Newspaper Days

Well, since I obviously cannot outlast my three-year-old and his insatiable desire for jelly sandwiches this evening, I guess I'll go ahead and get to work. I cannot understand how such a tiny little person can inhale all that jelly but at least he's eating something other than those goldfish things. My other son wanted to help me work on a food article this evening, but he fell asleep during the divas match of WWE  Monday Night Raw. Since he will be turning 8 in a few weeks I'm sure that won't be happening much longer.

Today I was (procrastinating) cleaning out my writing area and I found an old book my mom had bought for me about writing newspaper articles.  It made me think about how I got my start-professionally-and about those first few clips. I remember going to the interview with my fancy portfolio full of papers I had written in college. I didn't have any real clips-except that little paragraph I had published about what I was thankful for when I was in fifth grade. Somehow, I didn't think presenting that would be a good idea. Believe it or not,  I was later offered a job at that paper as a staff reporter.

My first story was about a "pajama day" at a local school-my daughter's to be exact. At least I knew enough not to interview her.It took me 2 hours to write that little ditty. Yep, I was greener than Kermit the Frog. Months later I was sent to our county fair where I lost my high heel in the muddy track around the grandstand, but I had a great time interviewing all those little 4-H kids with their animals. I interviewed all kinds on interesting people, heard amazing stories(some I couldn't print) and did some cool stuff. Oh yeah, and there was the time the photographer and I spent an entire day at the local Harley Davidson waiting for that Matthew McConaughey guy to show up on some charity ride. He didn't make it, but we had one hell of a good lunch that day! Later, I would move on to a short stint as the news editor of a weekly newspaper writing a column where I worked at various places for the day. I made pizza, pumped gas and milked cows at a dairy farm. Looking back those first forays into journalism weren't so bad.  It was a good time. Sometimes I kind of miss it.