My Farewell Address

Before I get down to the business at hand, which is resigning my position, I need to pay a back-handed compliment and make some explanations.

Explanations first. I am not a magazine editor. I am instead a reporter, a motorcycle nut and a lucky man, not quite in that order.

Several years ago this magazine was in trouble. I didn’t work here, or for the company, but I had written some stories for CW and am a fair judge of the printed word. I got the feeling all was not well. So I called the man who’d loaned me bikes when I first started hanging around the magazine and asked if maybe I could be of some use.

By chance he’d just been given the assignment of pulling the magazine out of its slump. Yes, he said. I came aboard in large part because I write faster than any two other reporters in the world and can crank out great piles of work.

Meanwhile, CBS Publications had decided Cycle World and motorcycling were worth an investment. The company spent money and got things straightened out. By luck I was standing in the spot from which falling backward meant landing in the editor’s chair.

This was a wonderful place to be. Reporters are curious people, I mean here in the sense of possessing curiosity, not being odd although most of us are that as well, so I read a lot and I have a keen eye for talent.

When you are a writer, talent makes you jealous. But when you’re playing editor, you don’t envy talent, you hire it. Which I have been doing ever since. A true catbird seat, is what Em hinting at, with the backing of a strong company behind me, a talented staff all around me. The magazine shook off the doldrums and all the curves have been up ever since, so when I scuff my toe in the dust and say“Tweren’t nuthin’ ’’people think I am being modest. Which I’m not.

The tribute involves Cook Neilson, former editor of Cycle, a professional rival and a personal friend. Cook became editor of Cycle when it wasn’t much of a magazine. He worked hard and used his considerable talent and Cycle first be-

came the best selling newsstand motorcycle magazine, then the best seller all round. Then, when he’d gone as far as he could in the field, he quit and went off to do something else.

His final column was the bare statement of resignation, followed by a list of names of people he wished to thank. My name was in the list. I was honored.

But at the same time, reacting as a Cycle reader, I was hurt. And puzzled. Let

down, in ways I hadn’t worked out at the time. Since then I’ve decided I was disappointed. Cook said goodbye, and thanks . . . but he didn’t tell us why. In my mind we, me the reader and Cook the writer, had a partnership. Seemed to me he owed me more than an adios.

So—shouts of “My Gosh What An Ego!” are duly noted and understood—I decided that when it came time for my announcement, I’d do it differently.

Like so:

When I signed on here, things were smaller, and scruffier. I could do nearly everything in the place. But now the size of the staff, the magazine, the product and the organization needed to keep track has at least doubled.

I once got a letter from a contributor who said I was so helpful in rejecting her work that I didn’t seem like an editor at all. And there was another letter from a reader who said he didn’t know who on the staff writes this column for me . . . wow.

Putting words in this space is what I do for fun.

What I do for work is what editors of large and thriving magazines are supposed to do. I fill out reports. I go to meetings. I sign approvals for payment of bills and look at budget forecasts and sit in on conference calls. I am a department head, a purchasing agent and a personnel manager.

This is not a complaint. This is how things must be done if the magazine, which is a business, is to stay in business. Nor can I criticize the parent company. As my Bullwinkle Moose T-Shirt says, “You knew this job was dangerous when you took it.”

Next, time. The best editor I ever worked for once told me that anybody in a job like this has a certain alloted time in which to do the job right. It takes a while to learn the job, then you do it better until you’re doing it as well as you can

do it. That’s where I am right now.

I am proud of this magazine, prouder than I dare say. I come in here some days and watch the staff doing good work and I all but dance around the room.

This is a good magazine.

It isn’t as good as it could be.

It’s as good as I can make it, given my own limitations, the requirements of the job, etc.

You can see where this leaves me. My old editor had a second half to his theory. He said once you’re doing the job at your optimum level, you can keep going for a while, sitting there and watching your homemade machine humming along. And then, when you’ve done all you can, you’d better do something else.

When this column appears I hope to be watching nurserymen planting the trees in my orchard, and I’ll be back writing. (In this magazine, I hope. The staff has virtually begged me to keep my hand in. Of course I was the boss at the time. We’ll see.)

As you’d guess, I mean one doesn’t buy land and design a house and order trees, etc., on impulse, I have been planning this for some time. We’re doing the final tuning on design, we’ve begun the departments I meant to begin years ago, our second-generation on-board test rig is undergoing shakedown, I’ve lured, pirated, trained and recruited the best people in the business.

Nothing left but a tip of the helmet.

Back to Cook Neilson for a moment. His thanks, as I mentioned, consisted of a long list of people in the business. I thought about doing that.

Then I thought again.

The people in the motorcycle business and the motorcycle press are good folks.

However. They don’t need thanks. They do their jobs cheerfully and well and are good company, but they are paid to do just that.

The people to whom I owe thanks are you.

Right, you. The reader. The boss. The volunteers. You pay for the magazine.

A list of appreciated readers was impossible. There was the man who retired from flat track and gave me his shoe, the 16-year-old who asked for advice in persuading his parents bikes are okay, the 93-year-old who renewed his subscription for three years, the 14-year-old who’s crazy about motocross and signs her notes “Love Ya All”, a feeling we reciprocate, the ministers and engineers and the guys in prison, those who want more dirt and those who want more street, the riders on vacation who come by the office, . . . impossible. You are all special and deserve more than the form “thanks” that’s all I can offer.

If I’ve done my job right, you won’t miss me.

But I’m sure gonna miss you.

And thanks.