Tuesday, November 17, 2009

The final column

In case you don't have access, the final TP column (Nov. 19, 2009)


It began so innocently. I was 17, a senior in high school who was producing his own sports “newspaper.” I was asked to write roundups for the Meridian Star for the Sunday editions about the Sam Dale Conference.

I did, and like an alcoholic taking his first drink, I was smitten. The words were shots of adrenalin. I remember writing a short story that fall that used the sentence: He used metaphors like others used a revolver, similes like others used a knife.

Though over the top, clearly I was in love with the written word like others were ogling cheerleaders. To write one sentence per piece that was clearly mine, something no one had written before was enough of an incentive to keep me going. Still is.

The following spring, I was asked to cover a baseball game. I came into the newspaper, sat down at the typewriter (yes, you read right) and typed for what seemed to be an hour. I wrote five inches. When I was done, they told me to take a message back to someone I didn’t know in the printing room they called the back-shop. I ran. In those days the method of operation still used “hot” type, metal engraving. I ran into a man carrying a page of those things that would have been a page in the newspaper.

Such screaming.

I nearly didn’t make it to another day in the business.

Though some have wished that had been true, here I am, 39 years later, saying goodbye. Like holding grains of salt on a windy day, this is hard, hard to do.

It’s hard, as so many of my friends have told me lately, to say goodbye to what you’ve known and, quite frankly, loved for so long, to say goodbye to friends, co-workers, readers.

Granted, I’ve been so lucky for these many years. I’ve covered Super Bowls, sat next to Muhammad Ali, talked with Bear Bryant one on one. In management, I’ve led some of the best sports staffs a manager could have and for 12 straight years they won national awards at three different newspapers.

Still, I’ve gotten just as much pleasure from watching Salmen’s Jay Carlin and Northshore’s Rick Mauldin win state high school titles.

I’ve been privileged to see some of the best in sports and I’ve been horrified to see some of the worst.

I worked inside, outside, done design and done agate. If it could be done either in sports on news, I’ve had a shot at it. I worked at startup of USA Today, and I’ve written some of my best stuff for the couple thousand readers of the Picayune sections.

I’ve looked into the eyes of some of the greatest of this generation and help tell their stories and I’ve written about junior high athletes who you might never hear of again.

But…

(You knew it was coming if you’ve been a reader.)

Here’s what I’ve learned.

This is a job. No matter how important I might have thought it to be or how much I loved it or even how much it paid (which will soon be a distant somewhat pleasant memory), it was and is a job. I’m just the next guy, to paraphrase a friend.

It is not life. Mine or anyone else’s. The greatest thing I’ve done in the past few years is demote myself twice for a much greater calling.

Still, I’ve met and, quite honestly, befriended so many of the coaches of this area I will have the hardest time not calling them on Sunday evenings and Monday mornings as I’ve done weekly for four years. It really was a pleasue.

But what I did was a job, not glamorous, not something that brought fame. A job.

My life?

Much, much more. I’ve found life in the past 14 years of a 35-year career, found meaning, found direction, found love, actually as full of cliché that might be.

I’ve found that helping others isn’t a chore but a privilege. I’ve found that caring isn’t an albatross but a dove. I’ve found that loving even those who are hard cases and think the press is something to be hated isn’t all that difficult, amazingly, because I’ve found the ultimate love one can find.

I’ve tried to help along the way. I’ve tried to gently push through opinion those who needed gently (and sometimes, I admit, not so gently) pushed. I’ve tried to point out that winning isn’t everything, though indeed it is sweet, and that losing is one of our greatest teachers, though it is bitter. I’ve tried to point out that anger puts salt in the wound of so many in sports. Mostly I’ve tried to make you laugh. Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t.

And now I go, full-time ministry, full-time into life. The story telling continues in a different venue.

I want to thank all those coaches and players who took the time they didn’t want to take to answer questions they didn’t necessarily want to answer. I want to thank the kids of the past four years who ignored my problems with spelling their names. I want to thank the co-workers who fixed the majority of the spelling of those names.

To coin as many clichés as I can in a final piece of work, at the end of the day all this will go away. We will be left with paperless newspapers and we will have tweets and blogs and Facebooks and you name it all. Perhaps as someone once wrote we’ve not even glimpsed the glory to come.

Perhaps the newspaper will silently, like me, slip into that good night. But we will know we were here. The evidence remains. A column here and there stood out, they tell me. A story here and there hit the right note, and tears were shed or someone laughed out loud or a couple words resonated and stuck in someone’s mind.

I’ve spilled no hot type engravings lately, just slit a few veins and let the words spill out as Red Smith once said of writing.

What I’ll miss most is readers, those silent and sometime not so silent readers. I upset them sometimes, gave them joy sometimes and sometimes flat out made them mad. One last time: I didn’t go to a school around here so I didn’t favor anyone over anyone. Believe it or not.

I once wrote to novelist Stephen King when I fashioned myself to be a such a novelist. To my ultimate surprise, he wrote back. His advice: “Writers write. There is no substitution for that. Writers must write. That’s who they are, not what they do.” Maybe it was a form letter, but I’ve never forgotten that.

Even if there are no readers left, I’ll write. That’s who I am. That’s who I will be. Stop by a local church and have a cup of coffee sometime. God loves you, and so do I. If no one else tells you that today, I’ve done my job.

After Russian leader Leon Trotsky was mortally wounded by a man who hated him, he supposedly said, “Do not kill this man. He has a story to tell.”

That’s what I’ve been, I reason. A story teller above all else. With words. With photos. With design. With creative thought. I’ve tried to tell your stories.

I always thought I would probably die in a press box typing a story on deadline. Instead, as it turns out, I have to die to this job in order to live to another. I’ve lived a life in which I was a green bean in a pressure cooker, but that is over now. I’m sadly ecstatic.

Thank you all. Because of you, it’s been good.

To quote Henry Ward Beecher, “Now comes the mystery.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Congratulations on this long awaited day. It has been an inspiration to see/hear-of the doors open and the obstacles overcome.

......and thank you for this blog.

James