For the 50-plus years my father was editor and publisher of this newspaper, he occupied two offices. One was a glassed-in space furnished with an old, oversized desk, cracked leather chairs, signed photographs from an assortment of obscure luminaries and several bookshelves filled with musty books that hadn’t been opened in a generation.

The clattering of typewriters and the sound of ringing dial telephones provided a soundtrack.

That office came to be known as the fishbowl.

I would walk in the front door of The Dispatch and as likely see my father talking with a senator or Congressman as someone who had wandered in off the street.

Two mainstays of the front office were Helen Gault, a tall, somber spinster, who had worked for my father’s father and society editor Dot Clark, a chain-smoking red-head with a husky voice.

Being a distinct character seemed to be a job requirement.

Walk down a narrow hallway of wood floors worn by years of use toward the back of the building and soon you would hear the din of Linotype machines. There, with the finesse of a church organist, operators Lige Brown and Al Schaffer converted text into lead type.

A pressman would fit their rows of lead type into frames from which plates were made. The plates were attached to the printing press, a rumbling leviathan tended by men seldom seen outside the ink-stained confines of the basement. (Females have since worked in the pressroom.)

In the early 1900s, the basement was home to a pool room. A man was shot and killed there, and occasionally his ghost returns to the basement.

For a kid, the place was full of mystery and wonder.

When I was 6, I got a paper route. My 11 customers were carved out from a larger route run by Larry Vassar. Each day Larry, then a teenager, would leave my small bundle of papers under an oak tree in the front yard of O.N. and Lena Pruitt, who lived at the corner of Bluecutt and Chickasaw.

They called us Little Merchants.

I was one of several generations of kids who growing up were either Dispatch carriers or worked at the tag plant located in the building that is now the workshop of Roger Larsen.

Later I had summer jobs at the paper, which mainly consisted of hanging out with the sportswriters, who spent most of their time hanging out with the boss’ son.

In 1975 managing editor Patrick Lynn hired me as a staff photographer, a job I would hold for a year and a half. This put me in the middle of the newsroom, and the photography prepared me for the work I would do for the next 20 years.

In 1996, with my father’s health failing, I returned to The Dispatch, first to the newsroom, then as editor and publisher.

I had a lot to learn, not only writing and editing, but managing people, relating to a readership with widely differing viewpoints.

The work was eminently fulfilling. I felt then, just as I do now, that a committed newspaper is a vital component of a healthy community.

We newspaper people have our quirks, but there is a steadfastness, a devotion to the product we put out each day.

It only takes one experience, one like publishing a Sunday paper using a single gas-powered generator after the February, 2001 straight-line winds, to confirm this.

In 2008 our oldest son, Peter, joined us at the paper. He was 30 and contemplating a career change. He had worked in Texas with a cousin on an internet start-up and then in Memphis in real estate. His plan was to spend a year at the paper before moving on to his next thing.

Peter had extensive tech experience and business savvy. He was perfect for the job.

During that year he discovered his love for newspaper work.

In 2018 I turned over the keys to Peter, who has proved to be an able steward of The Dispatch during increasingly difficult times for newspapers.

As for me, I still write this column and serve as a sounding board when needed.

When I’m at the paper, I inhabit my father’s other office, a low-ceilinged claustrophobic space known around The Dispatch as “the submarine.”

While most of the furniture dates back to my grandfather’s days, the decor is decidedly different. Hanging on the wall facing my desk is a mounted largemouth bass that has had a colorful afterlife thanks to the handiwork of Elayne Goodman.

On the stairs leading up to the submarine are framed mementoes from Uncle Bunky and David Evans, two dear people, who I worked with during my days as publisher.

Also, there is a framed panoramic photograph of a house with a large front yard covered in snow. The picture was made by O.N. Pruitt, the long-ago neighbor with whom I share a love for photography.

Most of the trees in the Pruitts’ yard are young saplings. One, though, is not. At the upper left edge of the photograph you can see its bare, snow-covered branches, limbs of the oak tree under which I picked up my small bundle of newspapers 60 some-odd years ago.

Birney Imes ([email protected]) is the former publisher of The Dispatch.

Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.