“Seems normal to me”

So concludes the 25-year career of BossMan (Robert Matson) at the mighty Mezz, the guy that years ago said “seems normal to me,” and thereby took me on as an unpaid intern following my stroke.
It turned into the best job I ever had.
My friend Mark Syverud (“SYE-vrrr-uhd;” Marky-Mark), retired with slight Parkinson’s, said the reason it was my best job was partly good supervision.
I agreed, although I was thinking of BossMan.
But I had many supervisors, one of whom was Syverud. To me they all contributed to making it the best job I ever had.
(Transit, by comparison, paid much better, but was awful.)
I walked in — the Happy-Hour was at MacGregors’ Pub by Canandaigua Lake — and there was Queeny and Kathy Meredith and Linda Barry.
Queeny is the only editor left from the days I was there (except also K-man and Wheeler; see below).
It was essentially Queeny and I that did the Sunday paper on Saturday nights; Queeny the page-editor and me paste-up.
Many of the Sunday pages had been done in advance, but it was Queeny and I doing 1A and 2A and 1B at midnight.
Meredith is retired; she used to be editor of Thursday’s massive Steppin’ Out magazine.
I did her “Night Spots” pages, and always felt badly about it — that it would have been better if my speech weren’t compromised making me bad on the telephone. (“Night Spots” were free ads from local dives: night-clubs; live entertainment.)
But Kathy always said she was pleased, since I was turning in enough for her to cut stuff.
Matson used to call her “the Detail-Queen;” her willingness to master a huge mountain of minutia, so that everything was right.
Linda Barry was a typist, typing briefs into their system, updating calendars, etc. (“Why wasn’t our chicken-barbecue on the front page? I submitted a 30-page writeup! What is it with youz liberials?”)
Barry says the job is no fun anymore since me and Marcy and Matt Ried (“REED”) left.
We all used to trade snide remarks.
A gaggle of youngsters swept in.
Queeny said hello to all, and Kathy and I observed we knew no one.
“Seems like it’s an all-new newspaper,” Kathy said. “Like starting from scratch.”
“It is,” Queeny observed. “None of my staff have been around any longer than a year.”
“‘The year is drawing to a close,’ I said to Kevin (‘K-man;’ Managing Editor). ‘We gotta pursue follow-up’” — pursuing stories reported on earlier to see if later developments should be reported.
“So I gathered my reporters together, and no one had been around earlier in the year. Follow-up was impossible,” Queeny said.
The only other editors left from my early days are K-man, Kevin Frisch (“Frish;” rhymes with “fish”), and the so-called Hasidic Jew.
Both apprised me of this Happy-Hour. “I always keep you in the loop, Bobbalew,” Kevin said.
K-man was the only one that called me “Bobbalew;” everyone else called me “Grady.”
Finally, old man George Sr. (George Ewing, Sr. [“YOU-ing”]) strode in.
Senior was the newspaper’s publisher when I started, but retired well before me. —He’s in his 80s.
“The guy that hired me,” I said.
“Biggest mistake I ever made!” he guffawed.
Kathy left about 6:15, so I figured I might as well leave too. I wasn’t eating or drinking anything. (As Matson said: “Nothing here is healthy.”)
“Good luck,” I said to BossMan; “and remember, ‘seems normal to me.’”
Don’t know how bad I was back then, but they took me on, I recovered, and ended up not wanting to leave.
They didn’t want me to leave either.

The “mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired three years ago. Best job I ever had. Bob Matson was their Executive Editor.

I had a stroke October 26, 1993, and it slightly compromised my speech. I started at the Messenger in late ‘94 as an unpaid intern, and was employed there in early ‘96.

“Queeny” is Lenore Friend, the queen of the newsroom. She has been employed there a long time, and is now an editor, somewhat a manager. She’s an excellent news hound. —Queeny was at one time the Sunday Editor.

The Sunday Messenger was done Saturday evenings until midnight; the Sports pages after that. Presses rolled about 2:30 a.m.

“Liberial” is how my loudmouthed macho brother-from-Boston noisily insists “liberal” is spelled. (Recently it’s “liberila” or “libieral.”)

“Marcy” is my number-one Ne’er-do-Well — she was the first I was e-mailing stuff to. Marcy and I worked in adjacent cubicles at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper. “Matt Ried” was a paginator and the newspaper’s webmaster. (“Pagination” is to generate pages in a computer.)

“Hasidic-Jew” is L. David Wheeler, an editor at the Messenger newspaper, and like me (and Matson) a Houghton grad (‘91). —Upon seeing a photograph of Wheeler, my ever-tolerant sister in south Floridy declared he looked like a Hasidic Jew. (“Houghton” is Houghton College in western New York, from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I’ve never regretted it, although I didn’t graduate with their approval. Houghton is a religious liberal-arts college.)

“Bobbalew” is of course me. “Grady” was my nickname at the newspaper. See blurb at right.

“Seems normal to me” is what Matson said when I interviewed for the position of unpaid intern at the Messenger about a year after my stroke.