Sometimes your photo roll travels back all by itself and up pops an image that screams …

What was I thinking?

That was almost 40 years ago!

How much can I remember about that picture?

Time for a Throwback Thursday.

I know these folks flanking me also worked at the big Syracuse daily, in 1984 I believe. To my right sits Mark Stewart, a summer intern in the sports department, a great worker whom I’d first met when I worked as sports editor at the suburban Maryland paper and he part-timed for us in high school and then while studying at the U of Maryland. I was happy when he agreed to come north for this summer, and he did well.

Jim Naughton sits to my left, a Syracuse newsroom star who afterward moved to the New York Daily News. When watching the ESPN four-parter on the 1986 New York Mets, recently, a Naughton byline popped up on the screen, and I was reminded how he was a beat writer covering my favorite team in that momentous season. But here, he was a friend who also loved the music of Bruce Springsteen. When we gathered a newsroom row-full for a Carrier Dome show, he brought up relatives from Pennsylvania for the pre-concert party and event and they became part of our extended family for a snapshot of time, I recall.

Roger van der Horst sits with his head down. He was a wickedly talented writer who became a fellow editor in the sports department. Our friendship went way beyond the newsroom. We stood up for each other at weddings! A slow and natural drift took hold when he moved to bigger papers in Louisville and Buffalo and the New York Times and I switched to become the music writer.

Roger is wearing a Post-Toasties T-shirt. We ordered a batch for our Saturday softball games, all newsroom player affairs, retire for beer and food at the Orange Grove afterward. The great Post-Toasties chest design came from Sue Santola, then an intern in the art department, now the longtime wife of buddy who shows up in so many post here, newsroom editor deluxe, Mark Libbon, aka KP. Sue still works design for the big daily’s parent company.

The folks at each end, I know are a news intern on the far left as your’re seeing it and I think may be news reporter Rick Moriarty on the right.

Sports reporter David Elfin sent me the photo. We still text frequently, he living in D.C. and our lives forever linked by the few years we spent together in Syracuse but shared experiences apart at the Washington Post before that and sports devotions thereafter.

Oh, my outfit! The T-shirt shouts of the Maryland Terrapins trip to the 1978 Sun Bowl, a believe was a gift from my then U of Maryland roommate and through-the-decades friend Greg TenEyck, who covered that game for the campus daily, The Diamondback. Those red shorts! I plead that they were the style back then, the color and the way-too-revealing length. I unfortunately recall a seam-splitting move at a party. A newsroom colleague’s wife offered her sewing talents to mend the shorts. I drove home, changed, and handed them off. Upon delivery good as new, Lindsay Kramer in the newsroom proved a bit less than pleased that his wife had spent her time mending my shorts! Or maybe he was just putting me on. We’re still friends and I have appreciated his dry sense of humor for all these decades.

Thanks for putting up with my Wayback Machine.