On Sunday, December 3, 2006, I helped put together the last newspaper that would ever come out of the Long Beach Press-Telegram building located at 604 Pine Ave., home of the city's newspaper for 81 years.
At the end of the night, there were words about the building and the thousands of people who worked there. I was busy during the day not only putting the sports pages together, but also writing my name everywhere and taking mementos for my friends and me.
The next day, I helped open a new chapter of the Press-Telegram as the offices moved to the 14th floor of the Arco Center on Ocean Blvd., with a wonderful view of the Queen Mary docked in the Long Beach Harbor. (Of course, the sports department gets a view of the oil refineries on Terminal Island, but on a clear day – we've been told – you could see downtown L.A. and maybe the Hollywood sign.)
While it is great to be in a new place with new furniture, I still think back to the old building. Towards the end, as furniture and items were being packed up, I couldn't help but think about the people that have stood before me in that building. You could almost feel the ghosts of the past as you walked through old hallways and wonder what this place might have looked like in the heyday of the newspaper business. I was imagining a group of people yelling and fighting over space and time towards the end and looking in the non-operative printers and wondering what they would have sounded at full speed.
As I now work in a new office, I wonder. In the future, will someone have those thoughts about what I am doing today?
