Now & Then: Our accidental writer explains how it started

I’m an accidental writer. In fact, it was a want ad that kick-started my career.

I came home from work one day 44 years ago and Ginny said, “You need to apply for this” and pushed the newspaper into my hands. The daily was wanting someone to write a weekly news column.

There was a reason that the want ad appealed to me. But let me go back about 20 years when I was in high school.

I clearly remember coming home from basketball practice and picking up the daily paper. I read a piece by Henry King, the long-time columnist whose oldest child was a schoolmate of mine.

I finished the column and thought to myself, “I could do this.” 

But I put those thoughts aside as I began planning what I wanted to do after high school.

College was an answer but what to major in was beyond me. I knew I enjoyed being outside and considered something like forest ranger.

So, I chose to major in Botany, forgetting that my worst subjects in high school were biology and chemistry. I was reminded of that when my final grade came in.

With my confidence at a low ebb, I looked for a major that was more down my alley while not taxing my insufficient academic capacities.

Thus, I switched my major to Recreation Administration. I could see myself working in parks and recreation. After all, I spent most of my spare time in the college gym.

Recreation Administration was a section of the Sociology Department, so that meant classes in sociology of the family, criminal sociology and educational sociology. There were also allied courses that were required, such as history and economics and English.

Another allied course came down to two choices in the School of Journalism: news writing or feature writing. I wound up in feature writing.

In hindsight, if I had truly looked at my aptitudes, 

I would have given serious thought to journalism as a major. I may have discovered that printer’s ink was coursing through my veins.

Anyway, I entered Dr. Joseph Morrison’s class in the fall of 1967. He was a no-nonsense instructor who once chastened me for working a crossword puzzle during his lecture.

But Dr. Morrison was a good teacher who, after my first feeble attempt at a feature story, drilled into my head how to write. I learned to find stories, to interview people while taking notes, and to turn those notes into feature stories, one every week during the semester.

Meanwhile, I changed my major again, to education. It was common knowledge that teachers were deferred from the draft and few of us college boys wanted to go to Vietnam.

After four years, with no degree, I was able to turn my broad education into rewarding jobs like roofing, school maintenance, construction, warehousing and, finally, furniture manufacturing.

Then Ginny showed me the want ad for a writer. 

I applied and found myself in the office of the editor-in-chief. He said I was far and away the most experienced applicant and gave me the job.

Well, not really a job. I was to find information in the community to put in a weekly column. So I was talking, after work hours, to civic groups, Scout troops, churches and others to put items in my news column. Occasionally, I would come up with a feature to add.

After a few years I grew tired of the news column and asked to just do feature stories. Soon the editors were asking me to cover news stories, even government meetings.

But my fulltime job was still in furniture. I began writing features for a weekly, The Randolph Guide, and later began doing my column. 

Then in August 1998, I took the plunge — and a big pay cut — and went fulltime at The Guide. For the first time in my life, I was doing a job I really loved.

Since then, there have been ups and downs and a few months when I was out of a job, but I’ve continued to write, thanks to Ray Criscoe and the Randolph Hub.

What’s ironic is this: If the feature writing class was all I took in college, I would still be doing what I do today. 

Larry Penkava is a writer for Randolph Hub. 

Contact: 336-302-2189, larrypenkava@gmail.com