A little tin press

A question you hear a lot when you’re a child is, “What do you want be when you grow up?”

For me, the choice was self-evident. I wanted to be a newspaper reporter. When I was about 10 or 11, I bought a toy press from a store in my hometown that sold gifts, cards and toys.

The printing press was made of tin and had little rubber type that you could put on a wheel and turn it to make an impression on a piece of paper. It was time consuming work and based on technology that even in the 1970s was out of date. However, that little press did what it was intended to do – it sparked my imagination.

By the time I was a freshman in high school, I was writing up sports stories about our high school teams for our hometown newspaper, the Roundup Record-Tribune. My senior year in high school, I was the editor of our school newspaper and had chosen the University of Montana as my college because they offered degrees in journalism.

A high school guidance counselor encouraged me to start college during the summer after my graduation. He pointed out that my high school had less than 200 students but the University would have about 8,000 students. He didn’t want me to have culture shock and drop out, so suggested that I attend summer classes – mostly with teachers who were coming back for continuing education courses – and I would be better prepared for classes in the fall.

This was a grand idea. Missoula, Montana, in the summer is a treasure trove of activities and I soon was involved in many of them including a Sunday morning softball game on campus. It turned out many of the players would later be my professors, so it was a good way to meet them.

After my freshmen year, I again went to college in the summer, which allowed me to graduate from journalism school in three years.

My first job after college was as a reporter in Beach, North Dakota. I soon discovered that a month actually working for a newspaper taught me more than college did in three years. I was covering city government, writing engagement announcements and even taking pictures of automobiles for newspaper advertising. The one thing I wasn’t doing was writing sports. So after six months, I decided to quit, go live with my parents and search for a job as a sports reporter.

My goal was to work for the Billings Gazette. But alas, after a two-month search, I landed a job in Alliance, Nebraska, writing sports. This was a short-lived job. After two-days, I quit. I found that the publisher had lied to me about my wages and benefits package so I re-packed everything I owned into my car and drove back to Roundup to live with my parents again.

A month later, I got a call from a newspaper publisher in Baker, Montana, who wanted me to be the editor of his newspaper. The editor of the newspaper in Roundup had put a good word in for me, which resulted in this job offer.

I snapped it up and moved to Baker, a town about the size of Roundup and one that had many of the same interests and both revolved around the oil exploration and production businesses. Still I wasn’t writing sports, but I found living in Baker very comfortable. There were lots of young people because of the oil boom and I liked to party with all of them.

Two years later, I was offered a job with Mid-Rivers Telephone Cooperative in Glendive. This marked a big change in my career because I left newspapers and moved into public relations. However, reflecting on the change, I really didn’t realize it at the time. I actually applied for the job in the first place because I thought it might bring some opportunities for my Baker newspaper to do some printing jobs for the cooperative.

Luck was smiling on me, because my neighbor in Baker worked for the telephone cooperative. And while my neighbor had a reputation for hating everyone, he liked me. That was partly because I was a part-time bartender in Baker at his favorite watering hole - the Windjammer.

After three years in Glendive, I found myself married to a gal who played on the same volleyball team as me. One day I told her that if MDU had a job opening in their communications department, I would apply. Even if it meant moving back to North Dakota. I had met a lot of MDU employees both in Baker and Glendive and I liked them all.

Well, that weekend in the newspaper, there was a job opening at MDU and I applied. I was one of about 90 applicants. A fellow by the name of Jon Metropoulos came to Glendive to do a first job interview. As luck would have it, I went to college with his son who also attended journalism school. I must have misunderstood Jon because somehow I though there was only three people who had applied for the job. Well, this gave me a lot of confidence as I thought I had to be better than the other two. Perhaps, Jon was telling me that they would narrow the field down to three and interview those three in Bismarck.

A week or so later I got a call asking if Belinda and I would come to Bismarck for a second interview. So we stayed in the Kirkwood Motor Inn, had our interview, had a nice dinner on MDU and I thought if nothing else, it had been a nice weekend. About a week later I was offered the job. I started in December 1985 as the editor of the utility’s employee magazine.

A lot of changes occurred in the ensuing 16 years and by 2001, MDU was no longer simply a regional utility and I was no longer the editor of the employee magazine. I had been promoted a couple of times and was working as manager of the corporate communications department. Until I wasn’t. I had been downsized. So in February of 2002, I took a job as a reporter for the Bismarck Tribune writing education stories.

This job lasted until September. However, being a reporter again was a shock to my system. The biggest shock was the cut in pay. I was making less than half of what my salary had been.

In October 2002, I went to work for the Lignite Energy Council, where I continue to work today as the vice president of communications.

My wife and I have lived in Mandan for 25 years and we’ve been married for 25 years. We’re the parents of two adult sons and life has been good for us. And to think it all began with a little tin press that I bought at Annie’s Gift Store in Roundup. 

A little Polynesian culture

Last week, I took my fifth trip to Hawaii but my first actual "vacation" to the islands. I think this was also Belinda's fifth trip so we are "veterans" among the Hawaiian tourists.

We speak the language of tourists very well. We know to say "Aloha" for hello and "Mahalo" for thank you. We know that "Pupus" (pronounced poo-poos) are appetizers and "Pipis" (pronounced peepees) is beef. That "Luau" is a feast but "lua" is a toilet. That entrances to toilets  read "Wahines" and "Kanes" instead of Men's and Women's. Luckily, there are often drawings on the entrances as well.

One of the most important things to know about the islands is how isolated they are -- sitting in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They are about 3,000 miles away from the west coast of the United States, and yet they are closer in distance to the United States than any other large land mass.

The islands are considered part of "Polynesia", which also includes other islands in the Pacific including Easter Island off the coast of South America and New Zealand, which is near Australia. There are about 1,000 islands in the Pacific that make up Polynesia. Since it would take months and lots of dollars to see all the islands, a simple way to get a flavor for the different islands is to visit the Polynesian Cultural Center on the east side of Oahu.

The Center is part of the Brigham Young University in Hawaii, so a lot of the people you see there are attending college from the various islands, such as Tonga, Tahiti and Samoa.

It's hard to know where the people that settled these various islands came from originally. Were they originally Asian or from South America? One things for sure, they were an adventuresome bunch to take to their homemade sail boats and float for thousands of miles on the high seas. How they ever survived is beyond  me.

Still, there are some similarities between the various cultures, which leads me to think that there must have been some trade between the islands. Perhaps a trader landed in Fiji after a stay in Hawaii. He would remember that he saw the hula dancers and might suggest that Fiji natives take up the dance as well. But since he has a poor memory, he can't remember all the movements or the color of their garments so they improvise.

Thus it comes to us today that the dancers from the various islands all have sort of the same dances but with different hand gestures, hip shakes and costumes.

Another thing to remember is that at the same time George Washington was commanding the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War against Britain, a war chieftan by the name of Kamehameha was leading his invaders with clubs and torches and burning the little grass shacks and chasing the natives over cliffs as he united the islands under his command. A statue of King Kamehameha stands across the street from the present day capitol of Hawaii in downtown Honolulu.

In 1778, the English explorer Captain Cook discovered the Hawaiian Islands and promptly named them the Sandwich Islands. So in 1866 when Mark Twain visited paradise, he called them the Sandwich Islands. However, eventually the native name of Hawaii became the prominent moniker.

After Cook came the missionaries who decided the natives needed to dress better so they gave them white shirts to wear. The natives didn't like the blandness of the white shirts and painted strikingly beautiful designs on them that were the forerunners of today's "Aloha" shirts.

There are many other unusual stories about the islands, including the role of the Dole family -- known for their pineapple plantations -- into persuading the United States to make Hawaii the 50th state in 1959.

Today, a visit to Hawaii will acquaint you with people from throughout the world. A bus trip from Waikiki to a Luau will include people from the United States, Europe, Australia and Japan....to name a few. There is no majority race in Hawaii. Everyone is a minority.

The U.S. has several military bases on the islands so you can also meet a lot of people in the service as well. They will be from all 50 states -- and I think they all enjoy their stay in the islands.

So practice up your Alohas and Mahalos, and save up for a trip to paradise. We've been to the islands in the summer and winter and there is no difference in temperature, the amount of daylight, etc. It's always nice in the islands. The flowers, the people and the natural beauty all welcome you to a wonderful get-away.