It’s funny how things change with age. At 26, being separated, living 14 hours from home and struggling in the workplace felt utterly hopeless. Now, at 49, I often think “Dude, you could have just quit your job and moved in with your dad back in Kansas.”
Hindsight, of course, is 20-20. It would have been easy to quit and run home. In hindsight, I never really gave McAllen, Texas, a chance. Or, in reality, that change never had a chance.
In 2002, after living in Missouri and Kansas my entire life, I was desperate for something different. Much of that was the result of being rather miserable, in part because I was engaged to somebody I didn’t like that much (just being honest), and in part because I wanted a “bigger” job.
Even though I was only three years and two newspaper gigs out of college, I saturated the country with my resume and portfolios, applying for sports writing jobs in California, West Virginia, South Carolina, Florida and Texas.
There were a few bites, but none better than in McAllen, home of The Monitor, a mid-sized newspaper that represented a significant jump from the small papers I worked at the previous three years.
In the spring of 2002, my fiancée and I flew to San Antonio, then drove four hours to deep south Texas. For two days, I interviewed with several editors, including the late (and great) Steve Fagan and Oscar Gonzalez. It was during a talk with the latter that he uttered the phrase that has stuck with me through the years.
“What I need is somebody who can come in here and kick some ass,” he said. “Can you handle that?”
I said I could, but I knew deep down that I wasn’t ready. I think Oscar knew that, and it took the folks at The Monitor a few days to make the decision to offer me the job.
“To be honest, we were concerned your fiancée was running the show, which is why it took time to make the decision,” said Oscar, who was nothing, if not blunt as hell.
Things didn’t go all that well in McAllen. Oscar and I clashed quite a bit. Aside from work, I never left my apartment after my exwife and I parted ways. Christmas that year was the worst one I’ve ever had.
It was really just a matter of time before I moved on. By July of 2003, I had interviewed at the Topeka Capital-Journal. I got the job in early August and was out of Texas by the middle of that month.
For several years, I was bitter about my time in Texas, especially working at The Monitor. As I’ve written in this space, that changed as Oscar and I reconnected on social media. We bonded, and I was deeply saddened when he died at the far-too-young age of 45 in 2017.
The bitterness about McAllen has subsided, too. Now, I have memories of covering high school football games in gigantic stadiums covered by palm trees, laughing with Oscar about the movie “Trading Places” and free beers at Tom and Jerry’s Bar & Grill (courtesy of Monitor part-timer Adam).
In hindsight, maybe I should have stayed there a little longer.
TWELVE DAYS 2025, PART X: Dad’s last mug shot and almost being Californians
TWELVE DAYS 2025, PART IX: An excerpt from Chapter 12 of “Goodbye, Butterfly”
TWELVE DAYS 2025, PART VIII: The old man and the high-speed chase
TWELVE DAYS 2025, PART VII: Christmas and Lebanon Junior High
TWELVE DAYS 2025, PART VI: Christmas with mono
TWELVE DAYS 2025, PART V: ShowBiz, Dragon’s Lair and other difficult games
TWELVE DAYS 2025, PART IV: “Dutch,” a guilty pleasure
TWELVE DAYS 2025, PART III: Christmas in Independence
TWELVE DAYS 2025, PART II: Craving an NES Classic
TWELVE DAYS 2025, PART I: An update on the search for James Danny Hollingshead
ABOUT MY SECOND BOOK: THE OLD MAN
ORDER “GOODBYE, BUTTERFLY: MURDER, FAITH AND FORGIVENESS IN A SMALL KANSAS TOWN”