The Cordova Daily Times

WHAT BECOME OF OLD HOME TOWN PAPER

Bringing back vividly to the memory of many, the old home town paper of their childhood. Charles E. Hunt writes the following in an exchange:

What has become of the home town editor who printed: beneath the heading of "The Jones County Banner" the words "Independent, fearless and free." and trembled in fear when the depot agent told him he would have to pay $3 before he could get his patent insides out of the express office?

You remember that not all the home town papers had that phrase. you say? Some had "Hew to the line, let the chips fall where they may": others, "Our liberties we prize and our rights we maintain." But none. not one. had any liberties or any rights or independence or freedom when the weekly bundle of patent insides came just before press day marked "C. O. D.. $3"

And do you remember those lean weeks, when there wasn't much news, that ye editor would write letters to himself and print them. just like they came from some subscriber, and then use up a column or so answering them? And the circulation, according to ye editor, was 2,000, but it was really 275. because you could run it all off on the Washington hand press in less than two hours.

You used to hear dad talk about the heavy editorials in the home town paper. Discussion of world topics and politics and everything but religion. which was let alone because it was supposed to stir up trouble and get advertisers to take out their ads and stop their subscriptions.

And how ye editors emphasized his arguments! Have you forgotten that small capitals were for special notice capitals very important, italics to show the profound wisdom of the editor. but exclamation points--that was a crisis. wasn't it? And when the editor used two or three exclamation points, which the tramp printer foreman called "screamers." something awful was intended.

And editors roasted each other every week. Columns of wasted ink on space that belonged by right to the readers. And they called each other "curs." and "sneaks." and printed all the things they ever did and didn't.

And each editor was afraid of the other and would go to the postoffice on press day, unobserved, where possible. get the rival's paper fresh with the damp of the "wettin' down" and see what had been said. And do you remember how the tramp printer foreman sometimes kept sober for three months?

And then on press day when you had smeared the ink out of the keg with the long-handled paddle on the ink stone and were ready to do your part to get the man-killer hand press started. ed. Hank Wright came in and said the printer was drunk in John Gompert's saloon in the basement? And sound asleep?

And how the home paper wrote up the parties and the sociables. The language was so strong in the way of compliments that the women hardly dared let the editor know about any more parties.

Every young girl there was beautiful, every volunteer singer had sympathy in the voice, and the young men got off with the conventional black.

And the time the tramp printer with red whiskers who sent $2 a month to the Louisiana state lottery and never drew a prize in ten years, got mad because he was fired and sneaked into the office at night and stole all the "f's" and "k's" out of the body type

And the trouble the editor had in explaining it in a special notice to subscribers? You have forgotten how it read? But you remember the last paragraph?

"This is no jouque to us, it is a serious aphair."

And do you remember the printer's devil, the dirty boy whose finger tips were always inkstained and his face streaked and he smelled like a perspiring garage mechanic that has just crawled from under a flivver? And he was always getting the town boys to come up and see the type lice? And he urged them to bend close over the columns of type and he would squeeze water in the opening and suddenly push the type upward, spurting the water into their faces? And he got licked for it when the town fellers caught him on the street.

And for all that, you are eager for the home town paper, with its exclamation points, and the sad life of the man who tried to be of service to his community, and his dull heart aches, and the little personals of aches. and the little personals of people you once knew-what a few are left.