It's been a lot of fun
By Brent E. McCoy thereal@roadrunner.com

It was a warm summer's evening back in August 2003. I was just settling in for a nice quiet evening at home when the phone rang. It was an old cohort of mine. By old cohort, I mean that I had known him for some time. He wasn't really old, at least not then.

He told me that there was going to be a new newspaper dedicated to serving the community of Moorpark and asked if I would be willing to write a column for the inaugural edition. It would be a column with an often humorous look at life in general and life in Moorpark in particular. I figured I might as well give it a shot. After all, how long could something like this last.

Well, as of this writing, that was 100 columns ago. Actually, it was 104 columns ago. Four articles never made it to the printer. Some of these were lost due to more important stories needing the space. A couple of articles were destined for the shredder as a result of the superior good taste on the part of the editor and publisher. But 99 made it before this one.

It has certainly been a marvelous ride so far, and I hope that I've managed to impart a laugh or a smile somewhere along the way.

This column has featured local politicians of both parties, commissions, boards and councils. One article depicted Moorpark 20 years in the future. A favorite topic has been the physical state of the city, including the streets, traffic, drivers and "The Dip."

Over the years, the streets and the traffic have gotten better in some places and worse in others. The drivers have more complicated cellphones. The city has grown out, if not up. Politicians and board members have come and gone. "The Dip," however, just dips along, year after year. It's good to have some stability, which you won't have if you're going too fast when you hit it.

If I am fortunate enough to get the chance to pen another hundred columns, maybe I'll be famous enough by then that they'll let me pour in the first shovel of asphalt when they finally fix "The Dip." On the other hand, if they have paid careful attention to the columns over the years, they may just hand me a shovel and send me out there at the height of rush hour.

Most of all, I have enjoyed writing about my own children's challenges with life. They have, for the most part, forgiven me.

There were a few awkward moments in the early days. A headline or two didn't make sense. Once, I was at the ball field and a friend of mine complained that the current column didn't make any sense. How could it not make sense? It made sense when I wrote it. I went home and read the offending article one more time. I had written it and even I couldn't tell what I was trying to say. Somewhere along the way, part of a paragraph had gotten deleted. Oh well, these things happen.

None of this would have been possible without the support of the editor and publisher. There never would have been a hundred columns if the Moorpark Acorn staff hadn't corrected countless errors. And most of all, none of this could have happened without you.

Thank you.