I became a journalist on Avon St. (Flint, MI)

I found this blog the other day in which the woman who writes it was living my life (sort of) from 32 years ago, in Flint.

Finding it was the result of some search I was doing. The "some search" is the problem. I commented on one of her posts and now I can't find it again!

So this woman, who is some 7 years older than I, apparently, was doing stuff that I was doing when I was in my early 20s - writing for a (free) publication called East Village Magazine. It's how I got my start, you know? Some things never change.

The editor of the magazine then and now is Gary Custer, who is the person who taught me journalism. I started off as a proofreader, became and editor, and then one day Gary asked me if I wouldn't try my hand at writing a feature story.

Then I started covering Flint City Council meetings. Ha ha, you should have seen those people! One of them was a few years later, with his wife, discovered at a dump in Toledo, Ohio. In their nightclothes and positively murdered.

Anyway, this blogger, Macy Swain (who has since moved to CA), was commenting about how she went over to Gary's house for a picnic and his brother Ed was there, and Ed's wife, Casey ... all people I used to know very well. I knew Ed and Casey before, at at the time they started, dating and now they have these grown up kids ...

I don't keep in touch with these people, I only read about them on other people's blogs.

The last time I went back to Flint, I stopped in at the magazine's office. Gary did not remember me at first (all those cases of beer finally got to his brain cells, I guess). But then he peered at me for a few seconds and somehow I came back to him.

He used to drink a case of beer every day. And he had a perpetual pot of chili (he just kept 'refreshing' it) and the most vicious cat I've ever seen.

"He's just being friendly," Gary would say as he disengaged its claws from my back.

Gary started the magazine in 1976 (when I signed on as well) and it seems it's still going strong. I used to type my stories on a - gasp - manual typewriter! With two carbon copies required ... and I proofread galleys, while sitting on the steps of my apartment, smoking.

We mostly all smoked, we drank, we got .... ummmm, our fortunes told, by Gary (he served in Vietnam and picked up throwing prophetic stones). He told me I would marry late in life and have 2 children.

The website is under construction or I would link to it.