The Doors, long ago when my hair wasn’t gray, my forehead furrowed and my hands didn’t look like my dad’s

After four years of sharing my thoughts, observations, leanings and occassionally insanity with you, dear readers, today I bid adieu.

Since leaving The Post on a day-to-day basis back in March, I have continued to write this column and add a few other pieces to the weekly print product, but the time has come to chase another dream.

I give up this weekly treasure/burden/chore/opportunity reluctantly and somewhat sadly as it marks the end of what was once a great adventure before the fortunes of the economy ran off a cliff.

I will miss the kind remarks I hear almost weekly, and even the other remarks from the likes of my incorrigible friend Bill Ford, the gentleman and scholar.

I will miss the not infrequent chuckle I still get after all these years when someone, most likely anonymously online, accuses my column of being biased (the whole point of a column being to present a point of view whether it’s on growing homegrown tomatoes or building mosques).

I have been honored that so many of you took the time each week, or most weeks, or even some weeks to read what I had to say.

Sometimes the muse was upon me; sometimes he/she was hiding and just couldn’t be found.

Sometimes the words flow like a flooding river; sometimes they were as difficult to produce as coughing up a concrete block.

Certainly, this community provides plenty to write about. I truly love this community, its warmth, its generosity, its openness to inclusion.

Sure, sometimes we are petty, intolerant and even plain, old mean. We all have our bad days, bad decisions and bad habits.

Overall, this is a great place to live. Lots of people must share that feeling since our population had increased by 50 percent plus in each of the past three decades.

So, right at four years since I started The Post with the help of a lot of great folks, it’s time to move on.

Things change.

But, some things don’t. And, here’s a final Murfreesboro Post Top 10, from this writer at least, of things we can always count on in this great place to live:

1) We will always be complaining about traffic somewhere.

2) Seemingly half of the other drivers on the road are idiots.

3) City/county planners will be accused of being buffoons/bought off/overbearing by someone who didn’t even know there was a planning commission until a project came up in or near their neighborhood (the charges coming even though the planners ruled exactly as they have hundreds of times before).

4) Murfreesboro and Rutherford County will remain an amazing football and overall high school sports power.

5) Our downtown square will be a special place.

6) Unless you are eating at 2 p.m., you will probably have to wait at least a little while to be seated at the incredibly popular Demos’.

7) Finding a parking place during weekday classes will still require a miracle or a ticket for parking by a fire hydrant.

8) We will still be building schools, and rezoning kids as a result.

9) Uncle Dave Macon will be looking down proudly.

10) Extraordinary people will do extraordinary things for the benefit of others.

11) The “good, ole boys” will still rule, according to some, but no one will know who they are.

Live well and prosper.

And may God bless.