Column: Farewell, My Readers

Hard to believe my first contribution to The Best Years was in 1995, a story about my dad making laptop dulcimers.

The story about my now-late father, Arthur Bender, was part of a class assignment for an English composition class at SEMO. We were to submit a story for publication, and that was my first time having anything published. It was perhaps a year later before I did another one about the old one-room school that was in Egypt Mills where my late mother, Cecelia Bender, went to school.

Some of the first articles I did were about local history, focusing on places like Neely’s Landing, Hines’ Landing, Moccasin Springs and other locations with historical interest. I interviewed on cassette dozens of people, getting their stories of how they lived “in the old days.” It was time-consuming to visit so many people over those years, but it was educational. Brad Spencer of Chaffee, Mo., who worked on the railroad. Otis Lange of rural Cape Girardeau who was a section gang member for the railroad out of Bainbridge at the time. Wildlife conservation agents Ken West and Russell Duckworth. Met a lot of people over the years.

My interest in writing and journalism sent me to the University of Missouri and then to the University of Nebraska. Missouri’s J-school is nearly impossible to get into, so I went to Nebraska for that, and though I took the requisite research and writing classes, I also emphasized photography, or photojournalism. I do still love taking photos.

By 2002 or so, I was writing a story for TBY every month, and many of those became more of what interested me, like duck hunting, camping and setting fishing lines. Around 2010, the Southeast Missourian went through some changes, and columnists were asked to do a story every two months to help others have opportunity to contribute. Even so, from the first story about my dad to this one, I’ve probably done 150 articles for the paper, all without compensation. It was just for the sheer joy of getting to write and share my experiences.

These past few years, I’ve focused more on my dogs, Violet and Dawn. Violet was technically Mom’s dog, even though I worked with both dogs in terms of obedience training and retriever training, which is my ongoing focus for both.

So, it’s time to say goodbye and let this column space open up for a new contributor. Who knows? Maybe the next writer taking this spot will contribute as many stories, too. Thank all of you for reading my content over the years. I’ll still be around.

Take care,

Steven