As experiments go, my one-year break after two spent at college wasn’t looking particularly promising.
My goal was to get a “real” job, hopefully at something I enjoyed and could see myself doing for a while. If unsuccessful, I’d go back to college, which I knew my parents would at least view as progress.
Opinion
My list of prospective careers always came back to journalism. I can trace my roots to editing my third-grade student newspaper. The highlight of that experience was writing an editorial detailing why the field trip the rest of the class enjoyed taking to a museum actually sucked.
My teacher, Mrs. Sprouse, probably took some heat for that one, but she defended my right to express my opinion. I’ve had bosses do that in the intervening years, but I’ll always appreciate her effort. Mrs. Sprouse was in her early 20s, and if she continued being a teacher, I’ll bet she was a great one.
Editing my high school and college student newspapers was mostly fun, but it meant spending long nights putting together issues that only occasionally matched my goals. I also had to coax assignments from reluctant “reporters” who liked their bylines but didn’t want to put in the work.
By the middle of my second year in college, our class rebelled against our instructor (we had our reasons) and quit en masse. We found another sponsor for what we pretentiously called a literary magazine, filled with my bad poetry and my staff’s literally sophomoric attempts at humor. It was the mid-’70s, OK? Standards were low.
None of this experience made me a good candidate for reporting, advertising sales, or anything else one could make money at while working at a newspaper. But I did finally get a job in the “dispatch” department at the morning Wyoming Eagle and afternoon Wyoming State Tribune in Cheyenne.
A half-dozen of us would type the advertising copy the salespeople gave us, and we’d proof our work after the printers put it together. The best part of the job was taking the really big ads back to stores and waiting until they approved them. On a good day, a dispatcher like me could stretch that task for hours, which meant much less time sitting around typing.
I had some friends who worked in the sports department, so I supplemented my income by covering and photographing high school sports. Yes, it was a pretty sweet life, but one where I could see myself headed back to the classroom the next fall.
But one day Kathryn Gress, one of my college journalism instructors who was also the editor of the State Tribune’s “women’s section” — it was the mid-’70s, OK? — stopped by dispatch.
Kathryn had been trying to get me a job in the newsroom for months and she had good news. A State Tribune reporter had quit that day and they wanted a replacement who was also a photographer. She grabbed my arm and started marching me upstairs so I could meet the editor and apply.
I stopped. I already knew the editor from my minor stint in sports, and Jim Flinchum terrified me. He was a gruff guy who’d yell at reporters, news editors, printers, anyone in the building. I’d watched him regularly bring his 20-year-old proofreader to tears.
I’d even heard that in his United Press International days, Flinchum tried to throw one of his colleagues out of a third-story window.
By the way, that story turned out to be true. Jim confided much later that the guy would sometimes stop by his office while on vacation and they’d laugh about the incident.
Ah, the intoxicating world of professional journalism. Is it any wonder it enchanted me so?
But Kathryn wouldn’t back down. She said this was the best possible job I could get, and Jim was a great boss who wouldn’t yell at a kid like me. The next minute, I was in Jim’s office, listening to him tell me he liked my sports stories and how he’d appreciated me filling in for his proofreader a few times when she was crying so much he’d sent her home.
Jim didn’t really ask me any questions, just told me that I was hired and would start tomorrow. He’d already cleared it with dispatch, so I didn’t have to go back.
Well, that was easy, I thought. I clearly didn’t sense Jim’s desperation, or the fact he needed someone at that reporter’s desk ASAP so he wouldn’t have to dole out the assignments to his already overworked staff.
Before I left his office, Jim told me he knew I was making $100 a week working downstairs. “I can’t do any better than that right now,” he said. “But we’ll see how you do the next few months.”
At least I wouldn’t be making any less, I thought, but of course, I did. Those freelance sports stories and photos, which earned me beer money, would now be part of my “real” job.
The next day was April 26, 1976, the first in my 50-year journalism journey that continues to this day with WyoFile. I’ve been writing “The Drake’s Take” weekly for 12 years.
As long as these good people let me keep writing, I’ll be here. And it’s taken me much too long to say this, but thank you for reading. From my perspective, it’s always been a pleasure.
