I never thought I’d have a chance to write this column and, I suspect, neither did you. It marks a full 10 years since the heading “I Was Just Thinking” first appeared in print in this newspaper — or anywhere else for that matter.
If you thought back then it would never last, join the club.
The question I — or any columnist — is asked most often is, of course, “Where do you find something to write about week after week?”
Believe me, there were times during these 10 years when I found myself asking that same question, but y’know, something invariably came up to meet the deadline.
The secret I seem to have discovered — for myself, at least — is that it helps having a pad and pencil on the nightstand and also next to one’s favorite recliner. There’s the fact that if you find your own niche as a curmudgeon, there’s no end to the things you can gripe about.
I was remembering that I’d missed only one column in all those years but, going to my file cabinet, I found that I’d submitted an extra column to cover a planned absence that week. It was in 2008 and Corine and I were spending D-Day in Normandy. A memorial parachute drop was planned to honor her father, a member of the 82nd Airborne Division that played a crucial role in that invasion.
A side note is that he didn’t drop in by parachute; he did something far more dangerous, accompanying heavy artillery into battle aboard a World War II glider! Those gliders were devices that had, from the beginning, gained the nickname of “flying coffins.” I rode in one a few times, but that’s another story.
As a writer I enjoyed the thrill of a lifetime during that trip: getting to visit Paris and sitting with Corine at a sidewalk café on the famous Left Bank of the River Seine. I was probably not more than 50 feet from the present location of the most famous bookstore in the world, Shakespeare and Company. And with the Cathedral of Notre Dame sitting on its own island in the river, visible just over my right shoulder not more than a couple of hundred yards away, I scribbled words into my notebook that would become the following week’s column.
What writer could ever ask for anything more; becoming — in my own mind — a member of the famous “Lost Generation,” joining, albeit surreptitiously, the likes of Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot and others. Even that memory is nearly 10 years old by now!
Getting back to reality, 10 years of columns times 52 weeks equals 520 columns. At a minimum of 600 words per column, it’s well over 300,000 words according to my calculator.
I can’t expect that I’ll equal Gordon Aadland’s record of 12 years of writing as Saturday’s Child and, there’s no false modesty involved in my admitting I’ll never approach the quality of his writing.
But still, it has been a darned good ride. I’ve tweaked a few noses, apologized for a few errors and met some very nice people along the way.
In my file cabinet there’s a folder of responses — both favorable and the other kind — to points I’ve made over the years. It’s both humbling and exhilarating to see how many there were and how, by far, the majority of them were favorable.
I once told Gordon that I also had another file folder entitled “Good Writing” and mentioned that there were a few of his columns in it. He faked a sad look and asked, “Only a few?”
I can’t top that.
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Bill Moeller is a former entertainer, mayor, bookstore owner, city council member, paratrooper and pilot living in Centralia. He can be reached at bookmaven321@comcast.net.
