Forty-one years ago next month, I found my calling.

In my senior year of college, I answered an ad on the bulletin board in the library at the LSU Journalism Building for a part-time reporter for a weekly newspaper in Plaquemine, La.

Things haven’t been the same since.

Like most young men starting out in the newspaper business in Louisiana, I covered sports. My first assignment was a playoff game between Donaldsonville High School and White Castle. It took all of 4 1/2 hours — one-hour each there and back, a two-hour game, and 30 minutes to write the story — for a couple of inches in a football wrap-up story in the Tuesday paper.

Before long, I was covering parish and city government in Iberville Parish, one of the most political parishes in Louisiana, and back in the late ’70s the political scene was raucous.

When I was in high school and freshman in college, I never thought about writing for a newspaper, let alone writing anything for pay. I guess I have to blame D.H. Culbert, a history professor at LSU, for moving me toward the life of a journalist. The good professor taught a course in U.S. Diplomatic History, and was a sort of news junkie. While we were studying the Spanish- American War, he assigned us to select a newspaper from the period and write a paper on how it covered the Spanish-American War for a month. I chose William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal.

I enjoyed reading the slant Hearst put on the war, but what intrigued me more were the other stories of life in the city. It was at that point I decided I would rather write about history as it happens than after it happened. And that’s something I’ve done.

I’ve covered three major hurricanes — Georges, Ivan and Katrina — and a Louisiana flood in 1981. Covered numerous state elections, the 1995 base closure hearings in Washington, and participated in writing stories after the conviction of former Alabama Gov. Guy Hunt for misuse of campaign finance reports.

I’ve done a lot of things I thought I would never do, like spend time on a Navy aircraft carrier and a super tanker at sea, fly with a member of the Blue Angels (a dream I had since seeing them at age 11), or fly into Hurricane Frances in 2004 with the Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunters.

My list of experiences is not bragging. All these experiences had a purpose to bring readers insight into slices of life, whether enjoyable or tragic. And that’s what I and the rest of my fellow journalists try to do daily — let people know what’s going on in their community; in their world — whether the local gossip is correct.

I’m a simple scribe trying to do my best. I’m not perfect, but I hope most of the time I hope I’m on target.

John Surratt is a staff writer for The Vicksburg Post — and we’re fortunate to have him. Reach him at john.surratt@vicksburgpost.com.