This I believe to be true. You start somewhere, keep turning in the same direction long enough, and before you know it, you’re right back where you began.
It works in NASCAR. It works in horse racing. And, apparently it works in my life. Which sort of explains how I came to be writing this column. Basically, it’s Rusty Turner’s fault.
Right after I graduated from a large state university west of here (the one that used to beat Kansas State in football on a fairly regular basis), I took a job in Fort Smith as the sports editor of the paper. Hey, it was either that or the crime beat at the Lawton, Okla., Constitution, where, due to its proximity to the Army post at Fort Sill, stories about vehicular larceny have been known to involve a tank.
In that capacity, I was required to write columns, mostly trying to explain why Arkansas hadn’t beaten Texas. Now, it appears sports editors are required to write columns explaining why Arkansas hasn’t beaten Alabama. It’s not particularly gratifying to discover some things haven’t changed.
Being a sports editor was a wonderful job for a young man who thought spending four consecutive nights a week in a press box was the height of living. Of course,at that time I thought a meal could actually consist of two Slim Jims and a Dr Pepper. I’m pretty sure that’s in the Food Pyramid somewhere.
I could have done that for a while. However, I made the classic blunder that has ruined many a journalism career while immeasurably improving at least one life: I got married. And started having children.
And realized that for some strange reason they seemed to like having me around.
And that since we all liked electricity and eating on a regular basis, I needed to look at doing Something Else for a living.
That, at the time, was what journalists called anything other than being journalists. We weren’t quite sure what it meant, except people who did it seemed happy and got to leave early when the score got out of hand.
So, I’ve been doing Something Else for some time now, turning on a fairly regular basis, generally in the same direction. Every now and then I dabbled at writing, but for the most part, I retired the notepads and the press passes and the Slim Jims. And that’s when Rusty called.
Now, one of the things I was required to do as a sports editor was hire sports writers. One of those sports writers was a certain Rusty Turner, who, years later in an apparent attempt to exact revenge for setting him on the path that left him a shell of what he could have been, asked me if I’d like to take a shot at writing a column once a week.
Rusty and I had been exchanging email over the years, and he decided that an every-now-andthen, off -the-cuff smart remark on my part could be expanded into 750 amazingly clever words suitable for publishing. I felt it impolite to suggest he check his office for gas leaks that might be causing those hallucinations, and agreed to give it a shot. This continues the recent trend of hiring Smiths to positions where their abilities, or lack thereof, are open to public scrutiny. Yep, the jury is still out on this one, too.
When I mentioned this to my wife, the lovely Mrs.
Smith, she asked me exactly what Rusty wanted me to write about. I said I wasn’t sure, but that I needed to be funny four times a month.
She said she thought that might be overly ambitious.
What’s that about prophets not being appreciated in their own land?
Since we’ve gotten this far, you might as well know what you’re getting yourself into. I write about stuff .
Not any stuff in particular, just stuff. The kind of stuff that happens to most of us, and that I hope, in a certain light at least, you might fi nd amusing.
I’m not particularly political, mostly because there are lots of really smart people in the pages of this very paper who are more than qualified to tell you how to vote or who the crooks are. I, personally, don’t feel qualified to tell you how often to change your oil. I’m pretty sure it should be just before that yellow light on the dash comes on. Don’t ask me how I know.
I do, however, remember back when I very first started, how exciting it was to be granted the privilege of writing for a paper, of getting to share my thoughts and opinions with others, of being, in some way a very small part of the proud tradition of newspaper columnists stretching back to the start of this country and before.
I look forward to doing it again. And, for a little while at least, getting back to where I began.
GARY SMITH IS A RECOVERING JOURNALIST LIVING IN ROGERS.
Opinion, Pages 5 on 09/27/2012