Today is my 30th anniversary at the Gazette -- and here's some drivel to expand on it

I started at the Gazette when I was 4 years old. OK, that's preposterous. So is noting my 30th year at the place. I started on July 1, 1981. I remember the day well. It ended six weeks of unemployment after college ended. You don't forget any stretch of unemployment.

I went to Terre Haute, Ind., for a job interview on the sports staff of the newspaper there. What wasn't made clear ahead of time is that they were looking for a scab. Which is why they brought in a kid straight out of college, sight unseen. Their newspaper guild was on strike. The sports editor took me to a grim cafeteria in the grim downtown for a grim lunch. They put me up for a night in a grim motel. Nothing about the trip was good other than it was the longest distance I ever drove anywhere by myself, and I got there and back without any harm coming to my dad's car. Or me, for that matter.

Oh, and I picked up a hitchhiker who turned out to be a just-graduated wide receiver named Dentino at Illinois who had signed a free agent contract with the Buffalo Bills. A nice guy. He didn't end up sticking with the Bills.

My long-time story to people was that I turned Terre Haute down because I refused to be a scab. The truth is, I don't know what I would have done had they offered me the job, and I'm glad I never found out.

I know the reasons to celebrate the big 3-0 here. Being employed in this business right now is reason enough. Being employed anywhere is, too.

But I mourn the opportunities I didn't pursue over the years. Like, well, uh ... OK, I miss the opportunites I fantasized about having.

A few years into my Gazette tenure, I wrote a piece for our travel section about New York. I went there for a few days, saw friends, came back, wrote something. And an editor wouldn't run it, claiming it sounded like I was there job-hunting. I definitely wasn't. I was never cut out for midtown Manhattan except as a tourist. Across the Hudson in Weehawken, N.J.? Maybe.

If I hadn't stayed put in Cedar Rapids, I would have missed so many amazing professional and personal experiences. I won't bore you with a short list. Because it sure bores me when people do that. I mean, who cares? Besides, I'm kind of busy just trying to live in the moment, professionally. That means writing this on a blog that didn't exist for about 90 percent of my professional career, a blog that is a beast needing to be fed almost every day of the year.

A big reason I got hired at the Gazette is I didn't smoke. I heard that second-hand. Get it? Second-hand smoke! You don't need to cut and paste that.

I filed photos and assembled the minutiae of the day for the agate page of the sports section and covered a lot of the lowest-rung stuff. It was a different time. I made very little money and didn't know or care I was poor.  I worked until 1 or 1:30 a.m. helping slap together a newspaper when newspapers were much larger then in size and stature, and that was OK, because we'd just find a place to have an after-hours get-together to talk about our hopes and goals and dreams. Or more accurately, to drink beer and laugh and gripe about all the silliness and stress we went through that night in the office.

In college, I knew I wanted to write for a living. I just didn't know how that was realistic. Something that moved me closer to believing it might work out came a year-and-a-half into my newspaper career. While America was staying home to watch the final episode of "M*A*S*H," I was at a Cedar Rapids bar called Dillon's Dance Hall writing about a pro wrestling event witnessed by maybe two dozen fans. A photographer was assigned, and groused to me that this was a nothing assignment. I was afraid he was right. The photo editor didn't seem too excited about the whole deal the next morning (it was for a picture page, which the Gazette had for nearly forever on the back page of the paper). I was crestfallen thinking it had been a big waste of time, so I wrote it as if it were just for my own amusement and would never see print. And then I went home.

That night, I went to see "Gandhi" at a Cedar Rapids theater. It wasn't because I was a patron of classic cinema. I think it was because it was one of those movies you were supposed to see. Or maybe it was to cleanse my palate from the rasslin'.

Coincidentally, my sports editor and his wife were at the movie, too. He (who might deny he hired me because I didn't smoke, but I strongly suspect it didn't hurt) told me before the movie that our managing editor thought my story was a riot and he ordered it to be run. The managing editor was a great old-school newspaper person named John Robertson who was pretty intimidating to a kid sportswriter. I don't think I paid any attention to "Gandhi" the whole three hours. I was excited, to say the least, and I may have gone downtown to get a copy of the paper when it hit the streets in the middle of the night.

Decades have passed. Faster, it seems, than the movie "Gandhi." I've covered a lot of events significantly bigger and better than observing a bizarre collection of oddly-shaped men pull punches and bounce around a wrestling ring in a dimly-illuminated saloon. But the same rush from writing still comes along once in a great while.

Oh, and the mortgage needs paying.

Thanks for indulging me. Now, I begin the next 30 years of doing this. In 2041, I'll send my final essay directly into the center of your mind. I don't know how the technology will work quite yet, but trust me, you'll love it. If nothing else, you can use the accompanying coupons.