If I were writing the script for a commercial about my family vacation to the Outer Banks a week ago, it would read something like this:
Car ride to Duck, North Carolina, nine hours.
Rent for a house for 13 people for one week, $3,000.
Publication of a family newspaper, The Daily Duckster, priceless.
At family reunions, my husband Dave and I write The Duckster long-hand, in ink on a yellow legal pad. It usually runs one page, but on rainy days it can grow to two. With tongue in cheek, we chronicle the daily highlights of the beach vacations with my two brothers, their wives, a cousin and our kids.
A look at some back issues suggests no lack of important news developments. The harrowing tale of the lost (and found) wallet. The pitiable attempt to get the kids to read books during the week, and the wails of protest that ensued. The headline: “This is vacation, not education, kids say.” The game stories from family wallyball and softball matches, complete with made-up quotes.
We’ve run soundbite movie and restaurant reviews, cartoons and even a correction or two.
Because there is only one copy of each edition, someone reads the paper aloud — town crier-like — to the rest of us, with inflections that range from Walter Cronkite to Paul Harvey. Reading the paper has become one of our favorite morning rituals at Duck.
Though the paper’s slogan began 11 years ago as “All the news we remember,” it somehow evolved into “Ernie says we’re here to have fun,” which is my brother’s not-so-subtle warning to six teenagers to keep a lid on the bickering.
Some people might wonder if this is a busman’s holiday, to take 20 minutes a day to write stories. But it is really a chance to cast off the restraints of real journalism and produce a newspaper with the laces untied. It’s liberating, for one week only, to cast responsibility aside and write a paper where truth is but a distant cousin, and balance went out the window with the water balloons.
Even so, this make-believe newspaper, with a readership of only 13, does many of the things real newspapers do.
The Duckster captures the small ties of everyday life that bind us together; echoes common themes and reaffirms our sense of community.
The archive of back issues — kept in a well-worn manila folder — reminds us of moments from past reunions that otherwise might be forgotten.
Like a real newspaper, the Duckster reflects the mores of its small readership: the gentle teasing that is my family’s way of showing affection; our relentless sports competitions, and our joy in watching our children grow.
The Duckster from time to time has faced competition from my brother Larry’s own paper, a single sheet he calls The Duck Avenger. We’ve found that competition only makes the Duckster’s writers strive to do better, something that happens in real life, too.
This year, for the first time, the Duckster faced competition from a new quarter. Late one night, say about 10 p.m., the adults gratefully retired after another day of sports. The kids found a sheet of paper, drew three vertical lines down the page to make narrow columns and created their own version of events.
One of them had been chastised that day for leaving the beach without telling the rest of us where he was going. There was 10 minutes of panic until he returned. The story the kids wrote had a completely different spin. It was a parent whose picture was put on a milk carton and declared missing. Not a bad effort for a first edition, which they read the next morning at breakfast.
The kids named their newspaper The Duckling. I called it priceless.
