400 block of Third Street advised that a subject has been calling her and her employees, singing Elvis songs to them.

Police Beat repeats, almost verbatim, some of the calls that the town’s police dispatchers receive and then dutifully log, often in a literary style that synthesizes the detached jargon of the police with the conversational language of the people.

Caller from the 200 block of Morehead Street advised that a known subject was raising Cain again.

Every day, except on those days when they don’t feel like it, the dispatchers fax copies of their calls log to the ink-perfumed office of The Record, just around the corner. There, a young reporter named Heather Crofutt selects the most interesting items, edits out the names and specific addresses and types them up for Police Beat. Although she is essentially transcribing the reports, she says, “People think I make it up.”

Officer on the 1000 block of West Highway 20 found a known male subject in the creek between Taco John’s and Bauerkemper’s. Subject was covered in water stating he was protecting his family. Officers gave subject ride home.

George Ledbetter, (pictured) the editor, says Police Beat rivals the obituaries in popularity, so much so that it has become an integral part of local culture. Not long ago, for example, the loud practice sessions of four Chadron State College musicians earned them a mention in the log. They instantly knew what to call their fledgling band: Police Beat.

Mr. Ledbetter struggles to name his favorite item; there are so many. But taken as a whole, he says, the feature is “such a reflection of human life.”

Over the years, Chadron police officials have had a tolerate-hate relationship with Police Beat. One top-ranking officer complains that the feature seems to minimize the difficulty of police work. She says that while there are plenty of calls about animal encounters (Caller on the 900 block of Parry Drive advised a squirrel has climbed down her chimney and is now in the fireplace looking at her through the glass door, chirping at her.), there are plenty of calls about far more serious matters: child abuse, domestic violence, you name it.

But Police Beat often reflects how heavily some of us rely on law enforcement for just about everything (Caller from the 800 block of Pine Street advised that she had just left someone’s home and she forgot her jacket, and requested an officer to get her coat), and demonstrates how deft the police can be at defusing potentially volatile matters:

Caller from the 100 block of North Morehead Street requested to speak to animal control because caller felt that someone was coming into his yard and cutting the hair on his dogs. Dispatch advised caller to set up video surveillance on his house. Caller said he planned on it.

What emerges, then, is a kind of weekly prose poem to the human condition, where annoyance about barking dogs is validated, where nighttime fears born of isolation are reflected, where concern about others is memorialized.

Caller stated that there is a 9-year-old boy out mowing the yard and feels that it is endangering the child in doing so when the mother is perfectly capable of doing it herself.

In short, Police Beat is a rough script to the tragicomedy that is everyday life. And if the details preserved in the ever-expanding Chadron epic do not always find us at our best, there are moments, recorded for posterity, when we seek redemption, we make amends. We try.

Two weeks after the theft of those three chubby-cheeked, red-hatted garden ornaments, a brief item in Police Beat reported a break in the case. Two girls refusing to identify themselves had “brought in some gnomes.”

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A Grand Gathering, but One With a Solemn Note

“Unless we can do something to turn the membership losses
into significant gains in the next couple of years, we may be
at a point where we can’t recover.” --Robert Robbins
Photo: Ángel Franco/The New York Times

By DAN BARRY

Published: August 26, 2007

DENVER

As with most matters of Odd Fellowship, nearly every aspect of the annual convention of the Sovereign Grand Lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows must adhere to protocol. The dais for the officers’ banquet, for example, must be two-tiered and able to accommodate 50 people, important on the bottom, really important on the top.

Seats for the sovereign grand master, the deputy sovereign grand master, the sovereign grand warden, the sovereign grand secretary and the sovereign grand treasurer. Seats for the leaders of the two uniformed branches, the Patriarchs Militant and its Ladies Auxiliaries. A seat for the president of the International Association of Rebekah Assemblies, established when the Odd Fellows long ago recognized “the need for a woman’s touch.”

Here they are now, the officers and their escorts, proceeding solemnly through the grand ballroom of the Adam’s Mark Hotel as the sovereign grand musician plays “Pride and Gallantry” on the piano. Six hundred people rise to their feet, more than a few with some difficulty.

Robert Robbins, the soft-spoken sovereign grand master whose yearlong tenure ends with this convention, takes his honored place. His black tuxedo is adorned with an eye-catching medallion of merit and the grand master medal he will soon relinquish. His jewelry is modest, given the glint of Odd Fellows bling in the room.

Gazing out upon this gathering of Odd Fellows and Rebekahs, all about to dine on small portions of beef or salmon, he sees a bobbing sea of gray and white. In this crowd he is practically a stripling, at 69.

Since his installation as top Odd Fellow, Mr. Robbins has warned that this order, dedicated to caring for the widowed, the orphaned and the needy, is in a “state of crisis.” Members are dying by the thousands, local lodges are closing by the dozens, and actual participation among the 289,000 members is dropping. If the people sitting before him do not heed his call to replenish the ranks, they will be the Odd Men and Women Out — defunct, extinct, done.

“Unless we can do something to turn the membership losses into significant gains in the next couple of years,” he says later, “we may be at a point where we can’t recover.”

Once we were a nation of joiners, and so many joined the Odd Fellows, a fraternal organization whose name stems from an English journalist’s observation in 1745. He found it “odd” to see “fellows,” rather than the aristocracy, helping widows, orphans and one another. The name stuck, oddly.

In many communities, you can still find an old I.O.O.F. building, a place of some mystery, where the rituals would include acting out the story of the Good Samaritan. Members were to apply that story to real life by aiding their brothers and sisters, chipping in to pay burial costs, for example. You merely had to express belief in one Creator to be eligible; atheists and pantheists need not apply.

Odd Fellows tended to frown on alcohol, loved bestowing medals on one another, and reveled in seeing their sword-carrying, uniformed brothers, the chevaliers of the Patriarchs Militant, march in Main Street parades. In their small worlds, Odd Fellows mattered.

Then came social changes to dull the appeal of fraternal organizations. Tighter government regulations forced the Odd Fellows out of their signature cause, orphanages, while baby boomers found all the pomp and secrecy to be, um, silly. Several years ago, after contentious debate, the Odd Fellows allowed women (!) into their ranks, but that has done little to stem the decline.

It’s gotten so bad that many members of the Patriarchs Militant are too old to march anymore. “Because a lot of them can’t even walk,” explains one chevalier, who includes himself among the nonparading ranks.

Still, here the Odd Fellows are, in Denver, 1,000 strong and not so, coming together from many states and a few countries on an expansive hotel concourse with many large meeting rooms, thus accommodating those using wheelchairs and walkers and cutting down on the chance for escalator mishaps.

At times the concourse is still, as private meetings focus on bylaw changes and membership crises, the protocols of medals and the worthiness of certain charities. Rituals have their occasional glitches, as when the Mardi Gras music of a Rebekahs gathering in one room filters into a memorial service being held by the uniformed branches in another.

But when those meetings break, the floor becomes awash with color, much of it radiating from the distinctive dress of the Ladies Auxiliaries: white nurse dresses, white shoes and white gloves, offset by purple-and-gold capes, purple -and-gold sashes, and purple-gold-and-white yachting caps. You know them when you see them.

Facing his brothers and sisters at this night’s banquet, the grand sovereign master cannot help but wonder what will become of his beloved order. Here is Hank Dupray, 63, a former sovereign grand master from North Carolina who guided the order into establishing an orphanage in Cambodia. Here, too, is Harrell Shoultz, 84, a retired farmer from Indiana who, with his wife, LaVern, just pledged $50,000 to that orphanage.

And here is Mike Easley, 64, who arranged this convention with his wife, Linda. His mother became seriously ill in the early 1950s, leaving him and his three brothers to spend years in a fine Odd Fellows orphanage. He says that he is simply giving back now and mentions in passing that his mother lives today in an Odd Fellows retirement home.

A toast then, to all national leaders of the world, as is Odd Fellows custom. Another toast, to all fraternal leaders of the world. Dinner, remarks, benediction, recessional to the strains of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Odd Fellows and Rebekahs everywhere, good night.

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Words May Have Power, but Gossip Is a Firing Offense

.

At table from left, Sandra Piper, Michelle Bonsteel and Jon Meyer.

By DAN BARRY

Published: July 22, 2007

HOOKSETT, N.H.

Six somber members of the Hooksett Town Council, men with faces set as if in granite, trooped into the public library’s basement the other night to convene what was advertised as a special meeting. The agenda did not concern tax rates or zoning issues, but rather that most public of commodities: words.

Of particular concern: That among the deluge of words released daily in the Hooksett Municipal Building, words about everything from dog licenses to the lunch specials down at Robie’s Country Store, a lingering few uttered months ago concerned the relationship between the town administrator and a certain town employee. You might call it gossip.

The accused gossipmongers, two women whose expressions were also as inflexible as the state rock, sat across from the town elders in plastic chairs that constituted a makeshift dock. Fired from their town jobs for gossiping, they were appealing for reinstatement to the very body that had dismissed them without any semblance of due process.

Also in attendance were two dozen or so local residents, some of whom killed time until the call to order by discussing the persistent failure of an acquaintance to take care of himself. You might call it gossip.

The council chairman banged his gavel and led everyone in the Pledge of Allegiance. Then the lawyer for Hooksett explained that the dismissed employees had 90 minutes to offer their proof of innocence, but they could not call witnesses or ask questions of the council.

“Speak louder!” an audience member shouted.

Jon Meyer, the lanky lawyer representing the two fired employees, stood to begin his argument. But first he said that in his many years of representing public employees at termination hearings, he had never participated in or even heard of a proceeding such as this. “This is like jousting a ghost,” he said.

Then came another shout: “Can’t hear!”

When the spotlight comes to Hooksett, a town of 13,000 along the Merrimack River, it usually shines on historic Robie’s, where needy presidential candidates come to feign folksiness. But lately that light has been trained on the old, red-brick Municipal Building, where human nature, in the form of gossip, unfolded.

The town administrator and that employee often worked late together, it was said. Behind closed doors, it was said. Their cars the last two in the lot, it was said. Not kosher, it was said.

Word about those words and others reached the administrator, David Jodoin, who is said to be happily married, with children. Extremely upset about the untrue implication of those words, he complained to the Town Council, which dispatched a lawyer to begin a hurried investigation.

The lawyer, who works for the law firm that represents the town, conducted interviews and checked phone records to track the wispy trail of those words — past the “Watch Your Step” sign on the Municipal Building’s front door, down the hall and, finally, to the offices of the town assessor and the code enforcement officer.

She concluded that the conduct of the four employees warranted discipline, and the council agreed. Without publicly stating why, the council promptly fired the assessor, Sandra Piper, a town employee for 27 years; the code enforcement officer, Michelle Bonsteel; and two assistants, one of whom would later admit that she had once referred to Mr. Jodoin as a little you-know-what.

The four women became the Hooksett Four, their firings became national news, and cheap gossip regarding two private people in a small town was shared with an entire country. But Hooksett still had more to say.

After holding a special meeting to consider — and dismiss — the appeal of the two fired assistants, the Town Council issued a statement saying that the gossip reflected “a conscious and concerted effort to damage reputations, to spread untrue stories with the knowledge that they were not true and evidently to retaliate for some perceived preferential treatment.”

Although the statement clearly conveyed outrage and righteousness, it also reflected the council’s struggle with the concept of objectivity. After all, two of the Hooksett Four, the department heads, had yet to appeal their case at a special meeting. Until this night.

Ms. Piper, short and in blue, and Ms. Bonsteel, tall and in black, sat with mouths shut tight, though perhaps a little too late. They left the talking to Mr. Meyer and to Lauren Irwin, the lawyer who conducted the gossip-sleuthing.

Mr. Meyer said his clients never talked of a romantic relationship, but rather were speculating about the favoritism their supervisor was giving a subordinate. Ms. Irwin countered that the four women were clearly implying an affair was taking place; their knowledge that it was baseless only underscored the malice of their words.

Ms. Irwin said the town administrator was so distraught by the gossip that he was “having difficulty functioning,” and feared that his career and family life would suffer. Mr. Meyer countered that this was irrelevant to the proceeding, and that he could just as easily have laid out the profound ways in which the fired employees had also suffered.

And yes, in retrospect, he said his clients should have shared their concerns with Mr. Jodoin, but it was an awkward subject to broach. At the same time, he said, the administrator could have handled the matter internally, rather than complain to the council.

The council announced that it would consider the matter in a “nonpublic” meeting, which is a benign way of saying in private. Then a gavel banged to end this very special meeting, sending people into a thunderstorm-wet Hooksett to contemplate governance, gossip and the awesome power of the word.

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A Community Swap Meet, on Your AM Radio Station

“We’ll have someone selling antiques. And the very next call
is someone wanting to sell their chickens.” DENNIS NELSON

By DAN BARRY

Published: July 15, 2007
==================

SYLVA, N.C.

Another noon hour is drawing to a close at the small radio station beside the railroad track, 680 on the AM dial, your home for today’s hits and yesterday’s favorites. Listeners have heard the news, weather, sports and a reminder to visit Andy Shaw Ford, across from the Wal-Mart. It’s time again for that thousand-watt form of communion, Tradio.

The host, Dennis the Menace, leans toward the microphone the way he might to confide in his life’s companion. His voice, chain-smoker deep, assumes the broadcasting cadence that tries to evoke folksy familiarity but somehow comes out sounding like God trying hard to just shoot the breeze.

“Well, it’s a good time to do Tradio, so let’s do it,” he says, to maybe 1,500 listeners. “Looking to buy, sell, trade or give away? Well, give us a call, and we’ll try to help you out.”

Remember, the number to call is 586-WRGC, as in WRGC-AM.

And the residents of Sylva, population 2,500, call. So do their neighbors in the surrounding hamlets and hollows of the Great Smoky Mountains in western North Carolina, where radio signals can come and go like snippets of dreams. For 15 minutes every weekday afternoon, people talk, listen and connect, all through a kind of radio-wave eBay called Tradio.

“Hello there,” says Dennis the Menace. “You’re first on Tradio.”

Callers can say they have a sofa, a car or a goat to sell. They can say they’re looking for a power saw, a bicycle or a goat to buy. They can promote a yard sale or ask that people keep an eye out for a beloved horse that’s gone wandering. Some call so often with the same items for sale that the host, whose given name is Dennis Nelson, hears the voice and instantly knows the rest.

“And I got a lamp for $20,” a regular caller says on this afternoon.

“And some end tables,” Mr. Nelson says.

“Yes.”

“See, I remember these things.”

“And a fish tank.”

“Oh yes,” Mr. Nelson says, recalling. “A fish tank — with fish.”

“Yes,” the caller answers.

Programs like Tradio — the Swap Shop, for example, or Tell It and Sell It — appear on small stations around the country. They usually prohibit the sale of bedding, firearms and animal husbandry, and often hint of curious interior lives. Not long ago, a car radio casting for a signal in West Virginia snagged a program in which a female caller was looking to sell a house, 16 acres, a bowling ball and a sequin dress slit up the side.

Here in Sylva, where WRGC’s power drops to 250 watts at sunset, Tradio may well be the most popular program on the air. “We get anything and everything,” says Will Candler, the station’s 26-year-old operations manager. “Matter of fact, I bought a lawn mower off of it. Use it to this day.”

Mr. Candler is also the morning show host and an ad salesman, which is the way things are at small stations: many tasks being handled by a few, all for the thrill of achieving that almost spiritual state of being called “on the air.” The other half-dozen employees at WRGC include the hosts, Dennis the Menace and Frank “The Byrdman” Byrd, with Charlie Bauder on the news and Brandon Stephens, “the Voice of the Mustangs,” on sports.

From Mr. Candler’s modest office in the modest station headquarters, you can see a horse named Kitty grazing in a nearby field and feel the tremble as another freight train grinds its way past to a local paper mill. “It comes about three times a day,” he says. “We try not to have the mike on when it comes through.”

Back to Tradio, sponsored by Savannah Farms Nursery and the Rusty Lizard bar. Down the steps, past shelved rows of thousands of black discs that haven’t spun on a turntable in years — from the Gospel Melody Singers singing about the Lord to Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty singing “You Done Lost Your Baby” — and into the wall-carpeted control room. There, the white-bearded Mr. Nelson sips a Mountain Dew and leans in again as if to share endearments with that microphone.

“Tradio, whether you’re lookin’ to buy, sell, trade or give away,” he says. “Perhaps a stray pet has wandered into your area. Well, maybe you want to try to find the owner. Or, heaven forbid, you’ve lost a pet. Well, we’ll try to help you.”

Mr. Nelson, 58, has worked at so many stations over so many years that their call letters seem to run together into one alphabetical jumble. He used to resist his nickname but has since come to embrace minor celebrity; “Dennis the Menace” appears on the shirt he’s wearing and on the front license plate of his pickup truck parked near the railroad tracks.

He lives with five cats in “the last house in the holler” and sees Tradio as a conversation with a community of both the rich and the poor. “We’ll have someone selling antiques,” he says during a break. “And the very next call is someone wanting to sell their chickens.”

Eighty-four degrees in Sylva, skies are bright and “it’s your turn on Tradio.” Someone has a refrigerator for sale, with ice maker. Someone has a 1997 Pontiac Grand Am, in good condition. Someone has 650 concrete blocks but leaves unclear the small matter of delivery.

Dennis the Menace returns after a commercial break. And with that deep, almost unreal voice of his, he invites another of us to join him on the air.

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A Quiet Escape on the Rivers, and an Endangered Species

River shacks are “representative of what I would consider the magic of
‘old time South Carolina.’ ” GOV. MARK SANFORD

By DAN BARRY

Published: July 8, 2007
=================

ON the LITTLE PEE DEE RIVER, S.C.

The boat moves through the murky river waters while swallow-tailed kites stir the evening sky and a little blue heron poses beside the cypress-lined shore, as if for Audubon. But these natural wonders only distract from the expedition’s purpose, which is to seek out a specific endangered species.

Shhh. There’s one now.

“River shack!” Chris Crolley, the boat captain, says, his tone a mix of awe and disgust. “There you go.”

His vessel gently sidles up to the specimen: a kind of raft made of planks and 55-gallon drums, some plastic, some rusting metal, and featuring two padlocked tool sheds made of plywood. The few homey touches include a foot-tall plastic picket fence, a small grill, a couple of buckets that might serve as toilets, and a ceramic frog or two. Keeping it moored is a long pole bolted to an ancient cypress.

This spring the state passed a law requiring owners to seek permits for the structures —
recent surveys counted at least 170 on several rivers and Lake Marion —
with the stipulation that in five years all shacks must be removed from the water.

Mr. Crolley and others on his bobbing boat examine the unoccupied structure the way a clutch of botanists might study an unusual plant. They marvel at both the cheap construction — “This is on the lower end of nice,” someone says — and the audacity of its appearance here on the scenic, public Little Pee Dee River, a few miles from the small town of Hemingway.

But this particular shack defies easy classification because it has not one but two sheds. Mr. Crolley, 36, so familiar with these waters that he is sometimes called Aquaman, pauses in thought before looking up from under his floppy hat and giving name to the subspecies before him. “Duplex,” he says triumphantly.

For who knows how long, people have plopped these river shacks into watery coves and curves along the South Carolina coast. They permanently anchor their shacks miles from the nearest landing and use them to fish, hunt or just get off the grid for a while. Some contraptions are so modest that to call them shacks is too kind, while others are so well appointed that they all but cry out for granite countertops and potpourri.

It all sounds so innocent, so idyllic — so American, in a Huck Finn kind of way. That is, until you consider that the river shack owners are essentially laying claim to public property without paying license fees, taxes or, in some cases, even respect. A few people use the river as their personal toilet; others abandon their shacks, leaving the structures to rot amid the natural splendor.

But environmentalists who see these shacks as an affront to the concept of resource management recently succeeded in lobbying for their extinction. This spring the state passed a law requiring owners to seek permits for the structures — recent surveys counted at least 170 on several rivers and Lake Marion — with the stipulation that in five years all shacks must be removed from the water.

The law has angered people like John Hilton, 21, a college student who has spent years building and refining a river shack on Lake Marion with a few friends. “There’s 90 55-gallon drums floating it,” he says. “It has a tin roof, screened-in porches, and is made with treated lumber.”

True, he says, he and his friends do not own land or water rights. And true, their river shack is analogous to some buddies plunking down a Home Depot shed on a public beach and calling it their own. “But I don’t see it fair to bring that concern up after all these years of them being legal,” he says.

The issue even posed a dilemma for Gov. Mark Sanford, who ultimately decided to allow the river shack bill to pass into law without his signature. While he supports land preservation, he explained in a letter to legislators, he wonders about increasing gentrification, and “the idea that someone could tie a bunch of 55-gallon drums together and stake out a house on the waterway is representative of what I would consider the magic of ‘old time South Carolina.’ ”

But Patrick Moore, a lawyer working for the Coastal Conservation League, which led the legislative fight against river shacks, sees no dilemma. “The idea that these shacks are some sort of entitlement of our natural heritage is, frankly, an insult to that very heritage,” he says.

Mr. Moore, 28, peers from under his own floppy hat as he sits in the back of Mr. Crolley’s 18-foot boat, now churning north in search of more specimens. Mr. Crolley is a naturalist whose company, Coastal Expeditions, explores and celebrates the South Carolina coast. He tends to call out the scientific classification for every animal and tree he sees, and, like Mr. Moore, he detests river shacks.

They come upon a cluster of river shacks with no one home, a kind of hamlet, really. Here is a cute white cottage on the water — literally. And here is a structure that appears to be the Versailles of river shacks, with electric lights, an air conditioner, a stainless steel grill large enough to cook a whole pig, a —

“Is that a satellite dish?” Mr. Crolley asks, incredulous. “Yes it is.”

The boat moves on, its passengers struggling with mixed feelings of outrage and envy. Soon an abandoned river shack appears on the horizon, and then another, and then another, victims of the swampy environment and neglect. All that is left of one are some Styrofoam pontoons, looking like faux ice floes. Another is flipped upside down, its only visitor the river, streaming through two broken windows.

No human comment is necessary. A flock of white ibises glides past. A jumping fish makes a splash. And a river in old time South Carolina carries on.

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Fears That Nature Performed a Coup de Grâce on Kansas Town

By DAN BARRY

Published: June 24, 2007

GREENSBURG, Kan.

It is morning in Greensburg, population uncertain. The sun rises from the flat-line horizon to cast light upon the tidy curbside piles of debris that had been homes, the untidy piles of brick that had been downtown, the denuded trees that now look like pale hands reaching skyward.

In the context of Kansas, the violent thunderstorm that had rolled through overnight was no more than a street-cleaning; a cosmic throat-clearing, really. Now, on the last day of spring and seven weeks after the tornado, another morning has come to say it was not a dream, your entire town really is gone.

Yes, a tornado nearly two miles wide really did mow through here one night last month. It really did kill 10 of the 1,450 residents. It really did destroy just about every house, business and church, as though determined to erase Greensburg, home of the World’s Largest Hand-Dug Well, from memory. And yes, all this in about the time it takes for a cup of coffee to cool.

The adrenaline rush that immediately followed the disaster, the gumption that temporarily displaced the grief, has slowed with the passing time and the rising heat. The extraordinary has become mundane, so much so that the incessant broadcasts of disaster updates — 1610 on your AM dial — serve as a kind of Muzak of catastrophe.

Residents have until July 15 to retrieve their pets at the former Countryside Vet Clinic ... FEMA is hiring for local positions ... Kansas All Hazards Behavioral Health is offering crisis counseling ... Leave room for emergency and military vehicles when parking ...

In Davis Park, where 205-mile-an-hour winds left the ball field’s scoreboard bowing as if in deference, young AmeriCorps volunteers mill about their encampment. As they clean out the destroyed homes — saving photo albums and tossing moldy clothes with clinical detachment — they hear the doubts that residents harbor about Greensburg’s future.

Sabrina Hilton, 24, a suntanned and mosquito-bitten AmeriCorps volunteer from St. Louis, says that many people just want their homes “ ’dozed” so that they can move on. “A lot of older residents don’t see the value in building again,” she says. “They can’t fathom putting the energy into it.”

At park’s edge, under a red and white tent left over from a religious Mother’s Day service more than a month ago, people from all walks sign up to volunteer their services. An AmeriCorps volunteer assigns them to lots that need clearing and offers them gloves and rakes.

Here comes Daniel Miller, 65, a straw-hatted carpenter from Arkansas who has been here a month. His team of Mennonite volunteers is nearly finished clearing a lot on West Florida Avenue and is looking for its next assignment. He say he tries not to focus on the ruined family belongings at his feet; if he did, he could not work.

And here come two white-haired bikers from New Mexico, both 64, who call themselves Totem-Jane and Ladders. Rolling past the destruction along Kansas Avenue, they had decided there was no choice but to stop, accept two rakes and spend a few hours on a lot on South Bay Street.

“We thought they could use a little help,” Totem-Jane says.

It is afternoon in Greensburg, and the sun is high and hot. Jon Clark, 58, catches his breath in front of what had been his printing shop on Main Street. The night of the tornado, Mr. Clark, a Vietnam War veteran, and his father, Harold, a World War II veteran, hunkered down in the basement of their home, waiting for this battle of nature to subside.

When some semblance of calm came, the son poked his head out.

The father asked: Is the house gone?

The son answered: Dad, I think everything is gone. Including the house.

Jon Clark, weathered, lanky, points out what was where. This hole in the ground was Hunter Drug Store; you should have seen its classic soda fountain. This pile was the county museum, where the town’s relics were kept. And this collapsed building here was the Twilight Theatre, with its uncomfortable chairs and fabulous tin ceiling.

“This is the lobby here,” he says, standing in daylight, a few feet from the concession stand’s marquee. Pop, $1.50. Beef jerky, 75 cents.

Mr. Clark says he struggles with the knowledge that Greensburg, 110 miles west of Wichita, was in steady, aging decline, and that many of those displaced by the tornado are not coming back. “It’s a real thorny issue,” he says. “Was this storm a mercy killing?”

True, some government officials see a rare opportunity to build a town anew — to transform Greensburg into an environmental, economic model of modern rural life, a place that attracts rather than loses young people. Visions of a new, different downtown are already being considered.

But Mr. Clark says that as debris piles are carted away and the town is wiped clean of virtually all but its roads, his ache of loss intensifies. “At least I could recognize the rubble,” he says.

It is evening in Greensburg, and the little left standing casts long shadows. The volunteers return their rakes and the claws of demolition take their last few swipes, while strong breezes from the south blow through the deserted streets to create phantom movement.

A twirl of dust rises from rubble on Florida Avenue. An electric fan spins at curbside on Walnut. And at a broken, abandoned house on Lincoln, a screen door slams shut.

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