Greetings from a little rivertown in Wisconsin

As recent memories become more distant, distant memories become more recent. My time at the Register-Guard is still very present and in focus.

After 5 years, I left the RG in 1988 to take the next best job I’d ever had — Features designer at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Basically, it was like art directing and designing the Oregon Life section every day — Arts, Food, Family, Lifestyle and Travel sections. More fun than working for a living. Often I could be heard bragging “this is how we did it at the Register-Guard”. The RG prepared me well for more good times in visual journalism.

We settled into the comfy little rivertown of Hudson, Wisconsin along the St. Croix River bordering WI and MN. An easy 19 minute drive to the newspaper in downtown St. Paul.

I arrived at the RG from a photographer position at the Des Moines Register. Having grown up in the very horizontal landscape of Iowa, I thought I had died and gone to heaven in the Willamette Valley. Then, I had my first good cuppa coffee. Ever. Sure enough, I was in heaven.

Rarely a week goes by that I don’t replay the visuals of returning home late night after the day’s RG had been put to bed. We lived on Lincoln Street on College Hill. I would step into a sleeping house and a low hanging night fog would literally spill through the doorway into the living room, backlit by the interior light. Magical.

I still miss that fog… and Eugene… and the creative energy at the Register-Guard. On the positive side, the Pioneer Press day hours put me back in sync with the family and I was no longer the foggy stranger who came home after everyone was in bed.

For nearly 17 years I played guitar in our 7 member Pioneer Press newsroom band, Yesterday’s News. Good time oldies dance music. We would hire out for corporate parties, weddings and about any occasion that called for a feel good music vibe. In our day jobs, we put a fine award winning newspaper. Ultimately, the band became our name…as did the newspaper that we once knew.

I remember a lot of exceptional music talent in the RG newsroom. Great potential waiting to happen. Wish I had stuck around longer for that to take shape. Maybe a Reunion Jam Band?

We were all beyond blessed to have come of age at the RG in that Golden Era Playground of exceptional journalism, creative writing, photojournalism, publication design. Retirement in 2016 finds me enjoying the very things I enjoyed during the previous 42 year career — photography, design, music.

Play well, friends.

— Larry May