Kvelve's Comments: A chance to live the dream

One of the things I always wanted to be growing up was a sportswriter.

OK, I would have been cool being the lead guitar player for someone like Metallica or AC/DC also, but writing about sports always seemed like a cool thing to be. 

I was sports editor of the school newspaper at Billings Senior High, and again several years later, was the sports editor, then editor of the Easterner, the student newspaper at Eastern Washington University. 

After a life interruption call to duty, I found myself being hired as a reporter/photographer for the Spokane Daily Chronicle, then the Spokesman-Review when the two dailies merged. 

I was hired as a regular beat reporter and feature writer, but I always hung around with the sports scribes, hoping someday I would get a chance to be one of them. 

Along the way, I went back to school and got my certification in Radiological Technology, which became my “career” for 42 years. 

I had a chance to go to work for the Wenatchee World in Wenatchee, Washington, a beautiful apple-growing town along the Columbia River. 

But the boss, aka my ex-wife, did not want to move out of Spokane and live in “that” town. 

So, for years I pursued X-rays, CT scans, MRIs, renal lithotripsy, and other forms of radiology. Jobs were plentiful and usually paid very well. 

Then, as the years wore by and I decided it was time to do something other than take diagnostic images of sick and injured people.  One day while working at the hospital in Plains, it dawned on me that 42 years was enough. 

I tried bartending, mostly to give me something to do. I do not have the patience or understanding to wait on people who are intoxicated or on their way to becoming so. 

So, one day I walked into the offices of the Valley Press and asked the ladies working there if they needed writing help, explaining that I once worked for the Spokane newspapers. 

“When can you start?” was the rapid response. 

I began covering pretty much everything in Sanders and Mineral counties, then realized how big high school sports are to so many of the residents living in small-town Montana. 

I weaseled my way into covering the seven high schools in the two counties, and set about covering all the sports. 

I was a big task.  For most of the past five years, I have been covering sports, including getting paid to watch games and writing about them.  It was the dream job I’ve always wanted. 

It was a match made in employment Heaven. Sports, where have you been all my life? 

And now, with heart surgeries and other medical needs dominating my life more and more, I’ve come to the realization that it is rapidly approaching time for me to hang up the typewriter keys and be an actual retired guy. 

Yeah, right Chuck. Counting flowers on the wall can’t be that bad, eh?