Once in a while I get asked a certain question about my job.

“What do you like most about being a journalist?”

My answer is always the same.

What I like most is being a part of things I would have no business being a part of if I wasn’t in newspapers.

In 2002, for instance, I covered the Winter Olympics.

I once interviewed Jay Leno and then became a joke in his act.

A few years back, I arrived on the scene where a woman had just killed her husband outside their home.

Police and ambulance arrived 10 minutes later.

And when I was still in my 20s, I climbed Half Dome in Yosemite and wrote about it.

This week brought more of those “once in a great while” opportunities.

I interviewed two Mower County residents who have reached or are reaching their 100th birthdays.

Vivian Witham turns 104 in January, and I met with her for a feature story that published Thursday.

Katherine Jax turns 100 Sept. 3, and I met with her so I could write this column.

Both of these ladies have lived through 19 presidents, while I have lived through seven.

Jax was born in New Haven, Iowa, grew up in Wisconsin and has lived in Austin the past 70 years after she met her husband at an Adams dance.

She lives at Sacred Heart assisted living, has a strong wit and a healthy sense of humor.

She’s an avid Twins fan, but not much into TV after that.

“Whey they go off in the fall, I’m lost on television,” she said. “There isn’t anything.”

Her memory is very good, and she talked in detail about the past, including growing up as the second oldest of eight children.

“My mother baked 12 loaves of bread every other day,” she said. “And when she was sick, I had to do it, and they ate it because they were hungry.”

I also asked about the depression and wondered if she felt today’s weak economy resembled that in any way.

She said it didn’t.

“It’s nothing compared to what the Depression was like,” she said. “It was bad. You were lucky if you had a cent because they closed all the banks.”

She then talked about how she went to the World’s Fair in Chicago in the 1930s.

“I went there with $20 and came back with $5,” she said.

She talked about how some of her family traveled five miles to Midnight Mass each Dec. 24 in a horse-drawn sleigh and about her fondness of Christmas.

“It still is quite a day,” she said.

A devout Catholic, Jax is visited often by her only child, Sister Bernadine Jax, who lives in Rochester.

“It’s a very special privilege to still have a mother this late in life and teaching me and reminding me,” Bernadine Jax said.

Katherine Jax may use a walker to get around, but she doesn’t look a day older than 80.

“There’s nothing wrong up here,” she said, pointing to her brain.

I believe it.

The older Jax still plays 500 every Wednesday at the Moose and is happy to discuss her take on her life.

“I’ve lived in the most interesting century in history,” she said. “Cars, airplanes, radio, TV, computers and that mind boggling telephone.”

The latter would be a cell phone, which she doesn’t own.

I pulled out my Blackberry to see if she wanted to try mine.

“A little light is going off on yours,” she said.

I told her it means I have a text message.

“Like I said, ‘it’s mind boggling,” she said.

On Sept. 6, Katherine Jax will be the guest of honor at her 100th birthday party, a celebration thrown by her daughter.

“I’m proud to have her,” Bernadine Jax said.

And I’m proud to have met her.