Fish, father, mentor, editor
Someone asked me recently how long I’ve been writing a newspaper column and the truth is I really don’t know. I gauge things based on the age of my children or movies I’ve seen. Example: if someone asked me what year “Rain Main” came out with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise I would say, “Well let me think. I know I saw that a couple of years after I graduated college but before I had kids. College graduation was 1985 and my oldest was born in 1993 so Rain Man would probably be 1988 or 89.” Sure enough Raymond was watching Judge Wapner on the People’s Court in 1988. So it is when people ask me about writing this column, I tell them it was a couple of years after my father died but before my son was born in 1996, so my best guess would be around 22 years. As I sit here typing it occurs to me that I rarely ever write about how this column came to be.
Not long after I got out of college I got the itch to write something other than term papers. I loved fiction but there is little market for short stories in the Capital Region so I sought out interesting stuff from my own life to write about that others might get a chuckle out of. Then I remembered the time I saved a gold fish from my brother’s snapping turtle tank (he used them as feeder fish) and placed it in my bedroom aquarium. Well the fish turned out to be a baby carp and grew so big he started eating my little fish. I didn’t want to murder him, even though he had it coming, and couldn’t send him back to the hungry turtles so I took him to the pond that sits at the bottom of Campbell Avenue in Troy behind what was once a store called Barna’s.
I took the fish I’d rescued and set him free in the pond only to learn to my horror that the water had a current which carried the hapless fish over the ferocious waterfall to his death in the sharp rocks below. So much for saving him. In my defense how was I supposed to know the fish couldn’t swim? I’m telling you this story because way back then I wrote it down as a funny cautionary tale and submitted it to the Catholic newspaper The Evangelist. They liked it and printed it and even sent me a check for $25. I was happy just to see them print it and would have given it to them for free but hey, money is money.
Little did I know but I man named Doug de Lisle, a popular columnist for the Troy Record, saw the fish story and liked it. A short time after that my father died unexpectedly and in my grief I sat down and wrote a tribute to him. I sent it in to the Times Union with a note that said, “With Father’s Day coming I thought some people might relate to this.” It talked about how an ordinary man can have such an extraordinary impact on the world. A few weeks later they called me and told me they were running it in the Sunday edition, right before Father’s Day. Turns out Doug de Lisle saw that one too along with former Record editor Lisa Lewis and she liked it as well.
That’s when my phone ran and Doug and Lisa asked me if I’d meet them at Manory’s restaurant downtown Troy for a chat and an offer. They had an opening for a column on Wednesdays and wanted to know if I would give it a try? I was terrified and told them I couldn’t come up with 52 ideas a year to write about but they assured me everyone feels that way and I’d surprise myself. They were right of course and I’ve been writing the column ever since.
It’s at this moment I have to point out a truth that rarely gets said out loud. No one, and I mean no one, becomes a success at anything unless someone early on fills them with the confidence they lack. Whether you are Pablo Picasso or Michael Jordan very early on you stare at the abyss and think, “What the hell am i thinking? I can’t do this. Can I?” Then someone puts a hand on your shoulder and says, “You bet your boots you can.” For me that was Doug and Lisa. Doug died a few years back and I never got to formally thank him for giving me this chance. I’ll have to go on believing that just seeing me mature as a writer gave him joy and some measure of pride because he started this snowball rolling down the hill all those years ago. Lisa is very much alive and I’ve told her on several occasions how grateful I am.
So now you know. This column exists because of a fish, a father, a mentor and an editor. Take one out of the equation and you get no column. Go figure.