Mike Stevens

Mike Stevens was the first person to call me when my Dad passed away. He and my father were old school pound-the-pavement reporters. They had crossed paths many times. They were friends. Mike told his stories on television. My father used the newspaper. Both were WRITERS. They pushed words around the page with empathy and grace and made it seem easy.

It is not easy.

I was picking up my brother from the airport, parked in that lane they never want you to park in. My phone buzzed. I didn’t recognize the number. “Tom? This is Mike Stevens…”

I have no idea how he got my number. I never asked.

That voice. He didn’t need to tell me his name. The way he said mine was enough. His was a voice I’d been hearing about as long as the clacking of the typewriter in our own family dining room. I grew up with that voice….with the charming stories it told. He offered quiet condolences, and suggested that if I ever wanted to talk, he was available. Often this sort of thing is robotic….like saying “good” when somebody asked you how things are going. But Mike never wasted words. If silence was more effective, he’d choose silence. If he said it, he meant it. I said I’d like that very much.

Thus began our friendship.

He became a mentor.

We’d meet on Saturdays. Usually in local diners. Mike loved diners. He loved a good piece of pie. He was always recognized. These were the pre-selfie days so that usually meant a hand-shake, or a short chat. He had time for everybody. He’d always take a moment to introduce ME, which would make me squirm a bit. But any guy sitting with Mike Stevens can’t be all bad, right? To be in his presence was to be recognized.

I remember the first time we met up, and how nervous I was. I had a list of questions I wanted to ask him….and all that went out the window once we sat down. You could not script a conversation with Mike Stevens. They wandered in the same was he did. One time he became transfixed as he watched through the window as one of those vehicles that brings new cars to dealerships performed an impossible 3 point turn in the middle of route 6 and threaded itself into the lot, in seconds. He said the talent of the guy driving was akin to that of a surgeon. While everybody else focused on the flashy surgeon, Mike would track down the driver.

I wanted so much to write WITH him. I prodded and prodded and eventually he agreed to a sort of call and response blog with me, in which we’d alternate choosing a topic, and write 500 words on it. He began thus….

“In the beginning ideas are much like strands of cotton candy on the machine at the annual firemen’s carnival. They float about turning this way and that leaving only a sweet scent of flavored sugar in their wake. In a bit an operator comes along with a paper cone and begins gathering them up. Strand by strand they come together looking then like a small blanket of blue woven carefully by a deft hand. Eventually the project is completed and the individual strands of melted sugar become a ball wrapped tightly around the paper cone. There is nothing left to do then but enjoy them.”

….and all I could do was audibly “gulp” and put on my big boy pants. How could you not want to have apple pie at a diner with a guy who writes like this? We stayed at it for a year. Maybe more. The pieces he wrote are still out there in blogland, and one day I shall collect them all and gift them to myself. Each one is completely lovely and a class all by itself. I tried to keep up but felt like I was dog paddling.

I still do.

One day we took a road trip to Centralia, which I documented here. It was hours on the Pennsylvania road with the Pennsylvania road guy. I didn’t want the day to end. There was no better travel partner. The way he ambled…..the way he kicked rocks with his hands dug into his pockets…the way he noticed things that I never saw. The way he treated everybody with the same respect. He could charm the grouchiest “get off my lawn” guy in the world. Whenever we came across others in our travels, I instinctively backed off. Mike had the touch. He could talk a piece of steak past a wolf.

What I noticed most in his television segments was not his scripts, which were always perfect, but rather the spaces where his everyman voice dropped out. His was a visual medium, after all, and too much talk could be like rain on the lens cap. He was the absolute master at letting a moment breathe. He never said or wrote a word that didn’t move the moment forward. Such a simple lesson, but one that me and my manias have a hard time absorbing. He knew this, and would sometimes chide me for my crude language and my use of 10 words when 5 would do. But often he’s say “that’s good….keep going” and from Mike Stevens that’s like communion.

Every town, every exit, every back road or rustic kitchen…..he’d been there before. If there was a lovable oddball deep in some random woods, Mike knew him. He’d been there and talked to him and documented his oddness, and reminded the rest of us that it’s this stuff off the grid that makes the grid itself worthwhile.

When I got the news of his passing I was stunned. I cried. I don’t often do that. But tears do not move the story along. I think Mike would prefer that we amble instead.

In a bit…

—tf