When the above image showed up on Facebook, it took me back a few decades, to the year that John Lennon died.
I had temporarily quit the news business in a dispute over a planned vacation that was being withdrawn at the last minute. I took the vacation anyway, leaving weekly newspapers behind for the moment. A period of unemployment was followed by a stopgap government-financed job as a teacher’s aide in the Plymouth, New Hampshire, school district — what educators today like to call paraeducator or paraprofessional because the title sounds good even if the pay is not — and, when the funding ran out, one of the teachers gave me a tip that led to a job creating of Yellow Page ads with rub-on type in Wentworth, New Hampshire. That led to a contact at a printing company in Bradford, Vermont, where I alternated between darkroom work and typesetting, with occasional press duty — until I was invited to join the Mountain Times in Killington, Vermont, as assistant editor. That job turned out to be the most bizarre and maddening one of my life.
The Mountain Times, first published in 1971, was owned by Fred and Olga Straka when I joined them in late 1979. Today, the Strakas apparently are in their 80s and living in Manhattan, while the Mountain Times is now part of Outer Limits Publishing, which also produces Central Vermont Getaways Magazine, The Menu Book, The Summer Guide, The Killington Map, The Rutland Map, and mountaintimes.info.
I first connected with Fred while I was working at Upper Valley Press in Bradford, Vermont. He would fly in with the flats for Ski Racing magazine, out of Fair Haven, and one night I drove to meet him at a small, private airport in a farmer’s field, where I had to go into the barn and flip on the runway lights to guide the approaching aircraft.
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