From the moment I decided that the newspaper business was going to be my future, I was certain that future was going to be as a sports writer.

But a funny thing happened on the way to that dream. The Rockford papers hired me to work as a news reporter.

Nervously, I reported for work in the first week of September in 1967 in a coat and tie and prepared for anything they could throw at me. It was all new to me.

Within the first week, I had written and edited obituaries,  covered a city council hearing, written a feature on the abandoned train track system in Rockford and spent time simply observing a real, working newsroom. It was awesome.

Rockford, an industrial center, is the third-largest city in Illinois and is located just 15 miles south of the Wisconsin border. The Morning Star had a circulation of about 100,000, while the afternoon Register-Republic had a circulation of about 50,000. It was a great place to get started in my chosen career.

A combined reporting staff, we usually wrote two stories on each assignment, a different story for each paper, though using the same information. Each paper published six days _ the Morning Star Tuesday through Sunday and the Register-Republic Monday through Saturday.

Since I was the new guy, I became everybody's fill-in. Each day I would get my new assignment, depending on who was off that day.

A few weeks after I started, the police reporter took a weekend off. Suddenly, I was hanging out at the police station and the courts.  I even got to drive the newspaper's ``police car,'' which was a small station wagon with the company's name and logo printed in large letters on its side panels.

It was a pretty ordinary weekend, with lots of drunk and disorderly and minor crimes to report. That all changed on Saturday night, near our final deadline, as I was driving back to the office to exchange the company car for mine.

A police call came over the radio and the address was only a few blocks from where I was driving. I decided to check it out. I didn't know the police numbering system, so I didn't know what kind of situation it was. But I was young and dumb and enthusiastic, so there I was driving into the unknown.

It was a poor, mostly black neighborhood with neat lawns and well-kept houses. There was a crowd of maybe 20 people milling about on the lawns as I pulled up a couple of houses away from the address on the police radio.

I got out of the car and, feeling very vulnerable and obvious, I walked up to the nearest person - an older man - and asked what was going on. He turned to me, a pistol in his right hand, and said in almost a whisper, "I shot her. I shot her dead."

At that moment, a number of police cars with sirens blaring and light flashing began arriving. I walked slowly toward the first car and, as what I assumed was a detective popped out of the unmarked vehicle, I said, "Hey, I think you should talk to that guy over there. And he has a gun."

Turns out the man's wife was sitting in the passenger side of a car at the curb, talking with a friend with the door open. The man, in the front door, hollered for her to come in and make him a drink. She waved him off a few times until he got his pistol and threatened to shoot her if she didn't come in. She waved him off again and the gun went off. By the worst luck imaginable, the bullet from that little .22 pistol hit the woman in the arm pit and ricocheted into her heart, killing her instantly.

The police were not happy with me being there before they were. But I managed to get some details and put a short story into the final edition moments before deadline. I got  a nice atta-boy from the bosses for that.

The man, in his 80s, wound up getting probation for manslaughter.

Life was good and interesting and I began to think about what news beat might be right for me. Then, one day as I arrived for work, I was summoned to the office of the managing editor. It was like being sent to the principal's office in school and I was wondering what I could have done wrong.

The ME sat me down and, with a frown, said, "I told you if we ever had an opening in sports I would let you know. Well, we're very happy with what you are doing and we think you have a lot of potential, but I keep my promises. If you want the sports job, it's yours."

My mind was racing. After a short hesitation, I said, "No, I think I'll stay on the news side for now."

We shook hands and I went off to work my shift, my mind in a fog. I slept little that night. The next afternoon, I came in early and asked to see the ME. As I walked into his office, he stood up, smiled and said, "I knew you'd be back. That sports job is all yours.''

And, suddenly, I was a sports writer _ the eighth man on an award-winning eight-man staff led by columnist and sports editor Rick Talley. I had been with the Rockford papers for just under two months and now I was starting all over again.