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As The Tribune wanes, long-timers here are reminiscing a lot about the old days, for better and for worse. Not that we don't have our eyes turned forward, too.

What I'm remembering about The Trib and the city's life in general today falls under the rubric of "easy access." Everybody has — or soon will — similar tales to tell, at least until Albuquerque begins emptying, like a Chaco Canyon, Version 2.

• Before I started here in 1978, one of the professors at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism — Mel Mencher, who had worked at The Tribune in the early '60s — told me something repeatedly about Albuquerque.

"It's not the same place," said Mencher, bluntly. "It's changed. It'll never be the same" as it was when it was smaller, more intimate — when he worked here.

I didn't believe him. A place just couldn't change so much, so quickly.

• When I walked into The Trib's Seventh and Silver address — now a parking lot — off the dusty plains in August, 1978, the paper and city were smaller and more intimate.

For one thing, it was easy to find a house nearby, which allowed me to walk to work within 15 minutes, max — and from there, to walk to my government beats, nearly all of which were Downtown.

Downtown definitely was not bustling back then. Stores, offices and residents still were fleeing the "doughnut hole" for the malls and the suburbs. There were lots of empty parking lots to cross and not much traffic. I remember that walking to and from The Trib — a relative cauldron of stress — was greatly decompressing. Neighborhoods were filled with trees and flowers to smell, and Downtown in the evening was empty and serene.

• I could hoist myself to the Mayor's Office, on the top floor of the old City Hall building, unscheduled, and leaf through the daily agenda of Mayor Harry Kinney, while chatting informally with Frank Kleinhenz, Kinney's perpetual CAO.

Kinney et al. always seemed available. There rarely was a sense that the Fourth Estate was barging in — though barge, we did. We would persistently call public officials at home, directly, in the wee hours for comments. I caught County Manager Juan Vigil in his shower early one morning.

* The Trib Downtown, too, was easily accessible, with no security system or guards. People occasionally would wander in with stories about contrail conspiracies, alien abductions and such. I remember one editor persuading a would-be source to leave using a form of the bum's rush.

* When The Trib moved to its new plant in 1985, and I started bicycle-commuting to work, drivers were equally as clueless as today, but there was a lot less traffic. I could cycle from Second Street to Osuna to Jefferson and back in the blackness of night on many days — and never see a car.

Looking forward, I can imagine a city even more congested, frenzied and impersonal than today. Innovative strategies to put growth under beneficial control just aren't keeping up with growth. The pace clearly is unsustainable.

But the city isn't in a Chaco-style crisis yet. There will be time for you, gentle reader, to tell some future young cub about how much the city has changed, and how it will never be the same.