I have been fortunate enough to live in quite a few interesting places, some better than others.
Some were less interesting because of the circumstances, others wouldn’t have been interesting no matter what.
At least one city, where I spent 1982 and the first half of 1983, is a place you couldn’t pay me enough to go back.
Then there was Colorado.
Estes Park, Colorado
I spent two wonderful years in Colorado, and it was something of a fluke that got me there. I had been working in St. Louis for more than two years, and my employer was stumbling to the end of its existence. I had been sending out resumes without much luck. I had some vacation time due, and a woman I had known in college and had recently made contact with was going to be in Denver on business in early October.
I joined her there, and I had brought along my most recent issue of Editor & Publisher magazine with its job listings. When I scanned the ads on my flight from St. Louis to Denver, I noticed that the newspaper in Greeley, Colo., was looking for a sports editor. It was a job I would normally not have considered. My job in St. Louis was with a metropolitan daily and the Greeley Tribune was in a smallish city had had a circulation of less than 25,000. It would be the second-smallest paper I ever worked for.
I called the Tribune, introduced myself and asked if I could come up for an interview. I was told they were fairly late in the process of hiring someone, but they would see me if I wanted to come up. I apologized in advance for not having a suit and tie with me for the interview and my friend Nancy drove me up to Greeley the next day.
I had changed jobs three times in the previous five years, working my way across the country. I had three criteria for a job and I would only consider jobs that met at least two of the three. A bigger paper, a better salary and a better job description.
Greeley
The better salary was because my St. Louis job paid horribly and the job description meant it would be the first time since college than I had run my own department. Add in a paper that wouldn’t be going out of business and the chance to live in Colorado (!) and it was an easy choice.
I got the job, gave two weeks notice in St. Louis and actually got started for Colorado a week early when my employer went out of business.
It was a unique time in my life. My car I had been driving for more than seven years died on my last day in St. Louis and I abandoned it, driving to Greeley in a U-Haul with all my possessions. I spent my first four months in Colorado riding the bus to and from work before buying a new car in the late winter.
Although if I hadn’t wound up in Southern California, I would never have met the people who are now my family, I never wanted to live in Los Angeles.My goal was always the San Francisco Bay area, and only a bizarre fluke kept me from reaching it.
In January 1988, I came in second for a job in San Rafael, just north of San Francisco. That was a Gannett paper, and in October I was offered a job at the Gannett paper in Reno.It was a good job and I accepted it, but the very next day, the San Rafael sports editor called and said he had wanted to offer me a job.
I told him that was great, but he said the fact I had accepted the Reno job 24 hours earlier meant he could not hire me.
So I went to Reno and 18 months after that to Los Angeles. I wound up with a wonderful wife and two amazing children. I certainly can’t complain about that. but I left Colorado in October 1988 and have never stoppsed missing it.
Oh well.