Okay, last week we celebrated 48 years of relatively happy married life.
Try to imagine that not only have my wife, Patti, and I been married for so long, but that for most of our married lives we have worked side by side, seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
In our home office, a 15′ x 15′ second bedroom, our desks are about 6′ apart. We breathe the same air, hear every word and breath, along with snide remarks (some dog farts that seem to permeate the entire room) and the occasional loud disagreement.
Our three dogs spend most of their time underfoot or at the desk, and the cats wander in and out of our office throughout the day. If I leave my spot for a while, Janie, the smaller female cat, occupies my chair until I physically move her to another chair in the office.
We rarely play music in the office and often leave the TV news channels on in adjoining rooms, either as background noise or out of interest in what is reaching our news brain.
There are three phones in the small office. When the phone alerts us to incoming calls, I casually look up, call out “Patti is calling,” and go back to work to do the day’s work. Almost all calls are classified as “Patti calls.”
Yes, we have a phone in the living room for times when we relax, but Mrs. Patti likes to limit calls outside of that time to 8-9pm at the latest.
Yes, we receive calls outside of working hours on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and the usual bank holidays. You/We are reluctant to answer most of them.
Thursday is a tough day as we prepare for the deadline on Friday.
Time passes quickly as last minute stories crop up, last minute interviews are completed and legal notices and obituaries seem to pour in. We are bombarded with last minute begging to get in
“another message”.
I have to finish my pages by 11am, but I’m often busy with urgent calls and stories. By midday, my wife Patti is panicking because the 3:15pm print deadline is approaching.
We have a very tight time frame because the printer in Albany needs to receive our electronically forwarded pages in order to print them. They, in turn, have a very tight time frame if the Wayne County Times is in the press. There is simply no time to miss a deadline.
Newspapers are printed in over an hour, and letter-labeling teams take the time to label and sort the issues by zip code and city. The bundles are packaged and sent to the loading docks for pickup and delivery by truck.
Normally the truck pulls into our driveway at 3am, the papers are unloaded and the mail heads to the post office in Newark. This must be completed so that the Just can then be shipped to the Rochester Distribution Center in Henrietta before being shipped (hopefully) back to Wayne County and to numerous destinations throughout the state and country.
We used to arrange for Wayne and several post offices in Monroe County to be delivered directly from us, but the U.S. Postal Service, in all its wisdom, decided they could do it more efficiently. Like clockwork, our mail carriers head out to deliver newsstands at 6:45 a.m. and usually complete the process by 10:45 a.m. on Saturday.
The other day I heard a commercial from Channel 8 WROC boasting that they have been in the broadcasting business for 75 years. I thought to myself, man, we are in the Just I spent about half of that time publishing. Time passes way too quickly in a weird way.
I’m writing this column on Monday, days earlier than usual. I guess I just want time to pass a little easier this week.
By the way, as time passes, I’ve decided it’s time to give more work to Devin and his wife Christy. In two weeks, the pages will be divided into sections and he will be responsible for creating more pages and content.
Yes, I’m getting old. For now, I’ll keep this column, Law & Order, and several other sites.
We’ve also added some new comics and an “Ask the Vet” section to the Pets & Animals page. Check them out.
