I’ve written a lot of different material that covers a broad spectrum of categories, during my career. I’ve dabbled in everything from fiction to non-fiction, including ghost writing a chapter on China’s copper usage and how it impacted the stock market for a book on market analysis, which, by the way, was way outside my area of expertise, and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. But I pulled through, as I usually do on writing projects because I’m pretty decent. Not great, but decent. What I’m not decent at is writing jokes.
I started writing when I was sixteen, and after 21 years in the craft, I’ve only written two jokes. One was about a funeral procession, ambulance, fire truck, and police car all arriving at a 4-way, stop-sign controlled intersection at the same time and no one knowing who had the right of way. It was characterized in a comic strip and published in the Sun Day a few years ago. The other one I wrote was written on a piece of scrap paper and published on the bulletin board in my office, where it stayed until the paper yellowed and grew frail. Here it is for the first time in print:
You know you’re getting old when your age in degrees means it’s getting hot outside.
Not the funniest joke in the book, but I bet the corner of your mouth hitched slightly.
Most Sun Day readers are just the right temperature for me, 60 to 75. Nice, comfortable weather you can relax in and enjoy the outdoors. We’ll call it the Goldilocks climate of life. Just right.
At 36, I am, unfortunately, in that weird condition where you don’t know exactly what to make of it. Thirty-six is too warm for skiing and too cold for much anything else. When the sky opens up, it either rains or snows, sleets, or does all of it and leaves a slippery ground in its wake. Mostly, 36 is a temperature where people open their doors, and say, “Yep, it’s cold out there. Let’s stay inside today.” It’s a temperature that lets people know winter is coming, or maybe if you’re optimistic, spring is on the way. I’m not optimistic by nature.
This edition of the Sun Day marks its fifth anniversary edition, and so far as my joke goes, it’s cold. Really cold.
Luckily, newspapers don’t age like people. News dies fast. Each edition’s life cycle is a mere two weeks. May flies live longer. So after five years, the Sun Day is practically ancient and hardly considered young. In my opinion, the Sun Day is just entering the prime of its life, some miles behind, many more to go, riding on a smooth road of solid readership. Dare I even say, managing the Sun Day for the past five years has been quite a ride…mostly in an ailing 1999 Plymouth Voyager, but hey, it’s still going!
Not to switch themes, but when I look into the rearview mirror, I see a long ribbon of stories unfolding behind the Sun Day. Through 140 editions, three companion editions (and a recent half edition, which you should have received last week), we’ve printed approximately 840 stories, nearly 1,000 columns, about 500 photographs, an unknown number of submissions, and about 5,600 ads—all chronicling the goings on of Sun City life and the surrounding area. Although these numbers are nowhere near the mega-highways that major papers have produced, it’s no small feat, especially for a guy five years ago, who hit a brick wall at his current employer and was puttering along with the needle on E.
It wasn’t until I started the Sun Day that my life got a little gas. And it definitely wasn’t until its staff and contributors and most importantly you readers gave it zoom.
Each anniversary or milestone edition of the Sun Day I’ve paid major thanks for making the Sun Day successful, but I don’t ever think I said a personal thank you for the Sun Day’s success’ impact on my life. As I always have, I insist the Sun Day is not about me but about you, you’re the ones with the stories in it, after all, and other than what you read in Happy Trails, you see not word one about me. But after 5 years, it’s time I extend a very personal thank you for bringing motion to my life on a personal level. There are people behind this paper, some of which solely depend on its success, and we are grateful for your constant readership and support.
Thank you for providing us a road to travel through sunny and warm weather. Here’s to more miles to come.
