A 'fireside chat' with you who read us

When I answered the phone, the caller asked, "Do you accept calls from people who don't want to identify themselves?"

"All the time," I replied.

She took me to task for a column written weeks earlier about the John Edwards affair.

"In that column, you said, or implied, that having an affair has less emotional impact on men that it does on women," she said. "Can you substantiate that?"

I admitted that I couldn't and that my surmise was based on questionable research, certainly not from personal experience.

When I asked why she was just now reprimanding me for a column written weeks ago, she explained, "Well, I was going through some recipes and your column was on the back of one I had clipped from The News & Observer."

Years ago, after The N&O published the first collection of these columns, I received a letter from an Oregon lumberjack that read, "My mother sent me your book. I'm enjoying it a lot. I read one every morning when I go to the john."

Left-handed compliments to be sure, but columnists welcome all kinds.

Raleigh's Gene Puckett, former editor of The Biblical Recorder, remembers how the late Dr. Sydnor Stealey, first president of Southeastern Baptist Seminary, would sometimes write then-editor J. Marse Grant a single line on a postcard: "Marse, that last editorial you wrote was better than some!"

I'm in the book

Newspaper types, while not enjoying brickbats nearly as much as bouquets, do appreciate reader response.

While editor of The Raleigh Times, I once received a call at home from a Cary resident furious over a news story that, he said, misquoted his mother.

I heard him out without interrupting and then asked, "Now, how did we misquote your mother?"

"I don't know and I don't give a damn," he railed. "You shouldn't have quoted her at all. The woman is so confused she doesn't know whether to wind her watch or spit! And I'm coming out there now and beat your a-- before supper."

"Well, sir, you'd better hurry; we're about ready for dessert," I said, whereupon the fellow, now chuckling, said, "I'm still mad as hell. But I will say that I've lived in four other cities around the country and this is the only place where you can find the editor's telephone number in the directory, call him up and give him a piece of your mind!"

Bob Greene, longtime Chicago Tribune columnist, once described a columnist's work thusly: "The business I am in is a strange one. I intrude into people's lives for an hour or a day or a week and I scrape their lives for what I can and then I display the scrapings to strangers.

"When you write about people in a personal way, they react strongly. It is as if you have been in bed with them, the experience stays with them and often you will hear from them later."

I do not buy all of Greene's philosophy, especially about scraping people's lives and, most assuredly, not about a columnist's feeling as if he has been in bed with his readers.

Greene, one of the country's best writers, was eventually fired for an improper bedroom relationship with one of his young fans.

The veteran reporter and columnist James Reston better expresses what I feel about this profession.

"Many writers in other fields live a lonely life and often die before benefiting from the masterpieces that killed them, but solitary dead geniuses do not have much fun. Others devote years to a novel and after reading the reviews, wish they hadn't.

"But newspaper writing, like liquor, is quicker and while what we write today may be condemned tomorrow, at least somebody has noticed that we're alive, and we can start all over again the next day."

The reason we're here

I have been long remiss in not telling you, our readers, how much you mean to me and to this newspaper. You are our reason for being; you're the life blood of what we are really about.

Whether you write or call in anger, angst or with paeans of praise, your input enriches our personal experience and our mission.

Yes, columnists, at least many of us, do develop relationships with our readers, often total strangers, sometimes visiting back and forth via phone, e-mail or even snail mail, without ever knocking on a door, shaking hands or hearing the sound of your voice.

And, along the way --because of a voiced opinion on politics, religion or any number of matters with which others take umbrage -- we encounter a number of critics. That's as it should be. As a result, over the long haul of writing this personal column, I have acquired an extended family out there.

The lyrics of an old country music song by Scott Wiseman asks, "Have I told you lately that I love you?" and answers with, "Well, I'm telling you now."

Whether you've joined us recently or have weathered the years with me, I and The Old Reliable family do sincerely appreciate you.

Even a grumpy curmudgeon like me is entitled to indulge in an occasional display of sentimentality. Thanks.