DeLap: Can you come out and play?

Good morning, North Carolina!

I would like to welcome you to my first column. In the coming weeks, I will be introducing myself to you and letting you get to know me. I am hoping you will stop me on my journey and respond in kind.

As a columnist in Minnesota, Iowa and Wyoming I got a chance to interact with some incredible people. In southern Minnesota I was the managing editor for two newspapers and my column was named “Little Thoughts on the Prairie.” I moved on to be the managing editor of a paper in Iowa and my column there was “Sioux Whisperings.” On to Wyoming after a stint, shooting pictures for National Geographic – I found a very special place in Wyoming where the people were warm and the weather was brutal. My column there was entitled, “In The Wind.” That was, of course due to the occasional 70 mph gusts that came roaring across the I-25 corridor.

As I was relocating to North Carolina to focus on my love of writing and photography, I began wondering what my new column name would be. I wrestled with it, but in a place called “Mother Nature’s Playground,” I decided to go with “On the Playground.”

I was born in Milwaukee, and have lived and worked in Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles, Chattanooga and most recently, Wheatland, Wyoming. Although I have a journalism education degree from the University of Wisconsin, I have gone on to wear many hats.

I am a published author, a respected educator, a successful basketball coach, a veteran writer and left a place where people begged me to stay. So, as I sit here in the early morning Elizabethtown fog, leaving my wife behind in Palm Beach, Florida to sell our home, in a quaint bed and breakfast, in obscure town in the southeast corner of the “upper Carolina,” I of course need to explain why. Why Bladen County.

Those of you who live and work here already know. This is for those who have never found a “Brigadoon” or perhaps even tasted their own slice of “Mayberry.” Not in the sense that Bladen is a mythical, mystical land that disappears from time to time, (although I venture to say that it is overlooked by most of the world) nor is it a backwoods town of ignorant hicks that live here because they don’t know any better or have no other place to go.

On the contrary. It is representative of its name, full of adventure, full of promise and when I think of Martin Bladen, I think of a man who chose to be a part of a new world. When I see the cows in the pastures around town, I of course think of the milk that I grew up on that came from my grandfather’s cows. The county is full of these incredible little gems. In the short time that I have been here, it’s all that I thought it would be.

It brings back warm memories of my childhood. Life at a much easier pace, surrounded by all the emboldened best Mother Nature has to offer. You can almost hear her beckoning – “Can you come out and play?”

It’s the elderly couple walking down Broad Street with ice cream cones who smile and greet you on the street or the teenager delayed from his mission for no other reason than to hold a door open for you as you are scrambling to get into a building.

The toddlers dancing on the hardwood gymnasium floor as the high school jazz band is pumping out a jam. I don’t know if you realize it or not, but most of the world has become a microwaveable society. We want things hot and shiny, big and new and impressive… and we want it NOW.

We are missing life as we turn the treadmill speed faster and faster to the direction of a world that resembles a merciless personal trainer. We’re spending money we don’t have to obtain things we don’t need to impress people we don’t like. We turn our heads and the children are grown, and our life has passed us by.

When Champion Media’s Denise Ward called me and offered me a job to come to work as an editor and general manager of a paper that was 126 years old, I was already considering taking editorial positions in Virginia and Florida – even considering going back to National Geographic. Something deep inside told me that if I passed on North Carolina, it would be like closing a door on a moment that had been prepared and saved for me all my life.

It was that inner child longing to come home. Thank Goodness that Denise, Cory Champion and Megan Andriatch from this organization are all persuasive and persistent and convinced me that I needed to be here even more than they needed me here.

I suddenly remembered the sunsets as a kid growing up in Wisconsin when we’d go to Grandpa’s farm for the weekend or out on a summer stream flyfishing for Trout. Do you know that I can’t remember one sunset in Los Angeles? And there was a LOT of sun out there.

Although I earned a journalism degree, up until eight years ago, I hadn’t read a newspaper in a long time. I was just too busy.

I look forward to watching the North Carolina woods awaken this year. To see the wildlife bloom. I look forward to sitting on my front porch with my grandkids playing in the front yard and my head bent, reading the Bladen Journal and – looking up and taking time to catch the smiles on the children’s faces and then holding them close while we watch the sun go down over this “once” new world that has told millions of stories. It thrills me to be a part of new adventures, creating incredible memories and being a part of your family with many stories yet to tell.

It’s a wondrous thing to find a small town. It’s a gift when you can call it “home.”

Mark DeLap is the editor and general manager of the Bladen Journal. Reach him by email at mdelap@bladenjournal.com.