Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 1, 1993 TAG: 9308010024
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK CHAMBERLAIN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
But along about age 49 1/2, long before Senior Citizenhood, there comes in the mail, unsolicited and unexpected, an invitation to join the wonderful world of AARP.
AARP, for the uninitiated, is the American Association of Retired Persons, a large organization and Washington lobby like the National Rifle Association.
You don't have to own a rifle to join the NRA and, it turns out, you don't have to be retired to join AARP. All you have to do is send money.
You do have to be 50 to join AARP, but apparently 49 1/2 isn't too soon to fill out that application and mail in your five bucks.
But I wasn't 50 - yet! And I didn't want to think about being 50 - yet! And I wasn't too happy that AARP was reminding me, with the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the forehead, that my next birthday would be the Big Five-0.
AARP! Doesn't that sound somewhat like indigestion, which, I understand, increases with Senior Citizenship?
Where did they get my name, anyway? That piece of unsolicited mail so depressed me that I threw it in the trash and moaned and groaned, mournfully, for weeks.
Months went by. The Big Five-0 went by. I felt the same as usual, sort of. And I kept seeing AARP commercials on TV. Only $5 a year. Modern Maturity magazine every month. Senior citizens' discounts at motels and restaurants. A big lobby for congresspersons to keep their grubby paws off our Society Security and Medicare.
Hell, why not. The Big Five-0 beats the Big Sleep! I needed another magazine. I needed a voice on Capitol Hill. I needed discounts. So now I'm an official, card-carrying member of AARP.
Having survived that crisis, there came in the mail - also unsolicited and unexpected - a personal invitation from June Allyson. Some of you fellow AARPers and almost-AARPers may remember June as the gravelly voiced girl-next-door in movies, often the big-screen wife of Jimmy Stewart.
She was smiling from the full-color brochure, still looking pretty good, and urging me to order now for regular home-delivery, in plain brown wrappers, to save myself the embarrassment of shopping in public places.
What was she selling?
Depend. You know, those adult diapers for the AARP generation. No, thanks, June. At least not yet.
So it should have come as no surprise that I, an official, card-carrying member of AARP on the Depend mailing list, was included among aging Roanoke Times & World-News employees for an early-retirement offer in May.
No matter how we fantasize about a life of leisure with a pension, it's not an easy decision. I like working for the paper. I liked being a reporter. I like being a writer. I like being an editor in the New River Bureau. I like my boss. I like my colleagues. I like an actual paycheck.
But in life, there are certain truths: A full-time job really messes up your whole week! If they want to pay you to not mess up your whole week, why not?
Go for it, my wife said.
Friday was my last day.
For nearly half my newspaper career, I covered education and schools in the Roanoke Valley.
I liked it. I thought it was the most important beat on the paper. I still do. Schools affect most people and spend a large chunk of our money. Parents, teachers and administrators really got emotional about them - either because we wrote about something, or because we didn't write about something.
Over the years, I made some friends, and I also made people mad at me and the paper. But I always tried to be accurate and fair. I especially liked writing about people, and, of course, letting the public know when the administration (city or county) was pulling a fast one or doing something stupid, again.
I also had a personal rule: if a school board met, I was there - or it didn't count!
It is rather sobering to realize that when I banged out my first stories on my Underwood at the Roanoke Times three decades ago, most of my current colleagues of the MTV and computer generation were far from being born.
Yes, kids, before computer terminals and word processors, even before IBM Selectrics, there were manual typewriters called Underwoods and Remingtons. We typed on salvaged newsprint with three carbons and made corrections with a No. 2 pencil. We scribbled - 30 - at the end of our copy.
Yes, children, back in the summer of 1963, before President Kennedy was shot, the newsroom was a sea of big metal desks on a hard tile floor where reporters, shirt collars open and ties askew, fogged themselves in cigarette smoke and pounded away (most with two fingers) on daily deadlines.
The din was almost exciting, just like in those Clark Gable movies. Gable. Clark. Oh, never mind.
The smell of molten lead wafted from the back shop, where skilled craftsmen (No, there were no women back there - yet!) fingered the broad keyboards of clanking Linotype machines. They spit out lines of hot, lead type with the precision of a bottling plant.
Today, actual manual typewriters are long gone. One has to look hard to find a No. 2 pencil. And the Linotype is a dinosaur, a lone museum piece standing mute in the newspaper lobby.
The newsroom has evolved into a carpeted office with computer stations in cubicles, where no one smokes (those who do must go outside) and no one ever, ever shouts "Stop the presses!" anymore.
Actually, I never heard anyone shout "Stop the presses," but the old World-News did publish an "extra" three decades ago when John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.
It took 100 years for computer technology to displace typewriters and the Linotype, and for carpet to displace the tile. But these ever-changing microchips keep eating each other for breakfast and lunch like so many Pac-men.
Like Alice, one has to run just to keep up with the ever-changing technology, and with the ever-changing climate of competition in the news business.
What ever happened to Pac-man, anyway?
It's been fun (most of the time), but Landmark Communications has offered me a gift of the rest of my life to do pretty much as I please. And my wife says she'll still buy the groceries.
So, I'm calling it a career at the Roanoke Times & World-News. AARP and June Allyson notwithstanding, I'm much too young to call it retirement. So, as we did at high school and college graduations, I'm calling it another commencement.
My sailboat awaits. My dog awaits. We're off to The Land of Pleasant Living near the Chesapeake Bay, where big news on the Northern Neck is a second stoplight in town, and rush hour means both cars are out.
By the way, please don't send June Allyson my new address.
Jack Chamberlain is retiring as assistant editor of this newspaper's New River Valley bureau.
by CNB