In 1979, working miserably for an Ohio state legislator, I was lamenting my lot over an underheated pot pie one evening when the phone rang. A man's voice told me he had an opening at the Herald-Dispatch in Huntington, W.Va.

"I'll take it!" I said breathlessly.

Don Hatfield chuckled with what sounded like delight and said, "I haven't offered you the job yet."

Thank God he did. Otherwise it would not have been I who, three weekends ago, cheered when Don walked through the door of Charlie and Pamela Bowen's house. By then, I had hugged a slew of former Herald-Dispatch colleagues who had come from as far as Portland, Ore.; Milwaukee, Wis.; and Rochester, N.Y.

People entered our reunion household as if Santa Claus were behind the door. The photographer who taught me how to report at a crime scene, Lee Bernard, came in on a walker. Columnist Dave Peyton, an original and traditional Appalachian storyteller, gathered a crowd around a braided rug.

When Mara Rose Williams arrived, I made a zoo-animal sound and ran to her. We had been such buds and it had been 26 years since we'd seen each other.

After mingling, I went off into a corner to watch everyone and to remember.

In 1979, my future looked like Grand Central Station. So many J-school graduates were hot to be Woodward and Bernstein I had to wait nine gaping months to get a call from Don, who had assessed my woeful resume -- I hadn't even worked on the college paper -- and figured I might be trainable.

He had confidence in untried young reporters because he had a wealth of great mentors to offer them. City editors Charlie Bowen and Steve Byers would sit us down and talk about how the universal and the personal could reside together in a story that didn't have to be long; check was always followed by double-check, and be sure the quotes you used were better than what you could paraphrase.

At my first crime scene, Lee Bernard put his arm around my shoulders and pointed at an officer. "That's the man you want to talk to," he said, "but don't ask him for information now. Ask him when he'll have it."

Every day, Don Hatfield made newsroom rounds, patting us on the back, asking what we were working on, giving advice and chuckling like a father.

Mara and I sat across from each other in a little compound of desks that included Patty Rhule, Doug Imbrogno and Jerry Laws. We were the five musketeers. Charlie, sitting a few feet away, sucked on his pipe and tilted his head as he read our copy.

The reunion marked 30 years since the demise of the Huntington Advertiser. The Herald-Dispatch had been the victor in a Gannett Co. takeover. These contractions had not yet become common in 1980. The recollection of old colleagues brought back the hues of a picture that had faded, of a time when a bunch of adults had giddy, unexplainable fun putting out a daily newspaper.

"Charlie, I have a story on you," Mara said, captivating the room the first night of the reunion. "I had turned in copy that was so terrible, you sat down with me and said, 'Mara, have you considered television?' "

The room erupted in hoots because Mara has worked at several major metropolitan dailies since, including her current one, the Kansas City Star.

"That's the problem of an editor," said Charlie. "Sometimes you have to eat your words."

"No!" Mara protested. "We learned from you. I became a reporter here."

The story I told on myself was of the night making cop calls, still not used to the eastern Kentucky accent, when a dispatcher told me there was a fire in Pikeville. All I usually got from my calls was "nuthin' goin' on."

"A fire?" I cried, "Where?"

"Well," he said slowly, "from one enda town tuh t'other."

Photographer Frank Altizer and I flew out the door. When we got to Pike- ville an hour later, the fair was over. It had been an annual to-do, with marching bands, rides and cotton candy.

I was humiliated by what's funny now; that's one thing time is good for.

I was often weary back then, but I was 23 and 24, discovering possibilities in a profession that seemed infinite with them. Buzzing on adrenaline watching guys dig sand from around a co-worker who had fallen into a vat; following then-Gov. Jay Rockefeller around on the campaign trail; standing in a holler with five barefoot children watching their house burn down, then rushing back to file, already busting deadline ... all those exciting, pressure-cooker things that made so many of us pop Tums and drink too much were things that the next morning showed up on the doorstep with bylines and decisions spread over page after page of copy, photos and ads ... lots of ads.

We five musketeers had no clue then that two-newspaper towns have two newspaper cultures and that when papers blend, readers don't get something of both, they get something different and less of it.

We had no idea that most of our colleagues at multiple papers would be out of the business in 30 years.

Today, newspaper owners are desperately trying to figure out how to make enough money to keep newspapers alive; there is no inspiration for newspaper culture. But as long as we have great mentors, news people have a forum and a porch light for stories.

I feel lucky to be one whose first editor was the forward-thinking Charlie, who left newspapers in the 1980s and has become a technology guru. He still lights up when he talks about the future possibilities of journalism, seemingly infinite thanks to the Internet and all the attendant technologies. I returned to Pittsburgh with his words in mind, and a lot of hope:

"I really think Thomas Jefferson would love what's happening," he said. "This is a great time for us."

Cartoonist Rob Rogers does "Rob's Rough," an early look at his work and his creative process, exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.