Joel Rose and The Drive From Cape May Spring 2006 (an e-mail tale) So, the latest piece I did for NPR is about the first job interview I had after getting out of the army (Sept. 1995, just to put it in context for you). Pretty funny behind-the-scenes story with this one: I actually originally recorded this puppy back in January (or maybe even December?). It usually doesn't take this long for one of my pieces to air, but because of the subject matter, my editor at NPR, Martha Wexler, was waiting for just the right "real news" piece to run it with. So Debbie Elliott did a story this week on soldiers returning home from Iraq, and they decided to run my piece with it. Except...they couldn't find my piece. I was in Cape May, NJ, this weekend (about 2 hours from Philadelphia), and got a frantic phonecall yesterday afternoon: how quickly could I get to WHYY in Philadelphia to re-record my piece? The All Things Considered broadcast begins at 5 pm eastern, and they needed to run my piece at 5:35. And then it got even worse: it seems everyone at WHYY was celebrating Mother's Day or something, and there was no one there to work with me. After a series of frantic phonecalls, they tracked down a WHYY reporter -- the great Joel Rose, a scholar and a gentleman -- who happened to be home, happened to have a digital recorder, and happened to have a computer with a link to NPR in Washington. I threw my dogs and family in the car and hauled ass. For about a mile. And then came to a screaming halt. Traffic. I turned around. Drove 15 miles back to the Garden State Parkway and tried again. No traffic, but it was now 4 pm and I had all of NJ to cross. I took it up to 90 mph, and hoped that if I got a ticket that NPR would pay for it. Long story short: we flew across the Ben Franklin Bridge at 4:55 pm, and screeched to a halt in front of Joel Rose's house in Northern Liberties at 5:00 on the dot. My daughter Fiona and I ran in, Joel handed me a copy of my manuscript (which NPR had emailed him, and I hadn't looked at since January), and at about 5:10 I sat down on his bed and began talking into his microphone. Joel sent it off to NPR, we did another take to be sure, and he sent that off to NPR. At this point poor Fiona (7 years old) thought it would be fun to touch the fuzzy plant on Joel's windowsill. That would be a cactus. At 5:25 I began pulling cactus fuzz out of Fiona's fingers. At 5:30 I carried her down to the car, where I heard Debbie Elliott's voice coming from the car radio, finishing up her amazing story about soldiers coming home from Iraq (I know it's amazing because when we got home that night I went online and listened to the whole thing). And at 5:35...my commentary aired. We'd made it. Radio is just really cool...you know? Hope everyone's having a great spring, -Chris -originally broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered (May, 2006)