I began this column-writing gig back in 1963. My first newspaper opinion column (as opposed to news or sports stories) was a roundup of Presque Isle and Erie area lake fishing for the Erie Daily Times.

As a college kid, I was low person on the sports department seniority totem pole and I knew a squid from a sardine.

From then to now is a long, long time of writing weekly columns for newspapers in Erie; in Canton and Akron, Ohio; in Warren, Pa., and Jamestown, N.Y.; and for the past 32 years, in DuBois, Brookville and New Bethlehem.

All good things come to an end.

I should turn 80 years old later this year, my 59th year of writing these columns. That’s enough. I have always feared being gently told that these columns no longer resonate with readers, so I would be “asked” to retire. I prefer to skip out on my own terms.

Any way you slice it, I have written a lot of words. A newspaper column averages about 800 words. Allowing 48 columns per year to account for vacations, illnesses, etc., that works out to about 2,265,600 words. The average novel contains about 100,000 words. So 2,265,000 words equals about 22 novels. That is the quantity. What about the quality, the excellence?

That is not for me to say.

I can cite what my colleagues in the newspaper business have thought during those years. They are a tough audience. Pennsylvania’s two statewide journalism contests are run by the Pennsylvania News Media Association and the state Associated Press Managing Editors association. Each year, contest entries are bundled and sent to cooperating editors in another state. I can recall having Pennsylvania’s entries judged by editors from New York State, Massachusetts, Nevada, Ohio, California and Missouri. In return, Pennsylvania’s members in our two associations judge the entries from other states. I have done that judging for the past 30 years.

As I said, it is a tough audience.

My columns were usually for newspapers of 10,000-20,000 circulation. Moldering inside boxes stored in our barn are plaques or certificates labeling my columns as statewide winners, usually first or second place, in 1979, 1981, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1999, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2017, 2018, 2020 and 2021. There are also plaques for straight news stories, feature stories and editorial commentaries, but the recognition that some of my columns were among the best ones in the state have been the most meaningful to me.

Sometimes, the well does run dry, due to writers’ block, the press of other work, illness, etc. In those instances, we just pray that the 800 words we churn out will fill the space in more entertaining fashion than it would be if we just typed names and addresses out of telephone books.

(Remember telephone books? A legendary Erie editor, Ben Jones of the Erie Morning News, once told me that copying names from the phone book would have been an improvement over one of my early column-writing efforts.)

My first columns were pounded out, literally, on worn-out manual typewriters. In Erie, we used four sheets of carbon paper to make five copies of each article, to be sent to various editors, page layout folks and printers. The one who got the fifth copy had to squint; we reused that carbon paper, and the copies were typed onto chunks of newsprint that had been cut into 8.5×11 sheets after having been stripped from the nearly empty butt ends of newsprint rolls. “One grade up from toilet paper,” was the description of our copy paper back then. Today, there is no paper until the presses roll; keyboards transfer words directly into computers, then onto printing plates.

The newspaper technological progress continued through IBM Selectric typewriters, the first “dumb” computer terminals, “smart” (free-standing) computer terminals and today’s whiz-bang machines.

Through all that, I tried to tell stories that were both interesting and informative. Sometimes, I succeeded. At other times, readers let me know, sometimes pungently, that my prose was wide of the mark or, worse, boring.

My words were not just thrown into vacuums. Several publishers, dozens of editors and hundreds of colleagues helped to sharpen them, focus them, focus me.

Thanks to all of them. Thanks, too, to the people who were the topics of those columns, including my family, whose foibles provided grist.

Most of all, thank you to those of you who took the time to read what I had to say, evaluate it and then agree or disagree.

I wasn’t out to prove anything. Just telling stories is what I have enjoyed the most. Now, while I still have most of my marbles, it is time to pass that privilege on to younger folks.

In the “old days,” we let printers know which of those typed sheets or carbon copies was the end of the story, in case things got shuffled. We typed “30,” centered, at the end.

That is not necessary in this day of words on computer screens. But I like the nostalgia, so ….

Denny Bonavita is a former editor/publisher at newspapers in DuBois, Brookville, New Bethlehem and Warren. He lives near Brookville. Email: notniceman9@gmail.com