Is it about time to stop writing?

Let’s have a show of hands.

Should I just shut up? Should I just put a sock in it?

A recent 50th wedding anniversary and a recent 55th high school reunion have me very aware of the passage of time.

I came home to Jay County in August of 1974 as part of the newsroom staff of The Commercial Review. Theoretically, I was second banana in the newsroom. Mostly that meant I got to work every other Saturday morning. The CR’s Saturday paper came out in the early afternoon in those days.

But beginning in January 1977 I took over duties writing the daily paper’s editorials. That’s more than 44 years ago.

That’s a lot of verbiage, a lot of opinion, and more than enough times to irritate even the most loyal reader.

It’s also enough time to contradict myself. Attorney Phil Frantz nailed me on that a long, long time ago.

At the start, it was as if the floodgates had been opened.

I had opinions on everything. Or, more accurately, I had a space to fill on the editorial page as often as possible.

I’d bang out something on the typewriter in those pre-computer days, hand it to the composing room and hope it made sense when the page was proofread later. For the most part, the editorials made sense.

They may not have been profound, but I liked to think that they were thought provoking. If they didn’t persuade, at least they made you consider another point of view for a few minutes.

Still, they ruffled feathers, especially when I touched on local issues.

At one point in the late 1970s, a local judge threatened me with contempt of court after I ridiculed a couple of egregious rulings. Sheriffs also tended not to like me very much. Some mayors, council members, commissioners, state representatives and school board members fell into the same category.

That’s OK. It goes with the territory.

When the floodgates were completely open, I was writing six editorials a week, 52 weeks a year. No wonder I contradicted myself.

I also wrote a few that I came to regret.

Anyone who deals in words can tell you they’d like to have some of them back.

From the beginning, I insisted upon putting my initials on each editorial. That’s what my father had done back in the 1960s. That’s what Tom Witherspoon and Dan Rottenberg did when they were in the same role.

Doing that is not a normal American newspaper tradition. Usually, editorials run without attribution. But I figured — as my dad had figured — that if we were going to require people to sign their names to letters to the editor, then we ought to have the courage of our convictions and let readers know whose words they were reading.

Eventually, the flood of editorials slowed, though the writing didn’t stop. About 25 years ago, I started writing a column for The News and Sun — this column. About 20 years ago, the column also started running in the daily.

Now you’d think that writing an editorial and writing a newspaper column would be pretty much the same thing. But you’d be wrong.

An editorial is a much more formal statement. It attempts to make a point, suggest an idea, set an agenda, voice a criticism, applaud good works and essentially be the voice of the newspaper.

A column, like this one, is just my voice, not the newspaper’s. So its aims are more personal and lighter in tone. An editorial is serious business; a column doesn’t take itself too seriously.

But now, looking back over the decades, I find myself wondering if you’ve heard about enough from me.

I figure I’ve written more than 1,300 columns. Editorials? At least six or seven times that many.

Multiply by an average of about 500 words and you’re getting into crazy numbers.

So, I ask you, as I approach the end of the first full year of my “retirement,” is it time for me to put a sock in it?

Let’s see a show of hands.