I get nostalgic around the 4th of July each year. I moved to Kalispell, Mont., from the San Joaquin Valley of California just before the 4th in 1977. The late C. Patrick King, then publisher of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, took Mrs. O & I (then married only 2 years) fly fishing and huckleberry picking behind the Hungry Horse Dam before I started my first day of work as news editor of his newspaper after the 4th of July. The move to Kalispell was set up by a remark by Doug Clark, the SR columnist who was then sports editor of the Coeur d'Alene Press. On a visit to my home in Central California, he told me: "If you ever get a chance to live in Kalispell, Mont., or Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, jump at it. They're both beautiful places." A few months later, the late George Cecil, then in charge of Duane Hagadone's newspaper chain, offered me a job as news editor in Kalispell. Clark drove me from Spokane to Kalispell for my interview with King. I was hired even though I was an hour late for the interview. Dang Mountain Daylight Time. I later became managing editor of the paper at age 28. My wife saw the Flathead Valley for the first time when we drove our U-Haul into Kalispell. That began a 37-year adventure in the Inland Northwest in which I worked for three of the region's prominent newspaper owners -- Hagadone, Butch Alford (Lewiston Tribune) and Bill Cowles and later his son, Stacey. It has been an amazing adventure in which I lived in both towns Clark mentioned. He was absolutely right. They're both absolutely beautiful/DFO.

Question: What brought you to the Inland Northwest?