Good work if you can get it.

After 40-plus years of pushing newspapers, with a marginal payback at best, I have reached the conclusion that I’m not cut out to be a newspaperman.
It’s not as though the industry has passed me by; I’m still a player. But it’s been a far-from-distinguished career that will not merit a gold wrist watch when the curtain falls.
But what of the rewards? you ask.
I’ll be able to wallpaper a room with certificates of excellence, awarded by other directionally disenchanted newspaper editors when in a gracious and forgiving mood, only to be told by Better Homes and Gardens and your neighborhood realtor that I will have to paint over the same walls if this house is ever going to sell.
No, you better cut and run now, bucko.
You should have been a cowboy, Floris, my mother, always told me.
You should have pursued a career in the Navy, Nelsie, my father, sometimes joked.
You should have been a traveling salesman, bartering homeowners out of their savings for new siding, sisters Jenny and Sue insisted.
They’re onto something, I secretly admitted.
“I don’t care if you live in a mobile home; you’re going to want this new siding, trust me. It comes with a lifetime guarantee; you’ll never have to scrape it, paint it or replace it.”
Sold.
Good work, Nelson, your commission check is in the mail.
That was then, this is now.
Having graduated from picas to Photoshop, from sweeping spent newsprint out of the old Banner brick building after school to occasionally vacuuming my 12×18 ft. office in yet an even older Banner building today, I need a change. A new profession, different work. Anything but newspapers.
Well, let’s consider your options, I suggested. At your age you qualify for just about every job out there.
How about the jobs the two ex-university presidents at Fargo and Wahpeton were given after they were canned. They were each awarded a title and job description, then told to get out of Dodge. Checks totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars were forwarded to new addresses.
“We’d prefer direct deposit, thank you.”
How does a guy get a job with FEMA? Even after you leave work there you’re paid millions in consulting fees.
I could consult ravaged victims of natural disasters as well as well as anyone.
“Pack your bags and get the hell out of there.”
We’re spending trillions to rebuild Iraq. Trouble is, we can’t find qualified people there to take over the industry we’ve returned to the war-ravaged country. For a piece of the action, I can bask in the Iraqi sun, get paid big bucks to nurse along a new water plant in the middle of the desert.
Cold water, here.
Back when cohabitation was against the law, I was in line to be the marshal of the Sex Police, but now that living single together is legal, encouraged and rewarded, as long as you stay in the state, I’m out of luck.
Then again, if they continue this business of fornicating in the open in North Fargo, the Sex Police might have to be resurrected.
What the poor, arrested fellow in a kilt needs is legal counsel. That and a marriage counselor.
I could be counsel to the stars, principally Lindsay Lohan, Dan Baldwin, Nicole Richie and Co.
The crowd, however, that needs some direction is this country’s astronauts.
I could be the designated driver in the next space shuttle.
“Hey, bud, how ’bout pullin’ over. We need a six-pack.”
Sorry, bucko, this is a straight shot to outer space.
Any job in Washington would do. However, the turnover in the nation’s Capitol is worse than the newspaper industry. The pres, his VP and Karl Rove will all be looking for work inside a couple of years, so the pool of talentless, old fools, who can fool most of the people most of the time, is likely to be a little crowded.
That said, I might want to reconsider this business of jumping ship to another profession.
After all, I must remind myself, who better than you to clear spent newsprint from a newspaper’s back shop?