Way Back Wednesday

This is my grandfather, Alfred J. Monahan. Grandpa was the executive city editor of The Boston Globe for years, starting (I think) as a copy boy and working his way up the ranks. Grandpa is largely responsible for my career as a journalist but not because he tried to get me a job (he did, but I was too dumb independent to take any help) and not even because he was an extraordinary storyteller. He had a million stories (most journalists do!) and even though some of them weren't exactly appropriate for a young girl, I was an avid listener.

But he's responsible for my career because one day we had to pick him up at the Globe and we were standing on the periphery of the newsroom -- a real 1960s newsroom with yelling and laughing and typewriters clacking and dinging -- and I just liked it. The noise, the energy, the camaraderie.

And I have to say that years later, when I started spending quality time (or quantity time as the case usually was) in a newsroom, it was every bit as noisy and unglamorous as I remembered. I have loved this work -- for good or bad -- for more than three decades. Once I started working at newspapers I would occasionally talk to my grandfather about work and ethics and the art of story telling and we did spend some time together before he died in 1986. In retrospect it wasn't nearly as much time as I would have liked, but I know that the printer's ink that ran through his veins runs through mine, too.

I like to tell people that I'm an internationally award winning writer (I did win several awards from the International Free Press Association that included papers from Canada, after all...) but really, when you get right down to it, I like to bang around on a typewriter, play with words and tell stories. Just like him. And I also like to work with my feet up on my desk.

And that's why I like this picture.