Every year, just about this time, I am amazed that the Peabody Gazette-Bulletin staff is still kicking up some dust and reporting the activities of the community. When Janet Post and I signed on for this adventure, it was only supposed to be for six months or so. When Hoch Publishing Company purchased the newspaper in 2001, Bill Meyer said he was just looking for a part-time staff to fill in as a transition team until he could hire some real journalists to do the job. And that was OK with the two of us. We knew we weren’t real journalists. No surprises there!

We never have found out what happened to the real journalists. Sometimes we discuss them and wonder where they actually did end up. Usually we don’t much give a rip. They didn’t show up for their assignment so we just keep plugging away.

I do want my five or six regular readers and anyone else picking up a copy of this broadsheet to know, however, that we are probably now the business serving Peabody for the longest continuous run. The Peabody Gazette was established in 1873 — just a couple of years after the community was settled. That makes us 137 years old.

Peabody State Bank is in the running as a longtime Peabody business. Peabody Lumber and Hardware, the American Legion, the drug store, and, until recently, Baker Furniture and Carpet also have been around for decades.

But still, I think the newspaper is the kingpin of longevity in the Peabody business district. We appreciate those of you who advertise with us, send us your news or school, church, and sports reports, suggest interesting features, and, yes, even give us grief for our editorial opinions. Those are the things a newspaper is supposed to record in a community. So bring it on.

Technology is moving ahead by leaps and bounds. We likely won’t be around for another 100-plus years, but we will be here for a while. Janet and I are pretty sure that group of real journalists aren’t even on the horizon, much less headed our way. But we are always mindful of the place the Peabody Gazette-Bulletin has in our community — reporting the events that will go on record somewhere as a history of this town. That is a responsibility of some major proportion.

And so, while we are here, make good use of us.

Give us the scoop on your family news, the big events of your lives, or your opinions of the direction your community is taking. We may not be the best reporters in the state, but we certainly want to be at the top of our game when it comes to making an accurate record of what has happened to Peabody and its people.

Surely, none of us want the local coffee shop tales to be the official record, do we?

— Susan Marshall