Longtime journalist AC Snow and newspaper life are lovingly recalled in daughter’s memoir
In his 70-year career, A.C. Snow lived the life of a cherished newspaper columnist, the type whose words get clipped out and hung on the refrigerator, the variety who could scold a crooked politician and rhapsodize about a good tomato in the same 500 words, the sort who get remembered even after they’ve typed their final period.
But Snow, who died last year after a long career at both The News & Observer and The Raleigh Times, can hardly come more charmingly alive than when recalled by his own daughter, who once kept a pillow and blanket in his office so she could nap while he toiled before sunrise.
In her new memoir, “Stepping on the Blender,” Katherine Snow Smith recalls a life alongside a journalist personable enough that readers felt entitled to march into his newsroom and complain about matters as seemingly trivial as the skimpy portion of ham inside a $1.95 biscuit.
She portrays the beloved columnist’s life in the rare hours away from his Royal typewriter, when he would get so disgusted when his UNC basketball team fell behind that he would go outside and rake leaves in a huff. She recalls that he would end uncomfortable silences in any conversation with this non sequitur:
“Well, I fry mine in lard.”
Highly personal moments with AC Snow
She describes him in highly personal moments: recording a high school classmate’s death in World War II; mourning his oldest daughter Melinda’s death in a 1996 car crash; answering end-of-life questions in advance of hospice care.
“He checked yes to almost everything except being cryogenically frozen,” Smith recalled in the book.
But Smith, a longtime reporter at the Tampa Bay Times, speaks most poignantly about her own migration through both journalism and the Triangle — an inherited affinity for storytelling.
Her memoir follows an ink-stained path from UNC journalism classes, punctuated by nights at the Rathskeller on Franklin Street, from dreams of a New York Times byline to a long career with the Tampa Bay Times.
Throughout her own pages, Smith is seen thriving in the same hard-bitten newsroom environment her father inhabited — an unforgiving pressure-cooker in which one bulldog of an editor sneered at reporters audacious enough to leave at 6 p.m., even after working a pair of 12-hour days, with this sarcastic dagger to the heart:
“Thanks for stopping by.”
Back to Chapel Hill after many changes
At the book’s opening, Smith places herself back in Chapel Hill in 2021 after 30 years gone — returning to her native ground to earn a master’s degree and start teaching.
But the journalist who left in her 20s and returned in her 50s is now divorced with three grown children. The Rathskeller is long gone, and before she heads out into Chapel Hill for a nostalgic night seeing The Connells play, she notices the bottle of L’Oreal Magic Root Cover Up on her bathroom counter.
From there, her recollections are framed by a hometown where the newspaper occupies a first-floor suite in downtown Raleigh rather than an entire city block, where the Happy Store that sold beer to Chapel Hill students in her day is now a four-story restaurant and bar, and where A.C. Snow, her father, is preparing for his last days.
In-between all this, Smith navigates the world so changed that the hardware store employees no longer makes keys, and where match.com dates proceed awkwardly and end with potential mates saying, “Have a nice life.”
But as her father passes on and newspaper life keeps shifting, Smith finds the same pillars to grasp. She hilariously points out that when UNC students pick up a paper copy of The Daily Tar Heel — a bit like tuning a transistor radio — they try to swipe through the pages with an index finger.
In the life Smith leads — one I recognize as surely as my oldest friend — it’s easy to feel out of sync, as though you’ve stepped on something sharp in the middle of a task, cutting your metaphorical foot when you were already feeling a bit confused.
But as she notes in her memoir, more or less, there’s no recourse in newspapers, middle age or states of painful loss but to rub on a liquid bandage and admire the scar.
Katherine Snow Smith book reading
Katherine Snow Smith is the author of two books, the latest of which, “Stepping on the Blender,” she will discuss Tuesday at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh. The event begins at 7 p.m., and the $17.25 ticket price includes a copy of the book. Purchase tickets at www.quailridgebooks.com/event/snowsmith23
This story was originally published November 13, 2023 at 5:55 AM with the headline "Longtime journalist AC Snow and newspaper life are lovingly recalled in daughter’s memoir."