It’s been 35 years, but who’s counting?
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- March 1, 2025
- 716
This is the path I’ve chosen, and since my journey began Saturday, March 3, 1990, it has been a good and faithful guide.
I’ve written a weekly column for 35 years, more than 1,800 of them, and if you’d have told me then that I’d still be at it in 2025, I wouldn’t have believed you, but here we are, 2 million words later.
Lest you accuse me of self-serving humble bragging, let me be clear: I hesitated to even mention this milestone, let alone write about it, for fear it would send the wrong message. When you decide to craft a first-person narrative approach, there’s a very real risk of alienating your audience before you find your footing.
But over the many months since my work began appearing on a regular basis, I’ve discovered, to my eternal surprise and everlasting gratitude, my readers are not only tolerant, but also generous with their encouragement and appreciation.
So I have to thank you, first and foremost, for your support.
You can’t possibly know how often and how deeply your letters and calls, your emails and cards, your stories and your ideas have moved me. I’ve done my best to respond to your gestures, and if I’ve failed to reply to them, please know it’s not your fault.
When you’ve taken the time to sit down and share your thoughts, often in hand-written form, and then address an envelope, affix a stamp and send it across the miles, you have created the connection all writers dream about, the one that makes the wires sing.
I can’t even begin to count the number of times you’ve recognized me in some public place and how wonderful that makes me feel, though I harbor a suspicion that meeting me is rather disappointing.
After all, I’m hardly a rock star … more of a recluse, an observer.
When I’ve been asked to speak in front of a classroom or a civic gathering, I never prepare anything in advance, sort of the way I treated my wedding vows on the beach in Kitty Hawk. I go in with a vague notion of what’s important to impart and simply wing it.
This is undoubtedly why I understood early on that I could never be a good teacher. I lacked the discipline for prior planning, preferring to trust my instincts rather than to properly prepare. If you study my immediate family, you’ll see I’m the lone non-educator in the bunch as both of my parents and my siblings (and their spouses) have all made their marks as gifted educators.
It’s a lofty calling, a vocation that suits very few perfectly, and as such shuts the door on people like me who, despite having a thirst for knowledge and a modicum of intelligence, don’t have the drive.
How I ended up in journalism rather than academia or advertising or government work or public relations probably had less to do with commitment than convenience. One day during the summer after the bicentennial, I was asked to play ball on a team whose members included a couple of sports reporters. Next thing I remember I was covering high school football games, and a year or so later, I was the sports editor of my hometown newspaper.
I suppose it’s a good thing I could hit a bit and play good defense; otherwise, I don’t know what I’d have done, though I never really gave it much thought, trusting I could always mow grass, rake leaves or shovel snow, and I’d get paid enough for doing it well.
Journalism attracted a strange subset of humanity. Let me quote Hunter S. Thompson, who once wrote, “As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damn shame that a field as potentially dynamic as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia and apathy, stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity.”
This courtesy of the Father of Gonzo Journalism, whose writing I inhaled in high school, admiring his immense talent and bravado.
Over the years I’ve done my best to avoid the mediocrity he warned against, but I’d be the first to admit sometimes, despite my best efforts, an essay falls short of the standards I set for myself.
But it’s not easy doing something well once a week, at least that’s how I rationalize my shortfalls, and then I think of someone like Mike Royko, who, over the course of his career, wrote a column everyday, more than 7,500 of them, a total I just cannot fathom.
I like to think, however, that in my own way, I’ve managed to carve out my own little, comfortable niche, a place where readers can spend a slice of their days following my ramblings, maybe getting a chuckle or two, perhaps gaining perspective from words that make sense on some level, even looking forward to next week.
It’s been an honor and a privilege to have been in your lives since 1990, to have heard from you and met you and opened packages containing books and records and tapes and your own written words. You’ve made my life in print come to mean so very much.
I’ll close with just one other thought that might have some value.
At the same time my column marks 35 years, I’m turning 70.
That’s half my life spent sharing stories of family and friends, love and loss, music and movies, school days and summer nights, of beaches and lighthouses, baseball games and concerts, books and plays, cooking and camping, dancing and driving, sometimes getting lost and then finding my way back to what really matters.
I’d never have made it all this way without you … and that’s true.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805. He invites you to find him on Facebook, where time has a funny way of catching up with us all.