Paperwork: Not so easy to part with clutter in our lives

In the end, you find yourself throwing away the beginning.

That's how it feels these days.

I am going through boxes pulled off the loft in the garage. And others on hidden shelves in the basement.

They have been there a long time. And now must face a jury of one. Me.

And the ultimate guilty verdict. The simple ruling for each item I pull out .... that it is no longer needed or serves a purpose.

It's true ... out of sight is out of mind. But as I explore each box so much rushes back. And at times overwhelms.

I found two scrapbooks and two notebooks thick with newspaper clips pasted on white pages.

All dutifully dated. The start of my journalism career.

That's what budding journalists did. We saved clips and used them to get jobs at the next, bigger paper.

Those clips also were like trophies. Seeing your name in print ... that byline ... that never gets old.

Until it is. When the clips you are looking at date to '60s and '70s. Old stories that don't matter anymore.

Why now do they still feel like trophies? Just pieces of paper. But ... damn, they are still part of me. The tracks I've left behind.

Certainly I did not need to save everything I wrote. But it looks like I did. Pride is hard to hide.

("Look Mom. Look Dad. Look world. Look at what I did!")

I saved more than stories. I still have cutlines (photo captions) I wrote for the campus paper. (The real beginning.)

The summer of 1968 I interned for a weekly newspaper in Sycamore in DeKalb County.

I wrote 23 historical bits (little space fillers) that summer. I know this because they are in my scrapbook.

Actually I just typed the little gems, such as: "A theory has been formulated suggesting that DeKalb County was at one time a lake bed."

Pasted on a full page, like little badges of honor, are "stubs" from 31 parking tickets.

An amazing summer. I learned journalism can be fun ... besides important.

And the people I worked with are part of a tribe ...where I belonged. Those still around remain friends ... and mentors.

I really don't need clips anymore. Or scrapbooks. And I likely will begin tossing out old resumes and brochures I designed.

What's interesting is what I found attached to old crispy newspaper clips, falling off dried up glue like leaves off a tree.

The dates, for starters. Old stories take me back to a time and a place.

Again and again I mumble, "Oh, I remember that. I remember them.”

And people. Those clips reveal a time and place and people I worked with, people I interviewed. The cast of characters in the world of news.

I was learning about that world and how it works. And how I would fit in with that crazy cast of characters.

All that history staring back at me. As I unpack the past to see if it fits in the present.

That's the mission now I guess. To clear out clutter. So someday (who knows when) others won't inherit the painful task.

I admit that part of me wants those left behind to see the remnants of my life. Realize they are clues to the mystery of me. Who I was. Touch me one last time.

It's hard to call it clutter. But here I sit, staring at old headlines: “Thief gets $192 from local school.”

In the beginning, everything you write is precious. Every bit of praise or recognition becomes a rung on a ladder you must climb.

So it's hard to toss away beginnings.

Hard to watch my tracks fade away.

But that is what I am doing. I am here at some kind of "end." Throwing away the beginning.

And also finding it hard to resist the pull of the past. And the secret desire to be there.

And do it all again.

LONNY CAIN, of Ottawa, is the retired managing editor of The Times. Email to lonnyjcain@gmail.com or mail The Times, 110 W. Jefferson St., Ottawa, IL 61350.