Happy anniversary to me

Saturday marks the 10th anniversary of the day I walked through the doors at the McCook Daily Gazette as a bona fide employee.

It was a long and winding road indeed that led me to this corner of the world that is sometimes too hot, sometimes too dry, sometimes too cold and sometimes too icy, but mostly is just right. Of course, I've just come in from looking at a September blue sky, so I might be romanticizing the climate today just a tad.

When I came through that doorway, I had no idea what to expect. Certainly, I had endured many first days on a new job through the years, so I knew to take it slow and to pay close attention to the basics. Since I started in a part-time capacity, it was days before I finally found the ladies room and I didn't try to brew a pot of coffee for weeks for fear I would mess that up. Still, it took me no time to move into my desk, where I wrote death notices, weddings and club notes, wondering in those first few days if I was fooling myself along with the others about my writing ability. After all, I had no formal training, nothing further than high school English to my educational credit. But I did have a good ear for words, mostly because of my insatiable appetite for reading.

The Gazette wasn't my first foray into the world of newspapers. I had attempted to sell advertising at two other publications, first at the Northern Wyoming Daily News in Worland, Wyo., and later at the daily paper in Craig, Colo. (I say attempted because I was singularly bad at it and both of those careers were short-lived.)

Still, no one but God could have seen this path in my future. As it happened, when I first began to consider relocating to Southwest Nebraska, a classified ad for -- you guessed it -- an ad sales rep, was the only job that appealed. I applied, received an interview, and didn't get the job. Back home in Brighton, Colo., the phone rang one day. It was the ad director. The selected candidate hadn't panned out, was I still interested?

Sure, I said, keep my application active. Once again, however, I was passed over, but in making that call, the ad director mentioned that the news room was needing someone to write local news. Was I interested?

I agreed it might be something worth considering and he recommended that the next time I was in town, I should stop by and visit with the editor. So I did. We drove up over Labor Day weekend and Tuesday couldn't come soon enough. And although Bruce still doesn't remember it, I was introduced to our then-publisher Gene Morris that day as the local news writer and given a start date of Sept. 15.

The rest, as they say, is history. Soon enough the part time work became full time and my job duties increased as my skills advanced. Now, I can even write a sports story if the need arises, something I thought I would never accomplish. And although I did once again try my hand at selling advertising when that department was short-staffed, sales are never going to be my strong suit. In fact, I am convinced that I couldn't sell ice water in the Sahara or space heaters in the Arctic Circle.

Some feel that familiarity breeds contempt. Not so in the newspaper business, at least not for me. I have always loved newspapers because of their ability to inform, educate and influence people. And working for one has simply validated that concept as I've had to educate myself on a myriad number of subjects through the years, in order to be able to tell someone else's story adequately. I don't see myself doing anything different anytime soon.

This column has been one of the many joys I have found on this job, no doubt, the greatest joy, and a pleasure I take very seriously week by week. It came about largely by accident, the first one being published in late December 1999, after my experience performing Handel's Messiah with the McCook Community Choir. Bruce named the column himself and approved it with the understanding that column writers must commit to writing a column every week. (He also had stressed dependability when he first hired me, saying "I don't care if you're the greatest writer in the world. If you're not here, you're not doing me any good." I have tried to hold up my end of this bargain to the best of my ability in both cases.)

I write for a well-read audience of thousands and for a unique audience of One, a line of tension that rivals the highest tight-wire ever formed, yet I feel the hand of God steadying me at every forward step. That is what I try to communicate in these writings, the presence of God in the every day moments of our lives. And I have a sincere motive in doing so. I want others to see him in their lives, to stand in wonder, to fall before him in awe, to learn to call him, the Creator of all things, "Father," and his Son, "Savior and Lord."

Ten years. One-fifth of my lifetime. And it couldn't be better.

"The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a a delightful inheritance." Psalm 16:6

Things you won't see in heaven: Pink slips