Stumbling past trikes, bikes and wagons - into a career

When I was in grade school, my best friend was Jon Skovlin.

His father ran the local Penny’s store, and sometimes I worked with Jon and put together trikes, bikes, and wagons. The store sold a lot of these.

Jon’s dad would pay us for assembling the toys.

That’s when I decided that I didn’t want to do that kind of work later in life.

That was kind of funny because my dad could do just about anything. Raising a family during the Depression, you didn’t just hire people to do tasks you didn’t know how to do.

My dad learned how to do things by need. There isn’t enough space to tell the many tasks he did. I would sometimes help him only to learn that I wasn’t drawn to any of these tasks.

I limped along doing a variety of jobs after high school, and still hadn’t settled on anything.

I started college when I was 25, still not interested in anything specific.

Then it happened by accident. I was taking a journalism class in my second year, and my professor, Helen Wilson, referred me to the local paper’s editor for a job.

After a single shift, I confessed to the editor that I was out of my league.

He responded by telling me that he would edit what I wrote, and to give it some time.

This went on for a time, and slowly I started getting by-line stories in the paper. My grandson, Travis Irwin, a couple of years ago researched and found my first by-line story, had the page photocopied, framed and gave it to me for Christmas.

I never would have dreamed that I someday would find writing as my future job.

Writing became my ticket for three different trips halfway around the world, and visits to 35 states and a lot more in between.

I continued writing for the Idaho Free Press in Nampa and was hired away by the Idaho Statesman in Boise.

That’s when things really took off for me. The Statesman was loaded with cash and believed in sending its reporters out on stories, paying their way.

I worked there just shy of three years and started winding my way to the Seattle area. 

I settled in Bothell and took a job with the Northshore Citizen.

As luck would have it, the paper would allow me to take a month off each year to pursue my own interests, hence the foreign trips.

That freedom went on for 25 years until I took early retirement and ended up in Electric City.

By that time, I had learned how to circulate and find avenues that allowed me time to continue my interests in travel and adventure.

I was ready to settle down, and signed on at The Star where I put in another 25 years writing.

I guess the lesson is keep looking and you will find something to do that fits with your inner self.

I never would have dreamed that a course I took in college to satisfy an English requirement would develop into such a long adventure.