NICE WORK

[[wysiwyg_imageupload:309:]]In the 1980s, I got the job that would define my career as an editor at Habitat.

The job started with a handshake. In March 1982, I was all of 25 and I had been without a full-time job for a year or so. My first gig out of college had been at Firehouse magazine (1978-1981), where I learned all I ever wanted to know about the fire service industry.

After two-and-a-half years on that job, first as assistant editor and then as associate editor, I had had enough. I left for a gig at Americana magazine – which started as a promising partnership and ended up a disaster. I moved on after six months – writing about firefighters was more my thing apparently than making rocking chairs seem interesting – and I took off for a year to write my first book, produce cable TV's Videosyncracies, and discover improvisation.

And then I got my job at Habitat. While there, I wrote a great deal of freelance stories for various publications, and in the process, met a number of my childhood idols: Patrick McGoohan, Raymond Burr, the cast of Monty Python. And I got paid for it too! Nice work if you can get it and for a while, I did.

May 1, 2011