This newspaper was my life.
You get to meet new people and ask them annoying questions. One time I called Gillette Stadium and asked to speak to Mr. Robert Kraft. Of course, this doesn’t actually work, but when you say you write for a daily they snap to attention and get right back to you.
My heroes were Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson. Also [boring, endless list omitted to prevent reader stupefaction]…and, from my generation, Bill Simmons and Chuck Klosterman.
I became a journalist, but I hardly did it alone.
Sunday columnist Dan McCullough helped me. He told me the different sounds a clam rake makes when it hits a rock or a quohog. Want to cry sometime? Read the piece he wrote about Johnny Cash.
Molly Benjamin, I hope wherever you are the fish are running chock-a-block.
Bill O’Neill helped me early by buying articles of dubious and not initially self-evident worth and editing them into publishable form.
Vin Raimo helped me. Sometime after attending my second-grade birthday party, he had recovered sufficiently to do fishing charters on Nantucket and would explain to me some of the finer points — like, the not-insignificant difference between porgy and pogy.
Mike Conery set marks for me. He’s my godfather and both he and his son Ben were newspapermen. My first sail was on Lewis Bay on Mike’s boat.
Janet Messineo took me to Wasque Point to fish the big water.
Dave Simser rented me a room in Marstons Mills after I quit a swell corporate gig to move back to the Cape and try to become a writer. I sold exactly four pieces my first year. That’s about five hundred bucks. A year! Tough to make rent on that, unless you know the right people. We lost Simser in 2011.
Lee Boisvert helped me by pointing out the difference between Peaked Hill, an area off Truro, and Pequod Hill, which doesn’t exist.
Every artist or outlaw journalist requires a supportive village — a beer, a couch to crash, a place to do laundry, a place to just chill. Special thanks to Brett and Emma, Hannah and JC, Pete and Terri, Dave and Sue, Shelley, and the residents of Chrisdanistan.
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George Graeber always had a site for me on the Aeris.
Like me, Leah Servis is a UMass graduate — unlike me, she actually has a degree in journalism. She helped some wobbly early manuscripts find their footing.
Mike Sommer paid real money to make up fake stories about dune buggies.
Scott Mullin paid real money to imitate an oysterman. Hats off to King Harwich.
Patrick Quinlan publishing my novel, “Winterland.”
The Cape Cod Salties Sportfishing Club helped me in many ways; including bailing me out of a real jam I got myself into a few years back. Thanks, fellas. Semper Fi.
Cape Cod Flyrodders gave me a nice 9-weight rod — a magic tool that landed a striper the very first time I cast it!
Many, many, many tackle shop employees made me look smart by repeating what they just told me, but Danny from the Hook Up (he later changed his name to Danny from the Goose Hummock), George from Truman’s, and Amy from Sports Port deserve special recognition.
My dad told me to go for it and that “God hates a coward.” My mom gave me the gift of words and the sheer joy of making them dance.
Rick Eldred at the Yarmouth Sun helped me imitate a photojournalist — any face in a published photo should be at least the size of a dime, he said.
Bill Babner at Cape Cod Community College Main Sheet taught me not to introduce errors, the importance of deadlines and never, ever turn in dog crap (he phrased it differently).
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The late Howard Zinn taught me at UMass always to spell names correctly (most people only pick up a newspaper hoping to see their own name) and how to read the classified section (which indicates a town’s economic fortunes in real-time by the prices of used goods).
The late Jeff Lubin is the best fisherman I ever saw.
The “They Deserve a 1000-Word Tribute Apiece But There’s No Space” award goes to Vin Foti, Chris Kokorda, Lou MacKeil, Patrick Cassidy, Bill Higgins, Cam Gammill, Austin Proudfoot, Dash Riprock, Brady and captain Signs, Powderhorn Andy, Craig LeBlanc, captain Gary Brown on Bass Ackwards, Grimey, Fearless Fred, Bob DeCosta, Susan Blood, Sam Baxter, Darren Saletta, Steve Swain, library Joe, Bob Lewis, Tim Lynch, Pat Grenier, Scott Dietrich, Billy Perkins.
Endless thanks to the helpful staff at the Centerville Public Library — where I wrote two books and hundreds of fishing columns. Writer heaven — they have a fireplace and free coffee.
Wellfleet’s Parkington Sisters band made otherworldly music that I was able to clunkily and incompletely describe to land my first magazine cover story.
Before he was a Grammy-nominated producer and back when I thought I was a photographer, Joel Hamilton encouraged me to keep pushing.
A Team. Enough said.
Some several McCaffreys helped in several ways.
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Doug Feeney knows how to take a big metal boat out to Georges Bank and catch bluefin tuna and make it safely back to the Cape. I don’t.
This newspaper was my life. Before I wrote for it, I delivered it.
Like many natives, I’ve been working since I could push a stick. At age 8 — 8! — I started selling. A paper route may seem quaint but it’s actually a seven-day-a-week grind of jumping down from docks onto the icy “porch” of houseboats, getting posteriorly bitten by a German shepherd, and being cursed out by elderly people who didn’t care for my “play hockey now, deliver paper later” methods (we were an afternoon paper then).
Before I had the route, it was my job to stack old papers for kindling by the fireplace before the Bruins game started on TV38 — my dad making popcorn.
Always newspapers.
I remember when the noisy printing presses were right in the Times office. I remember the first day we had color photos; John Riggins of the Redskins charging right off the sports page.
You won prizes by drumming up new subscribers — Papa Gino’s, passes to the West Yarmouth drive-in; once even Patriots tickets. I took my dad. It felt good to be a wage earner in a blue-collar family.
It was a good run.
Shameless Plug: I had this column for 14 years, my longest job. Now I’m starting a new chapter. I’ll be running Black Jack Fly, a fly-fishing camp in the mountains of Maine. In partnership with Mt. Abram ski area, I’ll be leading small groups into the woods to fish cold water trout streams. For more information, email robconery@yahoo.com.
But this was the best job I ever had. I got to live my dream. Thanks for reading.
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