I did stories about unexpected encounters, back roads, small towns and ordinary folk, sometimes doing something a little extraordinary.

Often I have been exhausted on trout streams, uncomfortable, wet, cold, briar scarred, sunburned, mosquito bitten, but never, with a fly rod in my hand have I been less than in a place that was less than beautiful.

Now that I look back on it, having retired from being a reporter, it was kind of romantic. It was a wonderful way to live one's life, just as I imagined it would be when I was 6 or 7.

When we become a really mature, grown-up, wise society, we will put teachers at the center of the community, where they belong. We don't honor them enough, we don't pay them enough.

I did stories about unexpected encounters, back roads, small towns and ordinary folk, sometimes doing something a little extraordinary.

My mother, at least twice, cancelled our family's subscription to the newspaper I was working on, because she was so mad about its treatment of my father.

Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.