30 years down the road and we are still together
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- March 8, 2020
- 838
I had no idea I had this much to say.
When my first column — under the headline, “The Longest Journey Starts With the First Step, Right?” — appeared on March 3, 1990, this is how I put it:
“A year from now, when I’ve written maybe 50 of these things, perhaps I’ll know what I’m trying to do. Right now I just want to keep it simple and see what happens. All I have in mind is that, once a week, I’ll sit down and write. I hope it’s entertaining.”
That was 30 years ago.
Thirty freakin’ years!
Whew. That’s a lot of writing. If you figure 52 weeks in a year, four weeks in a month, for 30 years, that’s like 1,660 columns.
At a rate of 1,500 words per column — and that’s lowballing it because I’ve been known to crank out twice that on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” — that comes to about half-a-million words.
But don’t trust my math. I barely made it out of advanced algebra with my dignity intact, and these days I wisely let my wife handle all the finances, because the last time I tried, they shut off the power.
The point is it doesn’t take a numbers wizard to come to the conclusion I have lots on my mind; however, without someone on the other end of the line, there is no connection, no vital spark, no way to make the wires hum.
And that’s why I appreciate each and every one of you, my loyal readers, without whom I might as well have been keeping a diary.
You have made it a singular joy to have had this opportunity.
And I thank you for it.
Thirty years ago I had no idea you’d remember my birthday or invite me into your classrooms, that you’d call me up out of the blue or ask me to sign a piece of paper, that you’d share your sorrows even as you helped me deal with mine.
Back in 1990 there was no way I’d ever anticipate the hundreds of letters you’ve taken the time to write or the generous cavalcade of books and records, CDs and postcards, CARE packages replete with Trail bologna and Swiss cheese, let alone all the emails and Facebook posts you’ve sent since my work began appearing online.
You’ve invited me into your schools to speak to your children, into your social clubs to talk about my life, your churches to offer me hope, your TV and radio shows to help me share my thoughts.
But most of you I’ve never met.
That’s part of what makes me feel so humbled. You reach out and react to what it is I’ve written, and that is something so special, something I never expected back when I started this experiment.
Personal columns are not the easiest things to sell, especially when their author is a Roman Catholic Democrat, a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, a Rolling Stones freak, a Hunter Thompson disciple and a New York Yankees fan.
I mean there’s not a lot about me that screams, “Hey, I’m just like you!” On the contrary it wasn’t my destiny to get married young, buy a house, raise some kids and retire with money in the bank.
Since 1990 I’ve moved six times including uprooting everything and relocating from Ohio to the Crystal Coast of North Carolina.
But as preposterous as it seems, my strange, atypical, often ludicrous life has held your interest for 30 years, and that’s amazing.
People often ask how I come up with ideas, and I’ve never been able to develop a satisfactory answer, one that accurately reflects both the randomness and the specificity I feel when I’m doing what I do. Usually I steal a line from D.G. Fulford, one of the most talented columnists I’ve ever had the pleasure to know, and say, “Well, the column-writing machine is always running.”
Simple observation is one thing.
Being able to translate those visions into something different, something unique, something that others might find valuable, well, that’s the tricky part.
But if I can, say, turn a trip to the dentist into a rant on Lou Reed’s “Metal Machine Music” or describe what it feels like to have a line of 10-foot waves come crashing down on me as a Category Four hurricane prowls the Atlantic menacingly, then it’s just plain fun.
Writing from a personal perspective, as I’ve said, isn’t encouraged in journalism classes because it’s damn difficult to hold an audience’s attention unless you’re not afraid to open all sorts of doors. You have to be willing to go places without a map, or if you have one, to rip it into pieces and scatter them to the winds, all the while keeping in mind you’re not alone on the adventure.
You’ve got company, and if you’re lucky — and I mean 30-years fortunate — you’ll discover you can’t wait to add another chapter, even if that entails yet another door and another risk.
I get asked a lot about slicing myself open once a week, and my reply is always the same. “It’s easy once you get used to the pain.”
When I write about lost love or broken dreams or making a mess of a company meal or a stereo repair, I do it to make the reader feel better about his or her life, if only for a few minutes, and when I’m writing well, that’s the trade-off, one I’m happy to accept.
It’s more difficult, I’ve found, to delve too deeply into my well of happiness because it can come off as braggadocio, and that’s not good. No one is going to be very interested in reading about someone who’s always winning, a guy who sails through life, Gatsby-esque.
But that’s what F. Scott Fitzgerald understood all too well. When his hero gets too close to that green light at the end of the pier, that’s when the hammer comes down.
Not that a column on losing my high school girlfriend is ever going to be taught in college classrooms. In the final analysis, my words don’t belong between hard covers; they’re used to line birdcages.
And I’m fine with that.
I was sorting through the mountain of newsprint that represents my legacy — 30 years of sharing stories using what talent I have — and I thought, “Man, I ought to get all this stuff on some kind of digital device. It’s a fire hazard, all this paper stacked up like this.”
But I know I never will. I don’t have it in me. It’s too much work.
However, I retain the discipline to continue to do this once a week, to write to the best of my ability. Thirty years ago I said it this way:
“Most of you have no idea who I am, but that’s OK. You’ll have a weekly opportunity to decide whether you want to or not.”
The offer still stands.