For the first time in the history of the world, I fixed my automobile. Been driving nigh on three decades, and not once have I resurrected an engine stone-cold dead. 'Till just the other day.
I was coming back from Burlington after interviewing Ron Mathias, the new head coach of the Keyser girls’ softball team. A retired contractor, Mr. Mathias oversaw construction of the fields at Keyser High and Burlington, piloting the grader himself for a final-touch infield crown. Mineral County youth benefit from more than just Mr. Mathias’ ball fields, they are also  better for his presence in their lives. The more I’m around that class of individual called coach, the more I see how they can have such a lasting impact.
So, having had the pleasure of making Mr. Mathias’ acquaintance, I climbed and crested Knobley Mountain, anxious to get back to Keyser, for a high-noon appointment with Keyser Police Chief Karen Shoemaker.
Somewhere out on the boulevard near the tennis courts, a familiar ring arose and I reached for my cell. Only, it was casual Friday and I was in jeans, which makes for a tight retrieval. In practiced frenzy, I  thrust my left leg into the upper floorboard to stretch out, leaned back hard into the seat, and got the phone just in time. Turned out to be a phantom ring. Or maybe I was just hearing things, which is a distinct possibility.
So, I pulled into the office, headed next door to the police station and introduced myself to the chief, sharing a bit of my newspaper background and relating The News-Trib’s interest in reporting daily police activity. Police coverage is critical to any community newspaper, not just because people like reading about some rogue they kinda-sorta know who got in trouble again, but because it’s a matter of public safety. You have a right to know what the siren down the street was all about, and it’s our job to tell ya.
The chief politely put up with my spiel, and proceeded to give me the activity report for the past 24 hours, no fuss, no muss.
Ten minutes after getting back from the station, I was out the door to meet a lady who takes care of 1,161 cat lives, as our managing editor Andrew cleverly noted in his Monday headline for the story I subsequently wrote. But before I could interview her, I had to get to Fort Ashby, and when I turned the key on my 4-year-old Tacoma, it did nothing, which is something it’s never done before. Lights across the dash, but nary a crank. I pushed the clutch in harder, and at the doing, recalled my earlier foot-thrust phone maneuver. Maybe I hit something.
I’d always noticed a little button all by itself to the left of the steering wheel. “Clutch Start Cancel” it reads. Seemed like the perfect occasion to try it out, which I did. The engine kicked over without a hiccup.
I got into the button-punch routine, but it was a pain, and I worried that the fuse would short from its exertions. Saturday morning I finally bent over and peered up under the dash board, to that tangle of spinal wires. Didn’t see anything obvious, but then traced my gaze up the clutch. Found a little white connector that seemed disconnected, and pushed it back together. In the plastic click of copper union, the truck was restored.
Check that off my bucket list, I fixed a car.
It would be nice if life came with its own Clutch Start Cancel button, a convenient cure-all for just the ill that ails ya. Saturday morning, Andrew and I would have burnt that button out fixing all the newspapers we screwed up.
Bobbie Carpenter had put together a great story about the Preaskorn family; Tom newly back from war, a harried, worried wife finally relieved her own tour of duty, and five little kids fully overjoyed. Andrew came up with a stylized, three-column layout that showcased the story across three quarters of the front page, framing above the fold Bobbie’s magical photo of seven smiling faces lit up in love.
Early Saturday, after a  Friday-night celebratory soirée at a place where everybody knows his name, Andrew stopped back at The News-Tribune to get the paper hot off the press, just to see how it turned out. The picture was photo-paper crisp, Mike and Rick the pressroom wizards having flowed cyan, magenta, yellow and black in perfect harmony. But then Andrew noticed that the second column had somehow duplicated. Like you notice a punch in the gut.
I felt it too when he told me the next day, as mine were the last eyes to proof the page.
Over nearly a quarter century in newspapers, it has been my painful experience that the worst errors that go uncaught are also the most obvious, and that they usually appear in the stories you most want to get right. Which is as it was with the Preaskorn family.
Can honestly say, though, that I’ve never been in a position to mess up something that bad on the day we run a full-page reader survey asking folks to tell us what we need to do better. With a promo-editorial to boot.
In the throes of Sunday revelation of Friday-night sin, I recalled Mr. Mathias’ coaching philosophy, shared the day we did the Preaskorn page. All he asks of his players is that they give it their all, do their best.
If I had to choose between a perfect front page, and an editor energized enough to swing by the office in the wee hours for the thrill of seeing his handicraft while the ink's still fresh, even though it may sometimes fall painfully short of perfection, I’d choose the latter. Every time.
We might not get it just right, as we’d like, because we’re human, and because there’s a bar right across the street. But every day in The News-Tribune, you’ll get the best we have to give, and a commitment to make it ever better…