More adventures with Ed

All this Oakland Press reminiscing stirred up another long lost memory.

The date is lost to memory, but Ed Noble and I responded to a "suspicious" object found at Pontiac Central High School during a morning shift at the Oakland Press.

At the school we walked around the back (as I recall we beat the police as the OP was just two blocks away) and spotted what looked like a clock radio or other electronic device that likely had been dropped out of a window a couple stories up.

When police arrived, they moved us back about 50 yards and taped off the area.

That began about a four-hour vigil as the state police bomb squad was called from Lansing or some other far flung post.

Ed, using his telephoto lens, kept telling anyone who would listen (mostly me) that the object was nothing more than a broken clock radio. At one point he and I offered to walk up and pick up the object so we could go back to the office. (In those days, our editor was adamant that you never left a scene until the outcome was no longer in doubt).

So stay we did. When state police arrived, they stopped traffic on M-59 in front of the school, moved us back another 100 yards and began the process of identifying the "suspicious" item.

Now, we've missed lunch. A robot was deployed and actually began firing bullets or other projectiles at the object to see if it would explode. When it didn't (Ed and I had sore necks by now from shaking our heads in disbelief) two men in moon suits walked carefully up to the object and bent over it.

Suddenly one of them, at seemingly great risk to himself, reached down picked up the tangled electronic parts and gave the all clear signal.

At the press briefing shortly after we were told the item was a clock radio dropped from a classroom a couple stories above.

Ed and I have had a good laugh over that one for years.