I went home, wrote three columns and brought them to his office. I was told to leave them there and that he would call me. I was certain I'd never hear from him again. After all, I had no training as a writer beyond what I learned in high school.
To my great surprise, he called early the next morning with a simple message that changed my life. He said, "I'll take all you can write!"
Within the first six months, there was enough interest in my writing and enough people telling me I should "write a book" that I did just that.
The book took longer and cost more than having a baby.
I write almost everything from memory. Once in a while I'll do some research or ask for ideas or details but what I write is like the memories we all have of our first grade teacher being an "old lady" when she probably was not yet 30 years of age.
I did a whole series of interviews with local residents and got them to tell me all about themselves, their families and their own memories of the way it was way back when. In recent times, some of those people died and I was pleased to see copies of what I had written on display at their wakes.
There have been some fun times, too. Like the time my young editor corrected what he thought was a typo and changed the word Petty to pretty. He didn't know that a Petty Girl was an air brushed drawing of a wholesome and very attractive pin up girl, made famous by an artist named George Petty.
Subject material for my columns ranges from names, dates and places, to jokes both old and new, to opinions about what many people call "progress" and personal stories of my life and the people I have known and loved.
Most of the time, I write about "The Way It Was" as I remember it.
I like to recall the past and how different things were when compared to the way they are now.
Sometimes younger readers wonder if things really were the way I remember them. As one of my readers said, "Old timers know what I'm talking about."
It must be very difficult for those who are not old enough to even begin to understand the past. There is a tendency to believe that everything always was the way it is now. I think it is important to know how interconnected everything was. How one new invention led to another and another until the old ways became just fading memories in the minds of old people like me.
When I am asked a specific question about the past, it is difficult to give a simple answer. The computer I use to type these columns did not appear all at once. It evolved over time. Electricity was discovered, electric light bulbs were invented, and radio tubes that looked like light bulbs made radio and television possible. Then came the transistor, the TV picture tube and the computer. All interconnected.
I often wish I could talk to every one of my readers. To find out what they remember about the past. Do my columns remind them of something in their lives? Maybe the first time they talked on a telephone, or the first time they drove a car?
I wonder if some day, maybe a hundred years from now, someone will read my columns and wonder if that's the way it really was a long time ago.
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