AMARILLO — I attended the memorial service of a dear friend today, schmoozed with plenty of folks I once knew back in the old days and came away with a strange loss of identity.

You see, I once called this bustling city of 200,000 people my home, My wife and I lived here for 23 years, longer than in any community during our 51 years of married life together. Therefore, I was a bit puzzled by a seeming lack of recognition from some of those folks I once knew.

When I said the words “newspaper guy” or “Amarillo Globe-News,” I could see the light bulbs flicker on in their minds. “Oh, yeaaahhhh!” came the response. “I remember you now! Hey, welcome back home. Man, we sure could use you around here these days,” they would say … or words to that effect.

There you have it. I am identified by the job I performed for a newspaper that once was a significant presence in the lives of residents throughout the Texas Panhandle. It isn’t any longer. The Globe-News exists today mostly in the memories of those who subscribed to the morning Daily News, the evening Globe-Times or the Sunday News-Globe. Many of them read all three papers, given that they were produced by separate newsgathering and opinion page staffs.

Those days are long gone. Forever, too. The paper — if we can call it that — is merely a dimming shadow of its once-glorious self. The Globe-Times won the Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service in 1961, print journalism’s top prize.

What does any of this have to do with me? Not much, truth be told. I wasn’t part of that glorious past. I was part of a past that meant more to people’s lives than the present does or that the future ever will. We weren’t a great newspaper when I joined it in 1995, but we were solid and we damn sure reported the news thoroughly throughout the region.

What I didn’t realize is how much the job I did for the community melded itself into my identity. I will not complain about it. I am just realizing it out loud for the first time.

It’s all very strange.