A cup of coffee and a lifetime ago

I drank my first cup of coffee the morning of May 19, 1975, after successfully negotiating four years of college, including all-nighters, without the beverage.

It was the day after graduation from college. I had spent the night in an old old hotel in Waupaca, Wisconsin (I was there not long ago — Waupaca, that is, not the hotel, because I went to where it was and it wasn’t anymore), and I reported as requested at 5:30 a.m. to the WDUX Radio studios on Tower Drive, where my first newscast ...