We all gotta start somewhere, and since it was exactly what I’d always hoped to do plus paid a smooth $250 a week plus was the only job offer I had, I started my “career” as a sportswriter at “The Longview News-Journal” in East Texas 40 years ago this summer, 24, ready for a fight, proud to have health and dental.

And a free daily paper.

Louisiana Tech had coached me up as best it could, even graduate school and all. As an assistant in sports information, I’d had the chance to cover ball and meet the state’s ink-stained wretches and had what I thought was a hard-boiled idea of what the sports writing world was like. Had worked on the school paper, served as a stringer for ballgames and features, even talked to the Associated Press guys. On deadline.

Lots of time on the IBM Selectric.

Plus I knew how to work. Had done it since I was a little fella. Cucumber picking. Corn scratching. Tractor driving. Tobacco hanging. Grass mowing.

Had every reason to be confident. Big reader. Great teachers. Professional journalistic role models of the highest order in Keith Prince and Wiley Hilburn.

But I was scared to death.

Funny what you remember. I turned onto I-20 from Exit 82 in Ruston, the Tech exit, and noticed a brown roper, a cowboy boot, had fallen out of the bed of my truck onto the shoulder. Thought I’d packed everything in better than that, and still wonder why it had caught my eye in the passenger mirror, my roper tumbling out. Even as I got out and stuffed it in back in, I remember thinking I would never forget that moment, me trying to be a rookie professional — and things falling out before I’d even left town.

But John Inman, God rest his cheery, patient soul, was there to meet me in Longview. He loved to eat and we made the rounds during the suppertime break, it being summer and no high school football or basketball or baseball games to cover. Don’t know about today, but 40 years ago, a man could eat fine in Longview. Burgers & Fries. The Butcher Shop. A cafeteria or two.

Every morning, I’d sit outside my apartment by a swimming pool and read our Longview paper, “The Dallas Morning News,” and “The Fort Worth Star-Telegram.”

I’d seldom had it so good.

1984 was the summer the Detroit Tigers started their season 35-5, the subject of one of Mr. Inman’s questions during my job interview, which lasted almost a whole minute.

“What about those Detroit Tigers?” he said.

“Hot as grandma’s skillet,” I said.

He asked if I could start Tuesday.

It was the summer of the Olympics in Los Angeles, Mary Lou Retton and Greg Louganis and Mary Decker, a middle-distance runner and, along with Retton, an American Sweetheart. But she tripped and fell four laps into the 3,000 meters and there the iconic photo of her all alone, clutching her ankle or some leg part, in tears, and I wrote a column from two time zones away, “The Queen Has Fallen,” or something ridiculous like that.

Country come to town.

It was the summer the Cincinnati Reds retired the number of Johnny Bench, who’d played the final game of his Hall of Fame career the fall before, and I wrote a column that ended, “Thanks, Number 5, for the memories,” or some such. I think Mr. Inman didn’t edit that out, just to teach me a lesson about maybe not being a sappy idiot in words and whatnot. “Thanks for the memories” and cue the soap opera music …

Good lord help us all.

The only “live” event I covered all summer was the Longview City Golf Championships, and hopefully I got the winner’s name and score correct. And there was the Green Bay at Dallas preseason scrap, not exactly The Game of the Century.

But what a time it was. I learned a lot, pasting up the paper at midnight, hanging with fellow young bucks Olin and Kyle, who are still in the business, and with David, who I’ve lost touch with but who is likely out there somewhere smiling and being big and all muscled up and looking a lot more like a linebacker than a sportswriter.

Mr. Inman did what he could with us. What a blessing. Even with a weekly check of $197 and change, after taxes. Money ain’t everything.

Thanks, guys, for the memories …

Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu