The Old Newspaper Building
It was sad, though also heartening, to tour the old Missourian building, my first workplace after college. To see it empty, stripped of its newspaper-creating internals, but also to experience a homecoming.
The typesetting machines, the typewriters surrounded by stacks of paper, the giant cameras, the massive printing press in its enormous room — all removed.
The swarm of workers, the clatter and chatter, the sudden rush of a reporter running to capture some news before it got away — all absent.
The feeling of a big show being put together, opening night just ahead — gone.
It was now just a big, odd, dimly lit, ramshackle building. Beauty had never been its strong suit. Its greatness had been its enormity, the people around every corner, the thing that got made there.
The new owners were gutting it, preparing it for new uses. Maybe uses just as good and central to the town — maybe better. The owner leading me through it described possibility after possibility, potential tenant after potential tenant. Parts of it were already getting new interior walls and paint.
But the old interior was being erased. That place’s story of itself was being untold.
That’s the sad part. Where’s the heartening part?
I went into what was once the newspaper’s front office, a big room with a long countertop and plate-glass windows. People used to stand along that counter buying ad space, or the latest edition, or several copies of last week’s paper for some photo or story worth saving.
The particular friendly faces I remembered weren’t there. No one to greet me with, “Hey, Tom, you’re back! How long’s it been?”
How long? About 35 years. I’d been a reporter at the paper in the mid 1980s, my first job after college. I’d been back several times to say hello to old colleagues and to say thank you again to the man who gave me that job, Bill Miller Sr.
Now all those people had left the building. I was back there alone, no one to ask, “Remember that time we…”
How strange that I, the one who left early, was now the last of us there.
That’s it for the sad part.
The new proprietors were using that long, memorable countertop in a new way. It’s where I used to lean on my elbows to chat with the office ladies. Now I leaned there to order a drink and chat with the young servers.
They were bright and cheerful, smiling when I told them, “I used to work here, back in…”
They told me they loved that building and the exciting future it had.
Then I went outside for the main event. I’d left my house that dark evening just to visit The Missourian, but everyone else was there for a parade.
Such a variety of sound and music! So much hello-ing and laughter! So much slightly silly hurrah!
I had my audio recorder in my pocket, as I often do now, and soon I was capturing the music and voices for — well, for whatever. For the fun of it.
Then I got my phone out to capture it visually.
Then I was trotting between floats to get an angle from the other side of the street — a reporter again! And although it might not have looked this way to anyone else, I felt 28 again, felt like I had the same leg speed, the same multitasking eyes.
When I was reporting, this was normal for me, this rushing about intently while something civic and interesting was happening. I covered so many parades, fairs, school events, meetings, public works projects, random candid moments of the community.
I felt like I’d been called back to duty. The Missourian building had done it. Maybe with some lingering smell of ink. Maybe just the memories.
I was feeling the fun again — of being in my 20s, of being a reporter in my hometown, of capturing a moment someone might want multiple copies of, for the grandkids.
A parade at night is a parade with something special added. So is a place when it’s a place full of heartening memories. There I was, after a 30-year orbit away from Missouri, back on the local streets again, snapping photos again, doing the small-town newspaper job again.
That was the homecoming part. Getting back to a time of my life I thought was over.
In the background of many of the photos, dim but distinct, like an approving ghost, was the Missourian building — now “the old Missourian building” — still looking like itself.