Michael D. Davis.

This has been an unprecedented summer. In the last few months I have had experiences that I never imagined possible. The first being the office.

So, back in 2023 me and the kid (thats Just Jonathan to those of you familiar with page four of the Chronicle) started with the paper. However, the previous year, the official newspaper office was shut down. So, we always worked from home, or our cars, or coffee shops, or occasionally the library.

Then, back in June, with the kid back on the beat, we started thinking how wonderful it would be to have an office of our own, even if it is only for a few months. The smoke of this pipe dream then sparked the fire of reality as the kid sent a text to Marty Hardon. A day or two later, we saw a little office in Tama. The place had an untuned piano in the back, and one wall was all insulation. We took it.

The first day we officially had the office, we simply goofed around and talked about how great it was to have the place. We then made a video advertisement of me in the window trying to sell the paper; it was stupid, it was great. A day or so later, I go back to the office, and there is a cabinet in the back and a bar cart in the front. The bar cart looks straight out of Mad Men, well, if it didn’t just have juice boxes in it. Turns out the kid went garage saling and picked up a few furnishings. My contribution was an old table and a coat rack.

One of those first days at the office, I agreed to meet the kid down at the place, and I got there early. That’s when an Idea struck. I went back outside and moved my very distinctive car a block over, and walked back to the office. I then sat in the darkness in a swivel chair waiting to frighten. The problem was that the kid ran late that day. So, I sat in the dark for about 45 minutes. And then he walked in and simply went, “Hey.”

This was a precursor of what was to come. As this summer we have had shenanigans galore, but honestly did very little work in the office when we were there together. The dart guns, disco ball, rainbow wig, light-up swords, foam ball, aliens, and ping pong paddles and ball were not a great help for getting work done.

On my birthday, just hours after I’d been in the hospital due to my heart, I walked into the office and all was dark. There was the kid in the inky black darkness of the back room. He stood with a light-up sword and a can of silly string, as alien-shaped balloons flickered about. I grabbed my weaponry, and what commenced was thirty seconds of all-out ridiculous squealing and glee as silly string flew through the air. When the lights were back on, we saw that the kid was covered in the stuff, and I somehow was barely touched. I don’t get it either. We then spent about 30 minutes cleaning up the errant string.

The place soon started to show visible signs of our mutual insanity. Sticky notes for various stories became wallpaper covering the wood paneling. The whiteboards showed the odd messages and doodles. There was a chessboard with a tiny duck and a checker on it, which I used as a visual metaphor.

But then again, this was all the back room. The front part of the office was the official part. The kid used it for interviews and various work. The only signs of insanity here were the posters I had made. The first was a modified poster from the 1974 Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon movie “The Front Page,” where now it just said Tama-Toledo News Chronicle. The second was a picture of our editor lying in the grass, nearly dead after the Garwin 5k, with the words “Hang in there” above his head.

While having this office, I’ve lost my phone and had it found by a nice local family. I’ve lain on the carpet under the table. The kid and I have been able to go out at a moment’s notice to take pictures of emergency incidents. We’ve planned out stories ahead of time. We’ve shot each other with darts. We’ve played ping pong, and catch, and made each other laugh. And we spent one evening just looking at the local Sex Offender Registry just to see who we knew. When we were both there, little work was done, but it was fun.

The last bit I’ll tell ya didn’t even happen at the office. I was in line at Moony’s to get a burger, and a friend came up to me and we started talking about the office. She then asked me if the kid was just crashing there. I laughed, but then remembered he’d brought in a pillow and a blanket. I knew he wasn’t sleeping there, but I’ve had fun not killing that rumor. Until next time, I’m just Mike, whoops, no, I’m Magic Mike.