Maybe you saw the lightning. Perhaps you heard the thunder. You might have felt the raindrops.

The perfect storm was blowing in on a news organization as the Labor Day weekend began a week ago Friday in Anderson.

Weather? No, I’m talking about a balloon festival, a major road race and a full slate of high school football games … all on the same night.

Whoa. What a challenge.

Wow. What a newsroom.

Labor pains? Bring them on. Early in the day, on IndependentMail.com, we featured a story, photos and a video from the Great Southeast BalloonFest.

But there was a concert to cover that night, and there was a full page to fill in Saturday’s newspaper.

Done.

There were 13 high school football games in our region. After every score in every game, the phones rang in our newsroom. Up-to-the-minute summaries were posted on IndependentMail.com.

But there were four pages to fill in Saturday’s sports section. Photographers who also shot videos filled our pages and Web site with images. Kickoffs at Seneca and Westside High School were delayed by lightning. Coming back from the game at Westside, our sports editor was caught in traffic and had to phone in his story. But those four pages?

Done.

The traffic was a result of street closings for the Midnight Flight. Races started at 9 p.m., 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. Our press was scheduled to run at 12:30 a.m.

There was another full page to fill in Saturday’s newspaper. Even I had to admit later that this was crazy. But just when it looked as if an ambitious newsroom was overextended, guess what?

Done.

Like clockwork, a plan was executed. Professional journalists performed magnificently under intense pressure, producing coverage both online and in print that we could be proud of. Quantity? How about 30 photos in Saturday’s paper, and many more on our online photo galleries? Quality? Absolutely, if a proud editor can say so himself.

But the wild weekend had just begun. There were more BalloonFest days to cover. There were college football games on Saturday and on Monday night. There was a full page in Sunday’s paper to fill with complete Midnight Flight results, an effort that involved six people (including Yours Truly and Mrs. Yours Truly, who might never bring dinner to my office again).

So I owed my wife a nice breakfast Sunday morning. We waited 35 minutes for a table at a popular restaurant. Many groups were ahead of us, such as, “Smith, party of four.” Or, “Jones, party of two.” Then a name was called, followed by, “party of 45.”

It was a youth soccer team, parents, siblings and all.

Soccer? It didn’t really register until Tuesday morning. Boom! Lightning. Thunder. Readers rained on our parade, letting a humbled editor know how disappointed they were that the local newspaper didn’t cover their BalloonFest tournament.

No matter how hard we try, we can’t please everyone. But wait ‘til next year. …