I had just begun to write my column for this week when I received a Patch – Breaking News Alert, which you can receive also, if you wish. Go to the Mansfield Patch homepage and click on log-in, fill out the registration information and be sure to check the box that reads - I want to receive the Mansfield daily newsletter and updates about Patch!  

That’s it! It’s really that simple. For those of you who are paranoid and think there’s a vast left-wing and/or right-wing conspiracy determined to gather all of your personal information, please keep this in mind; the information you provide will only be used to supply you with the most up-to-date information regarding the ins, outs and what-have-you’s concerning everything Mansfield.  

But more importantly, Patch will never share your personal information with anyone else because let’s face it; who would want it? Do you really think you’re that important? Patch provides this service free of charge. Hey, we do what we can! 

The best part is that you’ll get all the breaking news before your next door neighbor; the one who thinks he knows everything about everything and borrows your lawn mower and never returns it and then when he finally does bring it back, after you’ve called and left him threatening message after threatening message; the mower has grass all clumped up around the blade and you have to clean it out and then while you’re cleaning it out the cops pull up in your driveway and serve you with a restraining order that says you have to stay at least three-hundred feet away from your neighbors wife just because you  were gawking at her through the fence while she was sunbathing in the back yard.  

Anyway, you’ll get all the news before that loser does if you’ll just sign up for Patch – Breaking News Alerts.  

The Breaking News Alert I just received was about a broken water main on Stearns Avenue in Mansfield. There was also a Tweet about men in Hazmat suits wandering around at Cumberland Farms, supposedly doing some ‘routine maintenance’. Hmmm! Hazmat suits? Routine maintenance? It sounds like the work of that same vast left wing/right wing conspiracy that wants your personal info. They’re everywhere!  

What the heck is going on lately? Record snow – frigid temperatures – ice – sleet –freezing rain –roofs collapsing all over the state, and now this! The word, Calamitous, comes to mind - or Cataclysmic. Those two words are a bit redundant, but they’re pretty cool words. You just don’t hear cool words all that much anymore. 

I’ve always had a love for words. Now that I think about it, love may not be the proper term. Perhaps it would be more precise to say that I have an infatuation with words. I’ve always been fascinated by their power. Words are a tremendous tool in the hands of one who has the skill to employ them properly – to wield them like a finely honed sword. 

In a column I wrote in the Easton Patch, I mentioned that my mom and I made regular trips to the Mansfield Public Library from the time I was able to walk. Unlike the library today, the old library was a little creepy, dark and damp, but to me it was a place to lose myself; a world of fantasy and intrigue.  

I’d always object when my mother would say, “We’re going to the library now so you’ll have to come in.” I’d be playing Wiffle Ball with my friends or maybe I’d be perched up in the top of one of the huge, old maples behind our house, swinging in the warm summer breeze, and going to the library, especially with my mother, was the last thing I wanted to do. But once I got there I felt much differently. I made a strange transformation. I became Literary Man! 

I never let on to my friends that I had a love for words or books, or that I treasured the time I spent exploring the musty old bookshelves at the library, crawling into the many hidden nooks with my favorite book.  It wasn’t the cool thing to do.  

Peer pressure is a powerful force and as a young boy I understood that only too well. I had seen kids terrorized for not fitting in, for breaking the mold. The truth was, I did fit in. I had lots of friends; I loved sports, which actually may have been my first love back then. But I always felt something inside – something calling me to another place. Perhaps it was the me that I was to be, pulling at me, striving to guide me to the place where I truly belonged – to my destiny. 

I started a neighborhood newspaper at the age of eleven and managed to get most of the neighborhood kids involved. We’d gather all the neighborhood news during the week and on the weekends we’d ‘go to press’ so to speak. Going to press entailed hand-writing one copy of our weekly rag and then reproducing it. I think one of the kid’s moms had an old (of course it wasn’t old then) mimeograph machine and she’d run them off for us, but I can’t seem to remember that part all that clearly.  

It may be that my memory is clouded because I lost a few brain cells from sniffing the heavenly smelling, yet noxious fumes from the freshly mimeographed reproductions – or it could be the sixties, but we won’t go there. Those of you who are old enough to remember the smell of a freshly reproduced copy from a mimeograph machine will never forget it. Am I right?  

We had the same distribution system as the biggest of the newspaper magnates of the day. Our product was delivered directly to the customer’s door by eleven and twelve year olds. I’ve spent most of my adult life in the newspaper industry and it has always seemed odd to me that multi-billion dollar newspaper syndicates, conglomerates of enormous power and influence, are at the mercy of prepubescent boys to get their product in the hands of the customer. That’s horrifying on many levels. 

One of the highlights of our tiny tabloid was my column. Yes, I was a columnist at the tender age of eleven. My column was called, Whether Or Not. Great name, huh? I was very proud of it. I remember sitting out in Chris Lovely’s barn, penning the words that will live in perpetuity; the words of my first column; the launching point of my career.  

Whether Or Not

By Bobby Havey 

Whether or not the weatherman will ever get the forecast right is beyond me. 

That was it! That was my whole column, inspired by many years of listening to my dad moan about the WBZ-TV weatherman, Don Kent. It was poignant. It was magnificent. I was certain I would win the Pulitzer Prize for literature. I could almost see myself walking up to the stage – gesturing to the jubilant crowd, like Queen Elizabeth waving to her faithful subjects. Surely, William Randolph Hearst would be calling, offering me a huge contract. What a day! 

Strangely, many years later, in 1969, I did go to work for William Randolph Hearst. Well, not directly but I worked at a Hearst newspaper, The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. It was my first job in the industry. The Herald-Examiner is gone now – defunct. A long, debilitating strike by the union put them out of business for good.  

I spent the next four decades in the newspaper business. There were times that I didn’t think I’d make it, times that the pressure of deadlines, sometimes three or four a day, nearly drove me out of the industry. But I stayed. I persevered.

To think it all started in Chris Lovely’s damp, old barn on the corner of South Main and Spring Streets, with a few sheets of paper, a couple of ballpoint pens, the pungent odor of the mimeograph – and my friends.  

And now it seems I’ve come full circle. I’m home again! 

Make it a great week!

Bob Havey is a freelance writer and a Mansfield native, currently living in Easton. His column "Take Me Back" appears every Friday at http://mansfield-ma.patch.com. His other column, The View From Here, may be seen each Tuesday at http://easton-ma.patch.com. Watch for his inaugural column at http://foxborough.patch.com next Tuesday.