Career milestone of sorts

Congrats SF, especially since I do know who you are and worked with you at one point for about five of those 30 years. When you hoist one tonight at your favorite pub, I'll at least mentally give you a clink of the glass.

 

I'll be at 8 this summer.

Dude, I've only been alive for 31.

 

I was at a bar on the Cape the day you were born.
Guhhhhhhhhh......

 

SF you are a tough sum'bitch.

Congratulations.

 

Congrats SE. That really is an impressive milestone.

For guys like SE, Steve, fishwrapper and other apparent lifers: Is the business just in your blood? I havent been at it nearly that long but I can't imagine doing anything else. Ever give thought to changing careers?

 

And, what would I do? I've spent nearly two decades honing a skill -- gathering news and managing those who do -- that has no application on the "outside."
I'm a newspaperman. Just like I'm a father and a husband. It's who I am.

 

Thanks, IJAG, I really needed that. And you're into younger guys besides.

Ty, it's briefly crossed my mind to do something else -- Champions Tour, teaching, owning a bar (two of the three are semi serious), but not for long.

I've been lucky, though. I've worked at a lot of great places, although some are having tough times now. I really never had to deal with some of the mismanagement horror stories that I read here all the time.

Well, once, when I was editor of a really small paper. But that was an aberration of several months.

 

Man, that'd be a hell of a trip. A GREAT trip.

 

Ahh, memories. My first college paper was produced on a linotype machine. Before I even knew what cold type was, I saw a page in the local paper where one of the stick-down column rules came loose and was jutting through a column of type. Having only seen hot type, I wondered how that could happen.
I have 37 years in, 25 at the first paper, which included a merger that actually put me with three papers; 5 months at No. 2; 14 months at No. 3; now 10 years at No. 4.
We used typewriters at my first job, with the UPI and horse racing wire machines grinding away in the background. I'd come in Sunday night to find that the horse wire had jammed and he had no entries, results or handicaps, but a lot of confetti.
When the first computer system came it, we called it FRED, acronym for Fucking Ridiculous Editing Device.
Thanks for dredging all of this up and congrats on your milestone.

 

First job involved sending agate up to the composing room in pneumatic tubes.
I also sent them cookies and, once, a half-tube of beer that fought its way up there after nearly jamming the system.
Boss? Unpleased.

 

People are overlooking the most important aspect of SF's post...

It's so obvious that his ex still wants him...

 

Ah, sure. A woman I haven't seen since 1982 with kids, a jealous husband and a home in North Carolina.

Her e-mail: Happy Anniversary(?). Boy, are we old.

Not exactly a love note, Mizzou.

I loved the pneumatic tubes, except when they didn't work. Never tried to get a beer up one, though.

I remember the first time our bowling writer, Joe D. -- he also ran the prep phone desk -- offered me one of his beers while he was doing the nightly bowling scores after deadline (ran in the PM the next day, then a day late in the AM). He paid a cab driver to pick the scores up -- and that six pack -- every night.

One of the best-tasting beers of my life.