Yogi Berra – My Life Coach

Sage advice at a crossroads in my writing career

“I never said most the things I said,” Yogi Berra.

After being cut back to two columns a month, I began to contemplate what life without writing might be like.

I’m retired and — at least for now — scraping by on Social Security. I could easily say to hell with it, live in a camper by the river, and become a hermit.

After a few weeks of serious reflection, I concluded that I can’t not write. I’ve been doing it way too long to stop. Half a century more or less.

I suppose I might stop if my mind were to slip into that dark place where nothing I write makes sense. Which is often the case anyway but that’s by design.

I don’t want to end up like a certain freelancer at our paper who kept submitting the same column week after week. He was still getting paid because our interim editor didn’t notice and kept running it.

It got to the point that writing two columns a month wasn’t enough for my hyperactive muse. A few months ago I started posting additional writing and random scribblings on the Substack platform. This supplements my meager income. More importantly, it keeps me from going crazy. Or crazier than I already am.

I post my Substack writings under the title “Spurnpiker’s Journal.” It’s a concept I’ve been kicking around for about a decade.  Some of my Times-Gazette columns fall into that category.

As the name implies, spurnpiking refers to a preference for traveling backroads in lieu of interstate highways. Face it, all interstates have to offer — besides efficient travel — are repetitive boring scenery and rude motorists who always seem to be in a hurry to get where they’re going.

I suspect that, in reality, they have no real desire to arrive at their destinations. My brother and I used to joke about that, about people hell bent on rushing to jobs they can’t stand, then hurrying home at the end of the day to unappreciative families and unfulfilling lives.

Spurnpiking is the antithesis of all that. It’s ma and pa restaurants where the waitresses call you honey. It’s motels that aren’t corporate-owned flophouses manned by rude clerks. It’s intriguing scenery that makes you want to pull to the side of the road and explore.

My supplemental writings on Substack have inspired me on two levels: I find myself wanting to dig deeper into whatever it is I’m writing about and I’m itching to try new genres.

To some extent, I have dug deeper and written follow-up pieces for my Times-Gazette columns. Case in point, an article about Gigi Janko’s public art installation, which I came across while spurnpiking in Eastern Ohio. The column ran in March 2024 in the Times-Gazette and perhaps other Gannett papers.

After writing the column, I interviewed the artist and posted a verbatim transcript on my blog. Having my own platform on Substack gives me more flexibility to dig deeper and publish in-depth follow-ups to columns I write there and for the Times-Gazette.

Moreover, I’ve found myself seriously considering other genres. That includes screenplays, a novel, or perhaps a liverwurst cookbook.

I’ve clearly reached a crossroads in my writing career. Or at least a fork in the road. Before I reach the point where I’m submitting the same column over and over, I need to weigh my options.

Or, as Yogi Berra supposedly said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

PS: I did some follow-up research on this quote. Actually, it predates Yogi Berra. Furthermore, according to some sources, when Yogi said it to his friend and fellow ballplayer Joe Garagiola, he was giving him directions to his house. He meant it as a joke because, no matter which way Joe went at the fork in the road, he’d end up at Yogi’s place.

This originally was published as a column in the Ashland Times-Gazette.