No company car, no secretary, and — most disappointing of all — no groupies whatsoever.

Still, I do get to write what I want, and today that means I can brag about some incredible people.

All of them are pooped out, their nerves more than a little frayed from overwork — just like the wonderful police, firefighters, disaster-relief workers and just plain folks who have endured so much hardship since the flooding began in earnest on June 27.

On Wednesday, June 28, when so many people couldn't get to their jobs because of closed or dangerous roads, every Daily Star newsroom employee who wasn't out of town on vacation showed up to work.

We didn't call them and say they had to get here. These thoroughbreds just weren't going to let a little thing like a major flood keep them from doing their jobs.

Sportswriter Rob Centorani, who lives in the Binghamton area, got here. It took him three circuitous driving hours to do it, but he got here.

When he did, we enlisted him to do a column for the main news section about his travels.

Reporter Patricia Breakey's house in Delaware County sustained major flood damage, and her two cars were ruined by the floodwaters. So she gathered information by telephone and filed her stories from home.

Woody Allen has said that 90 percent of success is just showing up.

The folks who produce the editorial content of this newspaper have been doing a lot more than just showing up.

Since that first water-soaked day, Daily Star news reporters have produced more than 80 flood-related by-lined stories and about 20 staff reports. That's in addition to stories on other subjects, including a daily 'On the Bright Side.'

What makes the number of stories remarkable is the number of reporters who did them.

Five.

That's it.

We're a community newspaper with a strong emphasis on local news, and for better or worse, we rely upon just five reporters to cover a very large area.

We make unreasonable demands on reporters Tom Grace, Mark Boshnack, Amy Ashbridge, Jake Palmateer and Breakey. They're used to that, but what they have accomplished covering the flood has been anything but routine.

For more than two of those weeks, because of vacations and Ms. Breakey having to deal with the damage to her house, we only had four reporters spread over six days of weekly publication.

In the same time period, more than 75 flood-related photos by our two staff photographers — Julie Lewis and Anita Briggs — appeared in The Daily Star. That's including Anita being gone for one of those weeks for a well-deserved vacation.

The unsung hero of The Daily Star's coverage is Managing Editor Cary Brunswick, who calmly directed our reporters and photographers amid a vast sea of information.

The 28th was Cary's wedding anniversary. Thanks to a very understanding wife — who has been married to a newspaperman long enough to know he wouldn't be coming home in time to go out to dinner that night — Cary orchestrated our news coverage like the maestro that he is.

Our copy desk, consisting of Cathy Guiles, James daSilva and Denise Richardson, along with intern Michael Meno, performed a nightly miracle in editing stories, laying out pages and getting the newspaper out. Librarian Deb McCaffery and obit clerk Johnna Nesteruk did everything asked of them and more.

Weekend and Special Sections Editor Denielle Ziemba and Community Editor Emily Farmer dealt with all kinds of public concerns and questions, produced a ton of flood-related and other information, and are the co-editors of a special commemorative section on the flood that The Daily Star is producing July 31.

By the way, we're also publishing a book about the flood due out in October.

Sports Editor Dean Russin and sports writers P.J. Harmer and Centorani ably covered the flood's effects on local sports.

I also want to brag about our readers, particularly those 300 or 400 who have contributed more than 900 photographs to our Daily Star website gallery. Others have written essays and poetry about the flooding.

We've heard from many former residents of our area and those who have relatives here that the gallery enabled them to understand the extent of the damage caused by the flood.

The numbers — these astounding numbers — speak for themselves.

On an average day, The Daily Star's website gets about 50,000 page views.

In the first week after the flood hit, the website was viewed about 12 MILLION times. The two-week total was more than 17 million. Even after all this time, we're still averaging three times our normal page-view traffic.

For handling all the photos, Internet traffic and making sure our many flood news updates were handled swiftly and properly, all praise goes to our industrious online manager, Tim Brown, who along with all our Circulation, Advertising, Composing and Customer Service folks, went far above and beyond the call of duty.

Like I said, there aren't a whole lot of perks associated with my job, but I can't think of a better one than the privilege of working with so many professionals who care so much about what they do.

Sam Pollak is editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at spollak@thedailystar.com or at (607) 432-1000, ext. 208.