Good-bye yellow brick road

By Jennifer McBride / Typewriter Tales

Cleaning out my desk is always a pain. First off, there's all the documents I keep because the information might possibly be useful at some point in time. Then there's the stuff that isn't even mine — like the coffee stain in the bottom drawer and the notebooks filled with the slanted handwriting I identify with my predecessors. When I first moved into the Leader office last July, my desk was already entirely crammed full of stuff that didn't belong to me. I tried to keep things intact in case anyone needed it, but, since I've been here pretty much as long as all the other editorial staff combined, I finally decided that I was competent to whittle the papers down to a manageable level.

This time, cleaning out my desk wasn't painful just because the combination of soap and water makes me break into a terrified cold sweat. Cleaning is at the top of my list of "activities I think should belong in hell." But sweeping out my space is especially hard this time because it's the last time.

On June 25, our publisher made me an offer I couldn't refuse. I was promoted to editor of our sister papers in Mineral and Sanders counties: the Mineral Independent and the Clark Fork Valley Press. My first day down in Plains will be July 2, coincidentally a year to the day I started work in Polson. So by the time you read this, I'll be gone — except for the trips I come back to collect stuff from my apartment. The problem with hiring young, talented and ambitious reporters is that they are too young, talented and ambitious to stay in one place very long.

Still, this isn't the way I wanted to leave. I wish I had a couple of weeks for a more leisurely good-bye. Time for writing a few more stories about issues I care about. Time for kicking my heels through one last trial in Lake County's sole courtroom. Time for one last chance to smile when Mayor Kim Aipperspach comes to Ronan city council, his hands thick with grease. I never expected to fall quite so deeply in love with this quiet community that seemed, to a city girl like me, out on the edge of nowhere. As I drive around that final, perfect bend of Highway 93 just outside Polson, I find myself slowing down like any dumbstruck tourist as I try to cram every little wave of Flathead Lake into a place in my memory.

There was a man I met who used to tune pianos for a living. He said he loved to clean out instruments because it gave him a connection to history. When he took apart my piano, he found a lot of stickers that had fallen through the cracks or between the keys. They probably belonged to an old piano teacher who must have cajoled dozens of students into practicing (or pretending to practice) with Smiley-face stickers or a hearty "good job" written in bright, purple font across crinkled music books.

I understood what the tuner meant when I started cleaning out my desk for the last time, determined to follow my middle school principal's rule of "leave any place you enter better than it was when you found it." I found negative strips from film cameras and outdated computer manuals. There were legal petitions with no dates or contact numbers on them, or much comprehensible English, for that matter. Also, I found bottles of Tylenol and Advil that other reporters probably used for the headaches brought on by said legal petitions.

I even found a pair of wooden chopsticks lay hidden beneath junk mail addressed to Linda Sappington. I dared our sports editor, Trent, to use them next time he ate lunch, but he wouldn't bite. Probably just as well — poisoning a coworker isn't something I particularly want on my permanent record.

Will I leave the same marks? Not really. Anything important, I saved, filed and passed onto others. The thank you cards come with me. The letters written by prisoners asking me to pay their bail went in the trash. What legacy can anyone hope to leave behind them in one, short year? Dust, crumbs and an empty mug are there where should be pens. Those are my contributions to the desk once dubbed "Jennystan."

My hope is that I left a more intangible impact — feelings and memories that brightened or helped with people's lives. That's all you can wish for, in the end. Copies of my work may have a small kind of immortality in the dusty, back rooms of libraries until the paper itself fades and is saved onto whatever librarians are using instead of microfilm these days, but everything turns to dust in the end. Even the ashes of our dreams are burned up in the ever-expanding sun.

As you can see, change, even good change, makes me mope. It's a lesson in transience. But I leave feeling slightly uplifted because I walk away with my life infinitely better than when I first came here, a broken child sure she couldn't make it in the "real world."

Trying to thank everybody who's helped me this past year would be a disservice, because I'm sure I'd miss someone. So I'd like to say that no writer could possibly express how welcome I felt here, and how grateful I am for the advice, assistance and friendships I've found. I'd also like to issue a blanket apology for the articles I didn't write. I try to be good to my word, but things haven't always fallen into place. Corny as it sounds, all your names are carved into curve of my heart.

And I am still only a phone call away. If there's anything you think we should be covering in Sanders/Mineral County, feel free to contact me at my new office in Plains at (406) 826-3402.

Until then, to quote Elton John: "Oh, I've decided that my future lies/Beyond the yellow brick road."