This weekend, hundreds of reporters showed up in a town of 600 to shove microphones in the faces of people who had just lost loved ones in Sutherland Springs.

This is not going to be a post about gun ownership as a result of the church attack. I know I’ve jumped into the middle of some high profile arguments before [including a controversial position that included me eating a Zagnut while watching reruns of Wings], but this is not the right time.

Loyal Scaiaholics will recall my position that the microphone thing ranks among my least favorite parts of journalism. I vaguely recall a professor in college showing us video of a stupid reporter going up to a woman at an airport after her husband’s flight had crashed and asking her how she felt.

“How do you think I feel?!” she answered, then entering into a string of words I would prefer not to appear in this blog. The professor’s point was to try to avoid stupid questions and, you know, show some sympathy because we’re living in a society, here.

This is going to be a blog about reporters showing up in a small town and being welcomed as long as they take some time to learn about the area instead of just looking for a soundbite. Back in 2011, I covered the wildfires around Possum Kingdom Lake.

​I pulled into the town of Graford. Crews from across Texas had responded to the fires, along with the Texas Forest Service and Texas A&M.

But Graford was closest, and there were plenty of people milling around outside the volunteer fire department. I walked inside and asked if someone wanted to talk about trying to control the fire, and if it’s tougher around a lake because you have to use different types of equipment. Or if it’s tougher because most of the homes are vacation homes, so they’re more remote and spaced farther apart. Or if it’s tougher for a small, volunteer fire department to work with other agencies because the local firefighters aren’t used to working in such big groups.

The fire chief offered to answer all of my questions by shoving me onto a truck and sending me onto the the fire line. That’s the only solution that made sense.

At one point, I remember stepping out of the truck with some of the crew to record natural sound of them preparing to hit the lines. Then one of the firefighters came and told me to get back in the truck because they had to move out.

“Rule number one out here: don’t panic,” he said to me, according to the caption I wrote six years ago. “But right now, we all need to get in the truck because the fire’s about to jump us. Don’t panic. But get in the truck, first.”

When we got back to the fire station, the chief said more reporters had started showing up, and she had suddenly started wanting less media attention.

Stories like that, where reporters crowd small towns, can be incredibly intrusive. In Sutherland Springs, people are used to seeing the same small group of neighbors every day.

After the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, that city shut down, even though it’s ever so slightly larger than Sutherland Springs. The president was meeting with families at the convention center; there was a large concert in a town square.

In Sutherland Springs, much of the town became a crime scene. It’s easy to shove a microphone in front of someone and wait for a soundbite; a good reporter will also head out to learn about the area to gain some perspective [never mind what happened when I did that in Houston].

Back in Graford, the fire chief started asking me the closest businesses that were still open so she could send people out to get dinner. I told her everything in Mineral Wells seemed normal as I passed through. She encouraged me to drive down and take I-20 home instead of driving back through Mineral Wells. That way, I could stop at Mary’s Cafe in Strawn.

One of the other firefighters chimed in that Mary’s has great chicken fried steak because it’s pan-fried instead of deep-fried.

If there’s a better way than CFS to gain perspective about a part of Texas I was unfamiliar with, I haven’t heard it. I also interviewed Mary herself while I was there [a reporter asks], where she talked about wanting to stay open so locals could have a place to gather, and she could keep paying her staff, thanks to those tourists who come in from I-20.

I later went back to PK to report on the recovery.

I stopped in at the Graford Fire Department to say hello. We started talking about Mary’s. I feel like I sounded like some city-slicker CFS connoisseur when I said I thought it was good, but it didn’t change my life.

“What are you, a tourist?!” one of the firefighters would have said if he had better comedic timing. Instead, he just urged me to try a different CFS joint in Mineral Wells. And I did. Not because I’ve gained a taste for CFS [and calling it “CFS”] since I moved to Texas, but for perspective.