West: Yep, we are moved

By MIKE WEST

Well, we did it.

We’ve moved to our new home at 113 West Main St.

That doesn’t mean the job is done. We still got boxes to unpack and stuff to find. We are already re-arranging a bit.
For example, there was the beautiful, I-don’t-know-what-kinda plant on the front counter. It looked great, but it also perfectly blocked the identity of anyone coming in our front door.

Teresa and I found ourselves bending and dodging trying to see who had just walked into the newspaper office. So we moved it to the opposite counter. And thus blocked the vision of Ron and Tony.

Oh, we’ll find a place for that plant. (I’m thinking Tony’s chair.)

Another mystery are the scissors.

For a while at the other location we just had one (broken) pair of scissors. It’s tough cutting anything with a pair of dull scissors with a broken plastic handle. But while packing for the move, we discovered all sorts of scissors ... at least five pairs. We carefully packed all of these scissors in one box, which we can’t now find.

It’s tough running a newspaper without scissors.

But we found plenty of lead type ... buckets of the heavy stuff. Buckets too heavy for a tired, old editor to pick up. Yep, he had to scoot them along the floor. Lead type hasn’t been used to print the Courier in many decades.

Naturally, we found a place to store them in the back of the newspaper. Did I mention that our building is l-l-l-ong?
What else did we find in abundance? Coffee cups. We’ve got them of every shape, size and description. If we were so inclined, our staff could drink coffee for months and never have to wash a cup. Fortunately, we aren’t built that way. (Most of us, that is.)

That brings the issue of the coat rack to the forefront. Well, actually it’s near the front door. Oh yes, it is convenient there. That’s normally where you put on your coat and then step out the door. But the coat rack near the front door has the same effect as the aforementioned plant. Yep, it blocks my vision.

Probably, we will all get used to it.

Enough whining.

What I love about the new building is that everything looks bright and new. Our former headquarters looked a bit like a taxi stand. Never seen a taxi stand? My father would describe a taxi stand as a junk hole. Now, the old Courier HQ was a bit loaded with cast-off computers and similar no-longer used equipment and we we stretched out across an open area in a building that used to be a hardware store.

We aren’t perfect yet, but our condition is greatly improved. We have art appropriately arranged on the wall and neat, clean working areas along with an improved computer network and phones that actually have voice mail.
Give us a couple more weeks and we will be completely unpacked and settled in for the next couple hundred years.
Just like Woodbury, the Cannon Courier is on the way up. Come see us. Uh, we don’t have a sign yet, but we are working on it. Just look for our mascot, Dan Wh --- oops --- I meant our four-legged mascots, Princess and Cocoa.

As for Dan, we haven’t told him our new location yet.