We bought our house after seeing a classified ad in the newspaper, and I realize how quaint that is

We have been in our house for 21 years. That feels like a long time to me, but I know many people who have lived in their homes for 30 or 40 or more years.

In some cases I think these folks simply found their perfect houses and have stayed ever since. In other cases, I think it's reverse inertia at work: It's such a hassle to move that many simply choose never to do it again.

For us, it was a matter of finding a big enough home to hold our young family while staying within the comfortable confines of Wickliffe, Ohio, the city where my wife and I have lived our whole lives.

I was thinking back recently to when we were looking to move out of our first home on East 300th Street.  I remembered that Terry found our current house not on the Internet (though she could have), but rather through a classified ad in The News-Herald, our local daily newspaper.

An ad in a print newspaper. Talk about a different era.

This memory is timely because it was 36 years ago tomorrow (August 22, 1988) that I started working at The News-Herald as an 18-year-old sports agate clerk. I took game scores and stats over the phone and soon began writing articles with my byline on them, which was always a thrill.

More importantly, it was a time when The News-Herald and community newspapers in general played a much more prominent role in society than they do now. Most households had a subscription to at least one paper in the late 1980s, so I could always be sure that whatever I wrote would attract plenty of eyeballs.

Newspapers retained their position of influence for several years after that, at least as long as 2003 when the previous owners of our house, John & Lisa, saw fit to advertise in the classified ads.

Nowadays, of course, that simply wouldn't happen. Classified ads aren't really much of a thing anymore, and even if they were, no one would think to look there for a house anyway.

The comedian John Mulaney said, "I was once on the telephone with Blockbuster Video, which is a very old sentence."

I feel you, John. I can say in all honesty, "One time I bought a house that was advertised in a newspaper, which is a very, VERY old sentence."

We grew up in such an analog world that the digital one can be a little jarring

One of my favorite subplots in the Harry Potter series is Arthur Weasley's continuous fascination with muggles (non-wizards). He is forever impressed by how they manage to live their lives without the use of magic.

I feel much the same way about the 1980s and 90s. How, I sometimes wonder, did we ever get by without today's technology?

The answer, of course, is that we did just fine. But there's no denying you and I have lived through – and indeed are still living through – a digital revolution that has transformed nearly everything. What we're experiencing is historic in its speed and scope.

I often think about the everyday gizmos and gadgets with which I grew up that are all but obsolete now. Cassettes, for example, are laughably ancient. So are paper maps. And the clock you kept on your nightstand with the little flippy numbers. And Rolodexes.

None of these things has completely disappeared, but they have mostly been replaced by faster digital alternatives. Whereas the old stuff was solid and physical, now so much is virtual. It "exists," but not in the same tangible way typewriters and landline phones and VHS tapes used to exist.

I often think about the early part of my career when I worked in newspapers. I was a print journalist right up until the end of the era in which editors would draw page layouts in pencil on pieces of paper. They would give these sketches to back shop folks, who would then take long strips of typeset text, run them through a hot wax machine, cut them into strips, and physically paste them onto large sheets of cardboard to match the editor's vision of the page.

That's how your daily newspaper was created. It seems slow and crude, but it worked.

Just as I got out of the business, it all went digital. I can't imagine how much faster and efficient it is now.

Time marches on and things change, of course, but the speed of that change in recent decades has been breathtaking. Day-to-day existence now is in many ways nothing at all like it was just 30 years ago.

To the point that I think our generation's experience of rapid technological change is unique in history.

I'm all for progress, but I do wish it would slow down every once in a while and let me catch my breath.

30 years ago, my pregnant wife delivered newspapers with me (the paper for which I was also a sports writer)

Terry looked like this and still helped me deliver papers. What a trooper.
(Photo used with the express permission of Mrs. Terry Tennant.)

It was 1993. Terry and I had been married a little more than a year and she was pregnant with our first child, Elissa. I was about a year and a half into my stint as a full-time sports writer for The News-Herald in Willoughby, Ohio, and generally loving life.

I've written before about my time at the N-H. I started as a sports clerk a week before college, left for a year to join the Cleveland Plain Dealer while still at John Carroll, then came back full time in November 1991 while still six months away from earning my degree.

My tenure at the paper spanned a combined eight years, during which I covered a wide range of high school, college and professional sports. What's more, while the paper itself was one of the largest suburban dailies in Ohio, the staff was relatively small and we all had to do double duty.

That meant nights when I would travel somewhere to cover a game, come back to the office and write my story, then grab a few pages from the next day's sports section to lay out before our midnight deadline.

It was an exhilarating way to make a living for a young newlywed, coming as it did at a time when people actually read newspapers.

The job didn't exactly pay well, so I looked for extra sources of income wherever I could. One of my side jobs was as a carrier for the same newspaper where I was employed.

For eight months or so, I delivered The News-Herald every day to residents of East 300th Street, Lincoln Road and Arlington Circle in my hometown of Wickliffe (we lived on 300th, so it was all very convenient).

On Sundays, I would load the extra-large papers into our car and Terry would drive the route while I walked and delivered to each of my customers. She would get out and deliver papers herself to the few businesses on my route, including the Wickliffe Public Library.

I will never forget the image of a very, very pregnant Terry in the middle of winter 1994 trudging through the snow in her long parka to leave a paper near the library's front door.

I will also never forget Mrs. Piacente, one of my customers on Lincoln. Many Saturday mornings she would greet me just as I was opening her side door to deposit a paper and ask me what articles I had in that day's edition. She also asked me to do a few odd jobs for her, including changing the batteries in her kitchen clock and knocking icicles off her gutters.

I was always happy to help, but the whole thing made me laugh. It was full-service journalism and then some! (And hey, she tipped well.)

Elissa was born in March 1994, and a month later The News-Herald switched from afternoon to morning delivery. That was when I had to give up the route.

I stayed with the paper another 2 1/2 years as a sports writer before moving on to technical writing and eventually corporate communications.

But if there was ever a time when I built a work ethic, it was back in those days when I would work in the newsroom until 2 in the morning, go home and sleep, and be up again mid-morning the next day to deliver my papers.

To be young again.

When we used to take little league scores over the phone for the next day's newspaper

I often bring this up on Aug. 22nd because it was such an important milestone in my career progression, but today is the 33rd anniversary of my first day working in The News-Herald sports department.

The News-Herald is our local daily newspaper. I was 18 years old the first time I walked into the newsroom in what is now referred to as "the old building" on Mentor Avenue. In 1994, when I had become a full-time staff sports writer, we moved into newer digs a little further down the street and behind the old site.

There was a certain smell that hit you the minute you walked into that place, and I will never forget the first time I experienced it. I couldn't nail down exactly what it was, but I always assumed it was the smell of ink and whatever chemicals they used to print the paper every night.

To me, it was a smell that meant I got to play some part in putting out that paper. And it was exciting.

I started at The News-Herald as a college freshman sports agate clerk, taking the results of local community and scholastic sporting events over the phone and typing them into the computer system for inclusion in the following day's sports section. We also wrote up little briefs/articles.

Later I began covering games and writing columns under my very own byline. I never, ever got tired of seeing my name in that paper, even though it had become somewhat old hat after a year or two.

All told, I spent eight years in the newspaper business before moving on to technical writing and later corporate communications. Those were formative years for me in a number of ways. I developed and honed skills that continue to serve me well even now.

Until recently, I had three print newspapers delivered to my house every day. But now I've stopped home print delivery in favor of digital subscriptions, as that's the way the industry is going anyway. Print isn't quite yet dead, but it does have one foot in the proverbial grave.

Maybe the thrill is the same for young people doing online journalism today, but I can't believe there's anything really like the feeling of writing a story, editing copy, and laying out pages for a paper that comes out hours later and is distributed to thousands of your neighbors.

It was exhilarating. It really was.

And now we've all moved on. Progress, I suppose.

But 33 years ago, it was all about that newsprint. I loved every minute I was a part of the process.

I read the obits now. Every day, in fact.

I've heard it said you know you're old when you start reading the death notices in the paper every day.

This assumes you read a paper, which I do but most people don't. And it assumes you're old enough to have friends and classmates passing away in significant numbers.

I am not yet of that age, but I do regularly spot the parents and grandparents of my peers on the obituary page. I'm also just generally fascinated with the lives people have led as summed up in those few paragraphs.

The creatively written obits are my favorites. Oftentimes these are inspirational and true celebrations of the person's life.

When I wrote my mom's obit last summer, I did it in a pretty straightforward way. In retrospect, I wonder if I should have put in a little more effort to let people know how incredible she was.

On the other hand, the people close to her already knew that, so maybe that's all that mattered.

I also read the death notices because, well, statistically speaking, I am probably on the downhill side of life. Very high up near the peak, hopefully, but still...I've likely lived more years already than I'm likely to live still.

So in the back of your mind are all of the things you want to make sure you do while you still can. I may have 40 or even 50 years still to do these things. Or I might have 5. Or I could have a single day.

You don't know in advance your own expiration date, and that's a good thing as long as you live your life in the most satisfying way possible, whatever that is for you.

So yeah, I read the obituaries. And no, I'm not 85 years old. Yet.

Sooner than I think, though, I will be.

The eldest child who can't possibly be as old as the calendar says she is

 

There are many things that date this photo, including:

• The fact that I have all black hair
• My stone-washed jeans
• I'm reading a print newspaper (OK, I still do that every day)
• The little girl I'm holding—somehow, inexplicably—is suddenly 27 years old 

That little girl is our oldest daughter Elissa, who is celebrating a birthday today. It is always a milestone when your oldest turns a new age because, you know, this is new territory for her/him and for you. Neither of you has been here before, so it's always a new adventure.

My in-laws, Tom and Judy, liked to tell the story about Elissa's birth. They were in the waiting room at the hospital when I came bursting out, still wearing my scrubs, and said (seemingly all in one breath), "It's a girl! She's beautiful!"

And she was beautiful. She is beautiful.

She has been my buddy since long before she can remember. For a couple of years when Terry worked days and I worked nights, I took care of Elissa all day long. We went everywhere together. We had scheduled feedings and nap times (hers, not mine, unfortunately). We watched countless episodes of Barney and Winnie the Pooh.

Then, as children are wont to do, she grew up. It has always been a bittersweet thing to me that my children have grown. Heavier on the "sweet" than the "bitter," of course, but still...

Today I wish nothing but the most awesome of birthdays to the pretty little girl who made me a daddy and later went on to become a pretty grown-up girl. She is dynamic, hilarious, talented, and so incredibly full of life. I'm not sure I ever had the spark she does.

And today she's another year older. Happy birthday, Lissy. I still think of you when I read the paper sometimes (that's a true story).

There was a time when Saturday night meant Love Boat, Fantasy Island, and folding newspapers

I am going to sound very old when I describe what most of my Saturday nights were like in the very early 80s.

More often than not, I spent those Saturday evenings:

• Watching "The Love Boat" at 9pm on ABC
• Watching "Fantasy Island" at 10pm, also on ABC
• Stuffing/folder newspapers to deliver the following morning

All three of these things are part of the distant past. The two shows, which were the very essence of cheesy late 70s/early 80s television, have long since been cancelled. And of course, almost no one reads print newspapers anymore.

Except for me, of course. We have covered this before. I still read print newspapers every day. Each morning I go outside to retrieve that day's copies of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Wall Street Journal, and the local News-Herald from the bottom of my driveway. I find it difficult to start my day without having read those papers while eating my never-changing breakfast of oatmeal, a banana, and coffee.

Back in 1981 when I delivered The News-Herald, there were a lot more people like me. You got the paper and you watched the evening news. That's how you knew what was going on in the world.

In those days, the Sunday paper was so large that they would deliver sections of it to newspaper carriers earlier in the week. One section would arrive at your house on Thursdays, I think? And more of it would come on Saturday.

The actual timely news parts of the Sunday paper would of course arrive on Sunday morning for delivery that day.

So, to prepare for the chore of delivering big, heavy Sunday papers, I would take the sections that had already been delivered to me by Saturday night and combine them into one, easier-to-handle chunk. Then on Sunday morning it was easier to combine that with the news and sports sections that would be dropped off by the big orange News-Herald truck that stopped at our house every day.

Folding papers was a tedious chore, so while doing it I would watch whatever little vignettes were to be offered up on The Love Boat and Fantasy Island. These shows required little in the way of intellectual engagement, which was good considering I was 11 or 12 years old at the time.

More than anything, I just thought it was funny when little Tattoo would go up in that bell tower and yell, "Da plane! Da plane!"

We were simple folk in the early 80s, you understand.

The return of five random thoughts on a Friday

(1) When my job went bye-bye, so did my newspaper subscription. Consequently, I have no idea what "sequestration" is and why everyone's talking about it. I do so much else online that you'd think getting my news there would be natural, but I can't get out of the newspaper paradigm. I really like holding sheets of newsprint in front of me in the morning. Eventually I'll adapt. But for now, I'm an old fogey.

(2) I just looked out my window and saw Hound Dog Guy and Relentlessly Waddling Lady pass by. These two (whom I assume are husband and wife) often walk up and down my street, and I used to see them frequently on my morning runs. Not anymore, though, as I run earlier in the day and finish long before they're out. I've been running regularly for about 15 years, and in that time I've given names to many of the neighborhood characters I encounter. I used to run past Cologne Guy in the morning, and the smell of his English Leather was actually quite pleasant. There was also Ridiculously Tan Woman and May or May Not Be Psychotic Guy. Hound Dog Guy, incidentally, derives his name from the fact that he walks his dog a lot, and at one point we thought it was a hound dog. It's not, as it turns out, but the name persists.

(3) I have yet to hear of: (a) a man who has an account on Pinterest, and (b) anything on Pinterest that would be remotely appealing to a man. I'm sure there are guys on there and they "pin" things that aren't related to crafts or fashion or whatever. It's just that I don't know any of them.

(4) The mention of English Leather above reminded me that I haven't had any cologne or after shave of my own in at least two years. I started wearing fragrances in high school, when Terry bought me a bottle of Polo. I liked Polo. I also liked Drakkar Noir, which was popular in the 90s, but Terry didn't, so I didn't wear it. When you're a married man or otherwise spoken for by a woman, your choice of manly aromas is not your own. This may or may not be a good thing.

(5) When I was in elementary school, I used to come home every day for lunch. My mom would have my food waiting for me and serve it to me on a TV tray. I would say thank you, but I don't think I ever really appreciated how awesome that was until...well, until just now when I typed it out. So I'll say it again, and this time it's heartfelt: Thanks, Mom. Those lunches were great.

Life among the ink-stained wretches

You may have noticed on the right side of your screen that the blog is now carrying headlines from the News-Herald, our local newspaper in Willoughby, Ohio.

This was the small tradeoff required to have "They Still Call Me Daddy" listed in the Herald's Community Media Lab. Being the latest addition to the Media Lab, the blog is listed waaaaaay down at the bottom of the page, but hopefully it will bring in a few new readers from around Northeast Ohio and parts unknown.

As many of you know, I spent the first part of my career as a sports writer for the News-Herald. I started there in the summer of 1988 as what was known as a sports agate clerk, taking little league and high school sports scores over the phone, writing up small articles on community athletic events, etc. It was a great job for an 18-year-old sports fanatic, and I loved being around the newsroom every night.

Because it was a night job, of course. Sports tend to happen at night, so sports writers tend to work at night. By the time I was a sophomore in college, I was working there a solid 30-40 hours every week, occasionally doing the 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. shift. The News-Herald was an afternoon paper at the time, and the presses didn't roll until 3 in the morning or so. A couple of us would always work late to make sure the sports section articles and photos looked good and didn't contain any obvious swear words.

TRUE STORY: One time a classified ad ran in the News-Herald for a house that someone had put up for sale. The ad described every feature of the house, including a "party-sized deck." Only the ad didn't say "deck." Instead it had a word that's very similar to "deck" and is in fact only one vowel away from "deck" and which made the ad absolutely hilarious. I'm going to let you figure out the word AND perhaps come to some understanding of what exactly constitutes "party-sized" in this context.

Anyway, I left the News-Herald for nine months during my junior year at John Carroll to take a similar position at the Plain Dealer, the large Cleveland daily paper, working out of the Lake & Geauga County Bureau. That was a good experience, but as I neared my college graduation, knowing I was going to get married, I realized I needed a full-time job with benefits. And while the 32-hour-a-week Plain Dealer position was fun, it didn't include insurance and the like.

So the News-Herald graciously accepted me back on a full-time basis, and I worked there for five happy years from 1991 through 1996. I got to cover a lot of sports in that time, mostly high school but with doses of college and professional assignments to keep me happy.

ANOTHER TRUE STORY: One time I was standing in the Cleveland Indians' clubhouse waiting to do a player interview, and third baseman Carlos Baerga walked by me carrying a plate of food from the sumptuous clubhouse buffet. With his mouth full and still chewing, Baerga looked at me and said, "You want some chicken? It's good!" I politely declined, but I love the fact that it even happened (plus, I don't think media members were technically supposed to have any of the food anyway).

I figured I was set. I would work in newspapers the rest of my life, eventually taking over a pro sports beat and traveling with the team I covered. That was my professional goal and it seemed a worthy one.

But three things got in the way:

(1) Terry and I started having kids. Kids cost money. Sports writers don't make a lot of money.

(2) Terry and I started having kids. As a parent, I wanted to spend time with my kids. Looking ahead to the time when they would be in school, I realized that working night hours would not be conducive to attending their sporting events and concerts, helping them with evening homework, etc.

(3) Newspapers and their budgets began shrinking, and beat writers no longer traveled to all of the road games, thus taking some of the luster away from what I had considered to be among the most glamorous professions.

And so I moved into other types of writing and journalism, and eventually got into marketing and PR. I still miss the newspaper life from time to time, but I know I made the right choice.

As I've mentioned previously, I also still read a newspaper every day. I like to think of it as my small contribution to a rapidly evolving (some would say "dying") industry. But honestly? I also really appreciate being in my bed at 3 a.m. these days instead of in a newsroom.

Yes, I still read a newspaper every day

Every morning I follow essentially the same routine: I get up, I feed the cats, I go downstairs and clean out their litter boxes, and then I go outside and get the newspaper. Only one of these things truly makes me happy.

The getting up part I don't mind but I don't love. The cat-related jobs are necessary evils, the kind of thing you do because over the years it has become your job and there's no real need to change. But the newspaper...that's one of the highlights of my day.

Seriously. I love getting the paper. I love taking it out of the bag and scanning the headlines. No matter that the news may already be 12 hours old (or more) and I could have found the same information online soon after it happened. The point is, there's nothing like holding and reading a real newspaper.

I understand that I am a dying breed. Relatively few people read physical, hard-copy newspapers anymore. And in no way am I a technophobe. I still get a lot of my news online. But you have to understand, I started my career in a newsroom. Night after night, I got the thrill of producing a publication that would be distributed to thousands of people within hours after we finished it. It was a rush.

Of course this was back in the 80's and 90's. Even then people were predicting the downfall of print journalism,  but I wanted to make a career out of being a sports writer. I loved covering a game, writing about it, and knowing that my work was being read at breakfast tables around the area the next morning. Or would end up being pasted into some kid's high school scrapbook. That was a natural high.

In time, I realized that a career in journalism wasn't to be. I had a growing family to support, and honestly, you ain't gonna get rich as a newspaper reporter. So I eventually moved into marketing and public relations, a move a lot of reporters make when they decide it's time to get a "real" job, for whatever reason.

But I hang on to my newspaper addiction. The paper shows up every day, rain or shine, in front of my house, and I read it cover to cover. I still read the comics and do the little word puzzle that runs next to them when I have time. I scour the sports pages, especially, but I also read every story in the metro and business sections to make sure I haven't missed anything work-related.

There will come a time in the not-so-distant future when newspapers will go away, and I'm actually OK with that. I know it's unstoppable, and progress is progress. But I think back to the days when I delivered the Lake County News-Herald and practically every house along my route got the paper at least on Sundays, if not every day.

Nowadays, the paper is delivered by adults with huge routes and hundreds of customers. The routes HAVE to be huge, because the vast majority of houses don't subscribe any more. I used to ride my bike and place the paper inside people's front doors or in their side milk chutes. Now it's thrown from moving cars, though sometimes (as in our case) you can ask for a delivery tube to be placed in front of your house and the paper will be stuffed in there every morning.

This is the second nostalgic blog post in two days, if you're keeping track. I guess that's another sign of advancing age -- when you start talking about the "old" days. But I'll tell you one thing: If reading a newspaper is a sign of old fogey-hood, you can book my ticket on the Geezer Bus today.