Sticktalker's Autobiography

THE FIRST 71 YEARS GO BY QUICKLY
By Sticktalker

         This is going to be harder than I thought at first. How do you pack 71 years into 1000 words? That’s a tad over 14 words per year. Sheesh.

         The first five years don’t count of course because I don’t remember them, but I was 9 or 10 when I talked a friend into helping me “publish” a comic book. Hand-drawn and using carbon paper to make copies, we published two editions and rented the book out to other kids for a nickel. That was the beginning of my “writing” and publishing career.

         In ninth grade I wrote, in longhand with a No. 2 pencil, a Science Fiction novella set on Mars. Two explorers discover a deep trench where oxygen and air pressure combined to create a near-Earth environment.

         In high school I published what had to be the first mimeographed “underground” USA student newspaper. Well, I only published ONE issue before I was shut down by the principal who explained you can’t libel folks in print without running the risk of getting sued.

         Using my same mimeograph, I started publishing a Science Fiction fan monthly magazine. I wrote some of the less-memorable stories in it along with stories and feature articles submitted by other fans.

         After high school I entered the University of California at Riverside where I ran for freshman class president. I lost by a 3 to 1 margin but was offered a job on the school newspaper as assistant editor. The next semester I was named editor (no one else wanted the job apparently) and I landed a job on the local daily newspaper working in…koff, koff…the circulation department. No, I didn’t actually deliver newspapers to homes; I contracted and directed the 13-year-old newspaper carriers and delivered bundles of newspapers to them.

         I found that I loved journalism and decided that is what I wanted to do for my career. OK, so I am a slow learner.

         At the end of the school year I moved to Northern California, argued my way into California State College at Sacramento on probation (I, er, well, had flunked out of UC Riverside due to losing interest in classwork as I discovered….women…and had to cut something out of my schedule, but we won’t go there).

         One semester at Sac State gave me the fundamentals of accounting, business management, laws affecting newspapers and one “class” on journalism which was taught by the most boring teacher I have ever met. His “teaching” consisted of sitting on his desk and telling innumerable stories about his early journalism career. By now I had finagled a job with the local weekly newspaper where I learned how to set type, run a press, sweep the floor and the basics of running a Linotype. My college circulation experience came in handy; I got to haul the newspapers two blocks to the local post office on a hand truck.

         Finally, I made it to the front office where I answered phones, sold office supplies (a sideline of the newspaper operation) took photos with an old 4x5 Speed Graphic press camera) chased fire trucks, covered the police beat and wrote obits and wedding stories along with feature stories.

         From there I went to a small daily newspaper in Orange, California, where I was taught by the city editor how to really write GOOD stories and features. Then I moved “up” to a larger newspaper in the adjoining City of Anaheim as the second city hall reporter and then the news editor where I edited stories, dummied newspaper pages and wrote headlines.

         It was there that I met a lady who set the type (this was still the days of lead or “hot metal”). I took her to a Christmas party as a first date, fell in love with her and finally talked her into marrying me on June 1 the following year. She had a four-year-old girl whom I adored and together we had two more children. All are married and have children of their own; the then four-year-old has two married children and two grandkids. Time flies.

         Shortly after we were wed we moved back to my old hometown where I was assistant editor of the local three times a week paper. After two years I left to open a photographic studio and serve as part time News Director of a 500-watt radio station. We almost had to file bankruptcy and only had food on the table due to my wife working night shifts at a lost wax casting factory and days watching other folks’ children. That was a tough time.

         We moved back to Northern California where I had been hired as the editor of a weekly newspaper near San Francisco. We soon bought half interest in another newspaper owned by the publisher of the weekly and ran that paper for five years. We sold that paper and made what was a final move to near Redding, Ca. where I started a weekly paper, then bought out the existing weekly competitor.

         We purchased our own printing press and began printing other area publications, finally selling the newspaper and keeping the printing business. Ten years ago my wife and I both “retired” and we turned the operation of the business over to our son who, three years ago, purchased the company.

         Now I write really bad fiction (which is a LOT different than writing bad news stories), volunteer at the local food bank as chairman of the Community Garden which raises food for the Food Bank to give away to needy folks, and am trying to learn how to write decent fiction through WDC.  The problem with that is I’ve become so involved with The Paper Dolls and The First Peoples’ tribe on WDC that I have little time to actually write.

         So the novel sits there in two binders plus a third binder of research and on three hard drives waiting for my skills to catch up with my desires.

         Maybe tomorrow morning I’ll see what I can do with that third draft.

(998 words)