Benjamin Franklin is credited with saying, “In this world nothing can be certain, save death and taxes.” While that statement has stood time’s test, I would add a minor — and possibly uniquely American — corollary. Nobody gets out of an auto parts store in less than 15 minutes.
It doesn’t matter if you are buying a can of oil, an exhaust manifold for a 1977 Dodge Dart, or a set of floor mats. Auto parts stores are designed to hold their customers hostage for a quarter-hour minimum. Men have missed the birth of their first grandchild because they swung by AAA-Big Easy Auto Parts to pick...
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I saw a photo of myself the other day that a photography student shot as a group of pre-K children passed through soliciting money for St. Jude’s Hospital. They were cute tykes, all dressed alike in matching T-shirts. They had walked from the nearby Child Development Center. Several held cans with slits cut into the plastic lids. The children solemnly watched as I deposited two $1 bills in a pair of the cans.
The student showed me the photo on her digital camera. It wasn’t one we would use for the newspaper, me being the adviser. She just wanted me to see it. My first thought was, “Good...
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In 1946 a 23-year-old Pennsylvania man named Walter was mustered out of the Marines after serving in World War II. He was stationed in the Pacific front on a special base security force, shuttling supplies by plane to the Chinese forces fighting the Japanese. Walter returned to his job working on the Pennsylvania Railroad. Over the years, he worked just about every job available and operated nearly all of the locomotives available. One of them was a steam engine, fueled by coal and used mainly for passenger service and known as a K-4. It is widely considered the greatest steam locomotive of all time....
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As the government staggered into shutdown this week, Americans and the world were treated to the spectacle of a Congress that is utterly broken, whose approval ratings are lower than both used car salesmen and journalists. As a member of the latter trade, I didn’t think that was possible. No matter where you land on the political spectrum it is difficult to find much to be proud of these days in how our system has ceased to function. Blame who you want — Democrats, Republicans, the president — we lurch from one manufactured crisis to another.
Last year, the United States risked damaging...
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Lately a recurring dream jolts me awake at least once a week in the early morning darkness. I am trying to get out a newspaper, usually in one of the shops in which I toiled over the past three decades. Sometimes the venue isn’t recognizable. Deadline is fast approaching. Everything is going awry. Reporters aren’t filing their stories where they can be found. Computers are crashing.
Unexpected and unwanted visitors — rodeo clowns, sheriff candidates, bill collectors to whom I don’t owe money — keep interrupting and sidetracking me as I try to lay out the pages of a newspaper. I feel...
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For the first time in more than two decades I sat in a pressbox under the stadium lights, covering a football game. The Kilgore College Rangers faced their archrivals, the Tyler Junior College Apaches. Two of my KC journalism students had never covered a football game before, so I sat between them, showing them how to record each play. The plan was, when the game ended, they would be able to write a comprehensive account of what happened.
A few days before the match, Longview News-Journal sports editor Jack Stallard kindly came to campus and gave my young charges a quick lesson on how to fill...
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Gary Q. Frields lived and breathed for art in its various mediums — visual, sculpture and performance especially. He was a legendary teacher as well and perhaps proudest of students that became teachers of art. At his memorial event recently in Lufkin, I talked to a young woman I knew well in a previous life. She was about to begin teaching art at a community college. To prepare, she was reviewing what she had learned in Frields’ classes at SFA, because now she is teaching what she learned from him. I am certain he is looking down with great satisfaction. Frields died at 67 of cancer on Aug....
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A thunderstorm rumbled through on a recent late Sunday afternoon, bringing much-needed rain to our parched area. It also knocked out the electricity with 20 minutes left in the last episode of “Broadchurch” on BBC-America. This brought an anguished cry from my Beautiful Mystery Companion who was trying to catch up on missed shows. We lose power inordinately in this cul-de-sac, even under a cloudless sky, though rarely for long. I have AEP’s outage number in my cell phone contacts and quickly went through the routine of reporting it to an automated voice.
We are frugal folks with a large...
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Forty years ago this semester I started night classes at Kilgore College. I took nine hours while working full-time during the day at the Made Rite Bottling Co. in Longview. I operated the bottle-washing machine. That duty consisted of perching above the wide conveyor belt and making sure the bottles stayed upright before they entered the belly of this beast. Occasionally I had to pull out a bottle with a broken or chipped neck. When the line broke down up where the clean bottles were filled with Dr Pepper or RC Cola, or back where other workers were loading the dirty bottles, I could steal a few minutes...
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Life and events again conspired to keep me from making it to Fenway Park this season. I can’t complain, since nobody will listen. Instead I drove down to watch the Red Sox play the Houston Astros in Minute Maid Park, accompanied by my middle daughter Mere and son-in-law Matt. We sat in right field by the foul pole in prime home run ball-catching territory.
Back in the day, the Astros for a time earned the nickname of the Lastros, an insult that sadly has been resurrected for a team that has fallen on really hard times. Some of the jokes making the rounds of Facebook include:
• I left...
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