Billings, MT

Dustin Freese Memorial Sidewalk + Neighborhood Streets

Run Time: 64:05 + 2-minute kick

The beginning of an extended 2-week trip through Wyoming, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Utah, and Colorado. Plus I flew on Sunday so that I could stop in and see my sis-in-law and her youngest, who live in Fort Collins. She brewed up a fiery batch of barbacoa, which was fantastic.

We talked a fair amount about writing. We have both recently finished a first draft of a novel, and we shared editing/rewriting strategies. She told me about some apps that sound interesting, though I am hesitant to dip into the AI world when it comes to writing. I still prefer analog over digital. In fact, I am thinking of buying a manual typewriter.

As I drove through the high desert the next day, I thought about my days working on a student newspaper in high school. I thought about my friend, Jim Hill, who was a staff photographer, and who has an original copy of each every-other-weekly edition we published in the two years we attended Glencoe High School in Hillsboro, Oregon.

These were my first serious attempts to write. I started out writing about sports, then worked my way into an opinion column, then got onto the editorial staff and wrote news stories and editorials. We were a serious group, though also irreverent, and though I have not read any of it in almost 45 years, I bet it holds up. The people in that group changed who I was — how I thought, how to commit and execute, what I valued. The personality range was vast, and yet I have never again been a part of a team that so operated so richly and successfully.

Every other Wednesday we would all gather at the end of the schoolday to lay out the paper. This was not scheduled class time. Our advisor, Mr. Taylor, invited us to do so, and we happily accepted. For 2-3 hours, we would all work together editing and cutting and pasting (literally) text, headlines, and captions onto full-size proof sheets, cropping photos, and sharing stories and hopes and dreams and insults and a lot of laughs. We had been working on this content for the full two weeks leading up to this night before publication, and I can’t really speak for anyone else, but I would bet that no one on that team ever had to be compelled to do the work. We loved all of it, and each other.

When we were done, usually 6 or 7 or sometimes 8 pm, Mr. Taylor would take the proof sheets to the printer. The next day the copies would be distributed throughout the school, and you’d go into the cafeteria at lunch time, and everybody would be reading it. That is a powerful and satisfying feeling, to see 600-800 of your peers reading your work, and in some cases, challenging what you wrote or threatening bodily harm (only happened a few times — mostly the football players who didn’t like what I wrote about their winless season). Everybody wanted to see my friend Tom’s editorial cartoons, which referenced national politics, Hunter Thompson, Rolling Stone magazine, Carlos Castaneda, School Board controversies, and Jim Morrison, perhaps all in one cartoon. The editorials and columns became the main interest, but the news and features were timely and sharp. Nancy, the News Editor, more than once was asked to shut down her tape recorder in the middle of an interview with Dr. Miller, our principal.

The disagreements and discussions in the Editorial Board meetings would get heated, but as a group we worked through complicated issues and reached consensus. Nancy, Shelley, Lori, Tom, Lisa — amazing minds all. The beauty of reaching consensus, and then the writing of the resulting editorial might be assigned to the person who originally opposed that final consensus, and then reading the concise and convincing masterpiece they wrote, would be sublime. And yet, we expected it of each other. Tom and I would fight bitterly to keep Mr. Taylor from cutting out questionable content from our columns. There were occasionally things thrown in the open classroom (like chairs), and many shouting and swearing exits. We all had carte blanche to come and go from the classroom as needed during the daily class period when we were actually assigned to be in the room, but most of us were working on the articles and opinion pieces throughout the days and often in the evenings. It was like a job that we loved so much we didn’t mind not being paid, which is a lot easier to engage in when you are a student and food and shelter are supplied at no personal expense.

When I am driving between Casper and Gillette, thinking about these things, I am tempted to plan a future visit back to Oregon, during which I look up my old friend Jim Hill, and we sit down and remove the old editions of the high school paper from the plastic sleeves he has kept them in, and we read and reminisce, but I actually think that would be too overwhelming. I get emotional just thinking about it. The actual doing it might crumble my fragile facade. Jim would keep me in good spirits — he always could — but the pain of not being able to recreate those editing sessions with those people like they all were in those times might overshadow the joy of the memories.

It was when I learned that I loved to write, but more surprisingly, that I also love to collaborate. Writing is usually a lonely undertaking. Opportunity to collaborate is rare, and maybe illusory or nonexistent. I am grateful that I found it for those two years of high school.