* "I was almost a newspaper delivery boy but lacked the snazzy cap and knee-shorts. And the delivery manager tried 'initiating' me by warming his hands by sliding them down the front of my pants on a 5am street corner. Even for San Francisco, I thought that was a bit odd. I mean, it wasn't that cold."

* "There were, however, 50-plus-gallon trash bins for all the waste paper/crumpled up "copy paper," paper that has since vanished from the earth, think fey manila. The trash bins stood four feet high and everyone smoked and if you tossed a cigarette into the trash bin you could readily start a four-alarmer that would wipe out the city room. I was trying out for a job on the Bergen Record, making up a story-see, they did make them up-on a two-alarm fire in Hackensack, when a copy editor tossed a cigar into one of those trash bins and started a nice little copy-paper barbeque. I was offered the job but didn't take it. Even little bits of hilarity like that didn't make it worth working in Hackensack."

* "As a community service we offered tours to schools. One day, a group of school kids came through and they were pretty rowdy and dismissive of the reporters. Not to be outdone, we showed how childish we could be and starting throwing balled up chunks of paper at them as they left the office and headed to the composing room for the rest of their tour. Turns out that one of the kids in retaliation for our behavior stole our front page plate. The boys in composing figured that they couldn't have walked out with it because it was too big to hide under a jacket so it had to be hidden. They turned the place upside down but couldn't find it. Finally, they called the school and one of the kids fessed up and told us where he secreted it. The paper, which was an afternoon, was several hours late."