When my youngest child left the safe and warm cocoon of my kitchen and the comforting ritual of Sesame Street and chocolate chip cookies and flew out of the nest all the way down the street to kindergarten, I decided the time had come for me to spread my wings as well.
So, I took a deep breath, discarded my blue jeans and T-shirt for something a little more business-like and went out to find a job.
And I found one.
I was hired by the Rimbey Record as a typesetter. Of course, that job is now obsolete and most likely some people have no idea what a typesetter even was.
Well, I am here to tell you that it was a particularly important job. The typesetter typed all the editor’s stories into this machine. The machine was called, as you may have guessed, a typesetter.
Weird, eh! But no kidding! That’s how it worked.
Anyway, that was how I came to be one of the unwritten stories between the lines of a weekly newspaper.
I hadn’t been at the Rimbey Record very long before I humbly asked the editor if I could submit my own column. I earnestly explained to her that writing for me was about as natural as breathing and could I “please, please” have a chance to show her something.
She barely nodded, hardly raising her eyes from her cluttered desk. I have since found out that’s how editors operate because they are always busy, always trying to meet a deadline and always in a hurry to be somewhere.
Anyway, undaunted and full of hope, I pounded out my first article that night, fast and furious, after the supper dishes were done and the kids were all in bed.
I am not sure if they just needed to fill space or if she really did like my humble attempt at conveying a message through the written word, but lo and behold, before I knew it the Record was running my column every week.
My very first reporting job was in Eckville. I was so nervous after I covered town council for the first time, I walked to work down the back alley so I wouldn’t run into one of the proofreaders from the community who inevitably seem to come out of the woodwork after each paper is published.
Yes, it truly was so many years ago when I tentatively stepped across the threshold of the office of the Rimbey Record Newspaper. Little did I know that that job would be the beginning of a long and rewarding career that would, decades later, end back in Rimbey, right where it started.
It has been a wonderful and fulfilling career and I am ever so grateful to have been a reporter, editor and columnist for several newspapers throughout Alberta.
And, last but not least, I am grateful for this opportunity to write this final column and say thank you to the people in Rimbey and the surrounding communities for your support, your confidence and your encouragement to me, always.
Communities such as Rimbey truly are the heartbeat of rural Alberta and I am proud to say I was the editor of your newspaper for more than a decade.
I wish I could give a little ink to each and every one of you who have touched my life in so many ways, but really it would take the whole newspaper.
In closing, I just want to say, once again, thanks so much for being there and for sharing your stories with me.
I will truly miss you all.
Oh, and I just want to say one more thing. Please keep reading your community newspapers.
They always and forever will be the voice of the people. Your voice.
Treena Mielke was the editor of the Rimbey Review.