By RON FIELDS
Hays Post

In a moment of frustration, I went job-hunting.

The first child still was a gleam in my eye, and it was still easy to see the world as wide open. If they would have me, I could go anywhere.

My process of choice was to give a newspaper-industry headhunter a call and have him ship my ever-so-slight resume around to see if it sparked any attention.

To my surprise, I was almost immediately on the telephone with a publisher from western Kansas who was looking for an editor.

While it wasn’t so long ago that the Internet didn’t exist, it was the day when functions such as maps worked so slowly as to be nearly unusable.

So as I chatted with this Kansas publisher, I called up a map, watching the progress bar grow.

We talked about the philosophy of news. We talked about my experiences. We talked about Bob Dole.

As I watched the map slowly load, I realized western Kansas was big. Really big. Russell, Kansas, appeared as a blip in the middle of the map. As I clicked “expand” once, twice, three times, I cut short the interview.

“I’m sorry. I should have looked at a map earlier. There’s no way I can live that far away from anything.”

Youth is short-sighted.

Years later, I jumped at the chance to accept another publisher’s offer — 30 miles farther west than Russell.

It was the best move of my life — a little older, a little wiser and this time with a wife, a 3-year-old and a newborn in tow. Both kids are Iowa-born, but somehow they have made us a “house divided” by blue and purple. (Neither gives much credence to my wife’s Iowa State red-and-yellow or my Notre Dame green-and-gold.)

We have much to be thankful for in Hays. It’s a remarkable place.

Everyone says that about their town — the difference here is that it is true.

We have negligible unemployment. We have a hospital and a university bolstering an already strong agricultural and energy industry. While crime exists, we certainly do not face the public safety challenges against which most communities struggle.

We have award-winning and consistently exceptional schools. We have a city that commits to our youth through the Hays Recreation Commission and its bevy of activities. We have potholes, but they sure don’t last long.

Too often, it’s easy to berate your community, to find flaws, to bemoan inaction.

And in this season of celebration, we are all free to make that choice.

I choose today to look out at this wide-open western sky and say thank you, Hays.

Thank you for welcoming me into your community. Thank for for offering my children your cocoon of consistency that makes them feel safe and secure. Thank you for opening doors to our family that have allowed us the chance to get to know so many of you.

Thank you Hays Rec, for your untiring commitment to getting youngsters involved, active and learning.

Thank you, city of Hays, for showing government that you can pay your bills on time and still provide for the community’s needs.

Thank you, O’Loughlin Elementary, for being both caretaker and guide to my beautiful daughter and precocious son all these years — and for enduring their often-scowling father.

Thank you, Hays Medical Center, for tending to loved ones with care and compassion when emergency strikes.

Thank you, city, county and state police officers, for letting me sleep soundly and being the buffer between trouble and our front door.

Thank you, my friends, for seeing the best in me and making me glimpse the same on occasion.

Thank you, my fellow Illinoisian transplants, for giving me someone with whom to bemoan my Cubs and Bears.

Thank you, aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins — and friends I consider brothers and sisters.

Thank you, my media colleagues here and across the Midwest, who have both propped me up when I was too low and brought me down to earth when I was too high.

Thank you, Dustin and Shannon and Harry and Rosene and Kathleen for making our little portion of our little block in our little town so neighborly.

Thank you, my family, for all the Interstate 70 travels you endure for the sake of togetherness.

Thank you, my around the corner neighbor Lance Smith, for making our neighborhood the best trick-or-treating spot in town.

Thank you, Hays natives, for allowing this Illinois kid to find a new home in western Kansas.

Remarkable places are made that way not by geography, not by buildings, not by box stores nor restaurants.

Remarkable places are made that way by the people who choose to call it home.

You are remarkable. And I am grateful.

Ron Fields has joined the staff of Eagle Communications as news and information director, overseeing news operations for Hays Post, Eagle Radio and Eagle Community Television. Fields had served as managing editor at the Hays Daily News for the past seven years. An Illinois native, Fields brings 16 years of journalism experience and his work has been honored by press associations in Illinois and Kansas.