One end leads to a new beginning
By Alonzo Weston
Poet T.S. Eliot said it best perhaps: “And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”
That is very fitting as this is my last “Street Smarts” column in the St. Joseph News-Press.
Where I go or what I do going forward is anyone’s guess. I know I’ll keep writing in some form or fashion or go back to my first love, which is art, and do some paintings or drawings again. At 70 years old, making a new beginning is something I’ve obviously never done before. What I won’t plan on doing is becoming some old curmudgeon in a tattered bathrobe clutching a fifth of whiskey and ranting incoherently at kids on my lawn. At least I hope that’s not the case.
Nor do I wish to go out like famed journalist Ernest Hemingway, who early on a July morning in 1961 blew his brains out with a shotgun in his basement. Hemingway suffered from depression, diabetes and high blood pressure as do I but life is still too precious for me to end it myself. I’ll go kicking and screaming, frantically trying to hold onto any earthly foundation I can find as the specter of death struggles to drag me out of this world. My dying words will probably be “Let go of me damnit!”
One thing I know I will do is sit up some nights and look back and reminisce about the career I had as a journalist.
I worked in factories for many years before Dave Bradley gave me an internship at the St. Joseph News-Press in 1989. It was to last only three months but stretched into a year and so on until I was hired full-time in 2002. I’ve met many influential and wonderful people in my career and got to do some amazing things. The job was made for me or I was made for the job as I dreamt of being a writer or artist in my early years.
I worked in steel mills, grain elevators, on railroad gangs and in bakeries but I knew deep inside I was a writer or artist. Some co-workers made fun of me and called me a dreamer. I stuttered, they’d say, and I wasn’t smart enough to be anything but a laborer — and not a good one at that.
I’m a firm believer in God putting people where they belong. He will put opportunities in your path as He did for me leading me to become a successful writer.
I’ve won many awards and accolades throughout my career as a journalist. I would like to thank all the folks who believed in me and voted me their favorite news columnist for more than 25 years.
My street cohort Bag-Head Jheri, the Messanie Street Philosopher, says goodbye as well and he’ll do fine, too. So with all this, I say goodbye for now and thanks to the Bradley family, all my editors and especially you the readers who supported me all these years. Don’t worry, I won’t fade away. You’ll see me in some capacity doing something that suits me in my old age. Thanks again and goodbye.
