Let's face it. I'm spoiled. I'm spoiled by shining lights, ringing fax machines and the warm glow of my computer monitor.

I like the hum of florescent lights and the whirl of the heating and air-conditioning unit.

It's strange how much we don't even notice those things when we have them, but when they are gone our lives feel so strange.

I am writing this column by candlelight Tuesday night. Literally. They shut off all the power in Marked Tree to do some sort of necessary repair so we've been without power for a little over three hours now.

It's Tuesday and that is the most important day of our week because it's the day when we put the paper together. We are quickly discovering, however, that there is very little we can do in our line of work without electricity.

It makes me wonder, how in the world did they do things back in "the old days." I couldn't imagine trying to put out a paper without computers, much less without electric typewriters.

I have hanging on my wall a copy of a 1905 front page of the paper, which was the Marked Tree Gazette in those days. I literally can't comprehend how they managed to produce that thing.

I learned about those types of historical methods in some of my journalism classes, but I honestly don't see how they managed to put out a newspaper every single week with all the content it contained. They had to use machines that printed type only by the line, and before that it was all metal letters and hot, melted lead that made the plates for the press.

It must have taken a lot more people than we have on staff today, because getting a paper out every week is still a challenging process.

It makes me greatly admire the men and women who came before me in this profession. I'm sure they probably weren't whiny about not having shiny lights.

And, they probably didn't have battery powered laptops. Guess I can't feel too sorry for myself now can I?