10 YEARS INTO RETIREMENT, DEADLINE NIGHTMARES PERSIST.

Byline: Ed Hayes Orlando Sentinel 

Stepping out of my ivy-walled little cottage in Arkansas one morning, I thoughtlessly placed my column - written the night before - on the roof of my automobile.

Then, after dumping my laundry in the trunk, off I drove.

Not until 10 minutes later, at my desk in the small town daily newspaper, did it dawn on me what had happened.

Out the door I raced to my car. Alas, the long, folded sheet of paper and my dazzling prose had vanished.

I squandered the next half hour touring up and down the streets, riding with the diminishing hope of finding the column.

Finally, back at the office, silently screaming, and with one eye on the deadline clock, I pounded out a pale facsimile of that lost piece, just in the nick of time to make it into the paper.

Today, remembering that scene, I can almost believe that my battered original column is still floating around out there in Arkansas somewhere, even today, 30 or so years later, perhaps drifting along like a tumbling tumbleweed.

And, who knows, it just could show up one of these days, from out of the blue, right here on a table in my present house, as if by magic, and my wife will call out, "Is this what you've been looking for all this time?"

Such curious hocus-pocus really does occur, as any regular reader of the daily news pages will readily testify.

Be that as it may or may not be, I bring up that long-ago episode as a possible launch pad for my nightmares.

Yes, even now as I embark on my 10th year of retirement, I'm still haunted by fairly regular deadline nightmares. OK, calling them nightmares might be cutting the chop too thick and bloody.

Still, the sweaty scene is fairly consistent, always with the big fire-alarm clock on the wall laughing at me, knowing there's no way I can beat him.

After retiring, I did agree to continue writing a weekly column, but this is a facile, self-imposed deadline, unrelated to my recurring, nocturnal melodramas.

It might've been different had I started out on a bigger newspaper. But I was a one-man sports department, and there were also obituaries to take on the phone to gobble up my time.

One particular undertaker, who always called at the most awful time, would say, "Mizz Birdcliff died."

I'd say, "Mizz? Is that M-i-s-s?" This was long before the "Ms." abbreviation came into popular play.

"Naw, brother Hayes. Mizz. M-r-s period."

"Ah. Missus."

"Now you got it. Mizz Birdcliff."

And the clock ticked and tocked, faster and faster.

Ah, well, I reckon most of us have our persistent, pesty, hair-raising dreams, regardless of our chosen professions. It's part of being alive, taking passionate interest in our world.

Anyhow, I've been very lucky so far. All my dreams, no matter how unnerving, always have happy endings.

I wake up.