Foggy starts

Fog at the mouth of the Columbia River sets a standard for fog. Fog defines where Oregon and Washington share its outlet to the Pacific. It also defined my nascent and up-to-then non-existent career as I drove to Ilwaco, WA, and my second job interview of that early weekend in December 1977.

Car-less at that point of my life, my folks loaned me a 1968 Ford Galaxie 500. Though only nine years old, one could see already why it had been handed down. I piloted this coffin on wheels toward the southwestern tip of Washington through a typically drizzly early winter day in the western part of the state. “Man, talk about wet!” I muttered. At the same time I thought this, I drove my 1968 Ford Galaxie 500 into a fog bank. Until that point of my life–all 23 years of it–I don’t think I had ever realized what the phrase “bank of fog” meant. Within 100 yards I drove from a gray, drizzly day into a shroud of bright nothingness. I could barely make out the highway signs along the shoulder of the road.

How had I gotten here?

Simple. In mid-December 1977 I found myself in imminent need of a job. The University of Washington School of Communications planned to foist me on society with a degree. I had trained, in a mediocre fashion, for a job as a reporter. I realized I wouldn’t get any top-tier jobs at the dailies of Washington State, Idaho, Oregon, and I wasn’t plugged into destinations further away. (No Internet, no networking skills, no time spent learning about how to get jobs pretty much anywhere.) The state association of independent weekly newspaper publishers had to do. For one thing, the association headquartered itself in Seattle just a couple miles from the University campus. I figured, correctly as it turned out, they would be desperate (in a relative sense). Our corner of the US hadn’t experienced the stagflation of the Carter Administration, and talented graduates don’t seek jobs with weekly newspapers. Neither do most graduates want to head to the hinterlands to report about social teas, high school sports, and local city council meetings. It sounded easier, and I was all about easy, then and now.

Shortly after finishing my final final, I traveled to my parents’ home in Spokane. Once there, I gorged on home cooking, spoke to them as little as possible, and grabbed their old Ford for some serious job hunting.

My first stop that early December weekend was in Moses Lake, afairly strange place if you’re from outside of the state. To us it merely offered a respite in the cross-state drive. I met a married couple who owned and managed two newspapers. One was a weekly in Ritzville, WA, which is a small farming-oriented community at the northern edge of the Palouse wheatfields where it enjoys a location on the main east-west corridor through the state, I-90. They also published a paper in Cle Elum, but I do not remember if it was the Miner Echo or the Northern Kittitas County Tribune. I tend to think it was the former.

The owners were salt-of-the-earth, don’t-give-me-shit small business owners in a small community, a class of person I soon was to become deeply knowledgeable about. They didn’t make the job sound attractive. And they offered $125 a week. (Keep that figure in mind.) I told them I was interviewing elsewhere, and I would let them know. Notice they offered me a job on the spot. My alarm was sounding, but not loudly: I had kinda figured this wouldn’t be extremely difficult. A theme of my life to that point, and for a goodly part of my life from thereafter, was to flow into the path of least resistance.

This was a Saturday. I continued after the interview to drive westward, arriving at my dorm sometime in the late afternoon. (What a “thrill” to park a car in the student garage like all the kids that had more money than I did!) On Sunday I got myself up at a non-student, responsible hour, got in the car again, and headed to Ilwaco where an interview at the Chinook Observer awaited me.

My encounter with the fog bank said, “Welcome to Ilwaco.” It continued, growing more dense as I got into town. I found the office and parked outside. Upon knocking on the door, I was met by a pasty-complexioned man who owned the paper. He seemed ill at ease, hesitant, insecure. I immediately wondered how a man could own a weekly newspaper, the klaxon of any community, the polestar of community ire, and have a personality like this. We had a milquetoast interview and he offered me my second job in two days, also at $125/week. He seemed upset when I said I already had one offer on the table and another interview pending.

On Tuesday two days later I headed to Monroe, WA. Only 15 miles east of Everett and about 30 miles from my dorm in Seattle, Monroe was the gateway to the North Cascades via US Highway 2. Tuesdays, I learned later, was publication day which meant that the paper was being “put to bed” while I interviewed with the owner. I omit his name in case I say something which might get me in trouble.

This interview started out weird and stayed weird. The antithesis of the Ilwaco publisher faced me. He’d served as motorcycle courier in World War II in Europe, and he carried that hard-bitten attitude with him. He revered John Wayne. He kept Cutty Sark in his desk drawer. He ended the interview thusly: “So…I can start you at $150 per week. When can you start?” I trotted out my now-practiced “well-I-have-other-offers-on-the-table” speech and he said, “Well, call them and tell them you’ve accepted this position!” I was caught off guard. He asked, “Do you want this job or not?” I thought (quickly) about $25 more per week. He was offering $7800 per year. In 1977 more than 25% of Americans earned less than this. I was young. Earning less than the median American ($13,572) didn’t sound that awful. I would be working as a reporter. I told him yes, I would give those others a call. He said:

“We’ve got phones, I’ve got an extra office. You can call from there.”

So I wound up on a Tuesday in mid-December sitting in what was definitely not an office but more a glorified cube (and would soon become my cube), calling the other two publishers and telling them that I had accepted an offer elsewhere.

Because we were at this point looking at the issue which would come out right before Christmas, we agreed it would make the most sense for me to arrive right after Christmas and start work on Monday the 27th. I got in the old Ford Galaxie, drove to my dorm, cleaned it out, and drove to Spokane. I celebrated Christmas with my family, including my brother, home from a separate university in the state.

On Sunday the 26th I drove across the state for the fourth time that month, the old Galaxie towing a U-Haul trailer with all my possessions. I got to my mother’s childhood home in Seattle very late afternoon, when it was dark. There my grandparents bequeathed me a chair and some other odds and ends, some of which–like the chair–I own to this day, more than 40 years later. I pulled into the parking lot for the Monroe Motel later that evening, checked in, and reported to work the next morning.

Fog defines my entire job interviewing process and my newspaper work thereafter. I’d no idea what I really wanted to do other than write. I couldn’t discern which job sounded better until the last publisher just plain told me. I stumbled through my first year until I managed to trust that all those empty inches would somehow be filled by Deadline Day. Less than four years later I drifted into something else.