{"id":1510,"date":"2015-02-16T22:44:31","date_gmt":"2015-02-16T22:44:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=1510"},"modified":"2015-02-16T22:44:43","modified_gmt":"2015-02-16T22:44:43","slug":"still-have-the-passion-the-love-for-writing-stories-time-has-forgotten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=1510","title":{"rendered":"Still have the passion, the love for writing stories time has forgotten"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Terry<\/a><\/p>\n

TERRY MOSHER<\/p>\n

The Plumber was here this morning fixing a leaky faucet and we talked a little bit while he quickly mended the problem. I hadn\u2019t known he had an open heart procedure about 10 years ago. He said he immediately felt great and was up the next day and walking the hospital halls.<\/p>\n

I confessed to him that I also had a major surgery and my recovery was nothing like his. It took me almost four months to bounce back from my May 13th<\/sup> trip to the hospital last year. \u00a0I have not bounced back all the way. I\u2019m about 60 percent of what I was, and chances are not good that I will get much past that 60 percent.<\/p>\n

So now I\u2019m 105 going on 120. I\u2019m still able to get around and to write, which is therapeutic for me. I\u2019ve been writing for over 45 years now and when I\u2019m asked the work I do always reply that I have not worked since I became a writer.<\/p>\n

That is supposed to be funny. But, really, I have not worked since Feb. 2, 1970 when I started as a sportswriter for the old Bremerton Sun. This is fun; it\u2019s not work. I know what work is because I farmed as a young boy \u2013 bucking bales mostly \u2013 worked trimming trees in an orchard, picked and bagged potatoes and helped my father build a house (if pounding nails with a hammer and digging a foundation is helping build a house).<\/p>\n

Once I got my degree from Western Washington I settled into white collar jobs \u2013 business manager, office manager, and office coordinator overseeing a bunch of truck drivers out in the sweaty oil fields of Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas.<\/p>\n

I took a drastic pay cut to become a sportswriter, but it was worth it to get to watch games, including the Mariners for nearly 30 years and the Washington Huskies (football and basketball) for over almost 25 years.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s doubtful that anybody can do what I did in today\u2019s world and just walk in off the street without any writing experience and become a member of the print media. Print jobs have been shrinking now for at least a decade and the jobs that are available are loaded with additional responsibility that includes Twitter, Facebook and blogging as well as video production.<\/p>\n

What I\u00a0 find amusing is that sportswriters now are encouraged to also be regular guests or work as co-hosts on talk radio. When I was going at it at my peak we could not be part of another media, although to be honest I did extra work during the beginning of the dot. com. era with a budding dot.com. company in San Francisco, and I also wrote for a football magazine.<\/p>\n

When I also wrote some stories for the Mariner Magazine, I got caught by my editor at the Bremerton Sun and was told in the future I had to get permission to write for it. Instead of doing that, I just quit writing for the magazine.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a fun ride. I don\u2019t think I would take back much of what I have done for the last 45 years. There were long days and long nights, some of them that were consecutive for a week or more. The long hours were such that when I went on a family vacation for a couple weeks it would take me three to four days to come down from the high I was on from all the fun work and then the last three or four days of vacation I would have to jack myself up again to be mentally prepared for the long work hours.<\/p>\n

I say work lightly. As I said before, writing is not work if you truly enjoy\u00a0 it. And\u00a0 that goes for any profession. If you really enjoy what you do, it\u2019s not work. I have enjoyed nearly every moment.<\/p>\n

There are times even now that I will\u00a0 be writing and not realize four or five or six hours have passed. You have no doubt heard book authors talk about getting involved in the characters they have created and lose track of time. Well, it\u2019s the same with writing sports. I get lost in just about every story I do, no matter the importance. It could be a pee wee story or a story on Ken Griffey Jr. \u2013 they are all important to me as I write them. They are, in a sense, the biggest story in the world to me. Once they are done, however, and passed on to my editors, I move on to the next one without thinking back.<\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019s just me, but I can\u2019t think of a job that I haven\u2019t enjoyed. Even digging a ditch or a foundation, which I have done numerous times. Or sweating in a 100-degree hay loft packing bales of hay together as they come off an escalator.<\/p>\n

That thought brings back a memory of working on a farm in Ferndale and the farm hands were throwing bales off the truck onto the escalator as fast as they could and I\u2019m in the hay loft, sweat rolling down my arms and dust clogging up my nose making it hard to breathe as I\u2019m trying to keep up. I remember more than once yelling to the farm hands to slow down, but they would just laugh and go at it even faster.<\/p>\n

But, you know what? It was fun even in those conditions. There is always a reward at the end of a hard day, and to me it was a cool drink of water and a few splashes on my face.\u00a0 I know I would come home and linger for a long time in the bathtub, just soaking up the good feeling of washing away the grime and the dirt.<\/p>\n

When I was finally clean again, the joy was over the top. I felt a sense of accomplishment of a job well done, and now I could relax and enjoy the moment while listening to some good music.<\/p>\n

The difficult part of being a sportswriter is working against a set deadline. I dreaded Friday night football games, especially at North Kitsap, because by the time I got back to the office in Bremerton to write I might have just 30 minutes to meet the deadline. Trying writing a game story and putting together the statistics in 30 minutes. It\u2019s not only hard to do, but you are seldom satisfied with the hurried result. There seems to be always a \u201coh, no\u201d moment when you realize after the story has gone to press that you forgot something. But it is what it is, and there is not much you can do about it.<\/p>\n

Whether it\u2019s being a writer or just because I have gotten old, I have a greater sense now of things and people who don\u2019t get the necessary public exposure I feel they should. And I\u2019m talking about things or people in the past.<\/p>\n

We just lost, for example, two people \u2013 George Ogg and George Strong \u2013 who maybe did not get the public attention they should\u00a0 have. Although, I did do a story on Strong some years ago. He was a lovable person who suffered through World War II and the famous Battle of the Bulge, being a prisoner of war, and had a remarkable memory of those terrible times.<\/p>\n

Ogg, I believe, went to Olympic College and Washington State. He was a key player on the Bremerton High School football team that won the 1947 mythical state championship. He also was a good catcher who played some semi-pro baseball and for almost a decade caught in fastpitch softball, which at the time was big in Bremerton.<\/p>\n

I love to do stories on people who have largely been forgotten by time. Again, maybe it\u2019s me. Maybe it\u2019s because I have great memories from my youth and have lost a lot of\u00a0 the friends I had back then, and I feel sad that they don\u2019t get to be remembered, except by me in most cases.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s fun to bring back into focus those people who have left us, like Ted Tappe, Les Eathorne and Ken Wills. Now I have a person who wants me to write about the 1949 Bremerton football team that went unbeaten. I may give that a whirl.<\/p>\n

There are also stories on Pat Dunn and Kurt Vestman I\u2019m thinking about. Both of those guys graduated from Bainbridge and went on to play college football.<\/p>\n

The one story I don\u2019t believe I ever will do is the one on Bryan Hinkle. I can\u2019t seem to locate him and when I did locate him years ago he never returned my phone calls.<\/p>\n

Hinkle, you might remember, played football at Central Kitsap, graduating in 1976. He then played football at Oregon and for 12 seasons (1982-93) in the NFL as a starting linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know how much longer I can continue doing what I love to do \u2013 write. As long as the Kitsap Sun will have me, I will continue to write a Wednesday sports column for it, and do an occasionally feature story.\u00a0 That is where my love is.<\/p>\n

When I write, I do so from home on the third level of our house overlooking Phinney Bay and the Bremerton Yacht Club. We have had a wonderful winter with warmer weather and more sunshine than usual. I can look out a big bay window here in my lofty perch and see bald Eagles, crows, seagulls and all kinds of birds flying around. The eagles are something else. When there is a strong breeze they will soar in big circles higher and higher and higher. Sometimes the crows chase them, but they can\u2019t go as high as the eagles, who outsmart them by going higher.<\/p>\n

Then there are the two fat raccoons \u2013 ma and pa \u2013 who rumble through our backyard. I even saw a fresh water otter come into the backyard one day, looking for some easy food.<\/p>\n

In short, it\u2019s wonderful up here. I have the music on, usually listening to Cajun or Creole music from Louisiana as I write. Man, the stories I get to hear from musicians from the Website American Routes. Some of them are unbelievable, and most of the musicians are so humble it\u2019s amazing.<\/p>\n

One guy told how he got to New Orleans and started his music career. He lived in poverty as a youngster and was warned by his mother not to go to New Orleans because of the nefarious things that could happen to him there.<\/p>\n

But one day he gathered the little things he had in a small bag and waited along the railroad tracks for a train he could jump aboard. \u00a0He made one box car and knew better to take the train all the way to its destination because security would capture him.<\/p>\n

So he jumped off the train, skinning himself up pretty badly and also losing his precious few clothes. But New Orleans was nothing like his mother warned, and he went on to become legendary in the city for his music.<\/p>\n

That reminds me of me, just a bit. I hitchhiked across the country when I was just 17. It wasn\u2019t my first adventure, but it was an eye-opener for the kind of people I caught rides with.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still into adventures, only now they are adventures in writing. I may not\u00a0 have as much energy as I had before surgery, but I still have the passion for writing. So I will continue on until like sportswriter Royal Brougham they carry me out of my perch feet first.<\/p>\n

Brougham, 84, suffered a fatal heart attack on Oct. 30, 1978 while in the press box at the Kingdome watching an NFL football game between the Seahawks and Denver.<\/p>\n

Seahawks lost.<\/p>\n

So did the great Northwest when the legendary Brougham died.<\/p>\n

But we are into winning here. Hopefully, you will like what I produce.<\/p>\n

Be well pal.<\/p>\n

Be careful out there<\/p>\n

Have a great day.<\/p>\n

You are loved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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