toledoblade.com --

Everything has to start somehow, somewhere.

This business column, for example, started with a mere suggestion nearly 20 years ago, in early 1989.

My boss at the time thought we could use a column to help kick off our newly retooled Tuesday business section. So I wrote one about how office workers coped before telephones, computers, copiers, faxes, and air conditioning.

The column got pretty good response from readers, and so I wrote another column for the following Tuesday, and the one after that, and for most of the next 1,000-plus weeks. (I missed some weeks because of vacations and other assignments, but did get to express my point of view on a wide variety of topics in more than 800 columns.)

But everything has to end sometime too. And so, I find myself writing my last column. I am hanging it up, winding down a 40-year career with The Blade and its former sister paper, the Toledo Times.

I don't give two figs about GATT, GAAP, FASB, ERISA, TEFRA, CAFE, COLA, FEMA, TARP, HIPPA, or OPRAH, and I didn't write columns about any of those. Instead, most of my columns have been on things I do care about - youngsters and their future, entrepreneurs, inventors, the rise and fall of the downtown, bull-and-bear markets, cars, Toledo's long (and sometimes glorious) business history, and struggling startup owners as well as Fortune 500 bigwigs. Oh, and also characters and crooks, geniuses and bozos of the business world.

I have especially enjoyed the response to columns on the virtues of a messy desk, the great lessons learned from first jobs, and the high cost of being poor.

Several times over the years, I chronicled the successes and failures of my own East Side Pack Rats Investment Club.

On several other occasions, I tallied the costs of keeping a car on the road. An $8,000 1985 Ford Escort, for example, ended up costing a total of $29,000 over its life span of eight years and 150,000 miles - working out to 19 cents a mile. My 1993 Jeep Wrangler, which I drove to its Colorado "retirement home" this year, cost $14,000 new but nearly $46,000 - or 42 cents a mile - by the time it clocked 110,000 miles in 15 years.

I treasured letters, e-mails, and calls from readers, even ones who disagreed with my point of view. I never knew what to expect: A letter of praise could be followed by another one telling me I am an ill-informed jerk.

The greatest reader response came after a column in 1991 titled "Sometimes a dad has to be proud." It was about my youngest son, who, several years after dropping out of high school, surprised me by getting his GED certificate and enrolling in college.

I had a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye when I wrote that column, and apparently it touched a number of readers who had their own experience with problem children.

Several times I wrote about the need for business people to admit mistakes and deal with them, and about the soul-cleansing benefits of forgiveness. In one of those columns I wrote: "To the fast talker who stole my first love away and married her, I forgive you. May I buy you a drink, sir? To the boss who fired me when I was a young and stupid kid, I forgive you. Of course, you interrupted my promising career as a grocery bag boy, but I forgive you anyway. … To my father, who was not a billionaire, Dad, I forgive you. There are some things money can't buy."

Many people think it must be fun to write for a newspaper. Not exactly, especially under deadline pressure, when an empty space awaits and the clock keeps ticking.
T-i-c-k-i-n-g. T-I-C-K-I-N-G.

But even though the actual writing is not much fun, it is fun to have written. Lots of fun. Thanks for reading.

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