All About Time

“Are you telling me that it’s going to cost a dime to mail a letter to my daughter in Houston?” she fumed.

Unruffled, the postal guy had this rejoinder: “Ma’am, you’re looking at it all wrong; that’s only a penny a day.”

I’ve pondered often about “the way things were” in Pony Express days, when the cost of sending a single letter — in today’s dollars — was $170. The route had about 200 stations for fresh riders and horses.

Little wonder that the Pony Express ran just 19 months, 1860-1862. After all, riders — though richly compensated — faced strict requirements, including a maximum weight of 125 pounds and the possibility of encountering Indians en route. There were repairs on the raided stations, and buying tons of oats for hundreds of horses was expensive.

The Pony Express first used the motto: “The mail must go through.” Today, most folks use the it for the US Mail, adding the word “eventually.”

Publications — at least in recent years — face many challenges; many have folded (pun intended).

I salute the folks who keep them going, satisfying old-timers’ oft-heard comment about the joy of holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a newspaper with the other.

The New York Times proclaimed, “all the news that’s fit to print,” and the late Will Rogers often claimed, “Well, all I know is what I read in the papers.”

What we “read in the papers” these days is far more accurate that most “jabber” on social media. Throw in artificial intelligence, and we increasingly yearn for the influence of Rogers, who died 90 years ago in an Alaskan plane crash.

I believe that newspapers provide the “heartbeat of communities.” Further, I stand on tiptoes to applaud the Hood County News in Granbury, TX, as well as the London Lobo in the Texas Hill Country and the Index-Press in O’Donnell, TX. (I cite these for three current, unique reasons.)

The Granbury paper regularly nabs numerous honors in statewide competition, and — published on weekends — it has more pages than weekday editions than Texas’ metropolitan publications.

With staff and circulation growing, Publisher Sam Houston, Executive Editor Richard Nelson and HCN writers have it going.

In O’Donnell — where a museum honors the life of Dan Blocker (“Hoss” on the long-running TV show, Bonanza) — publishers John and Sharon Wells are as resourceful as it gets. He “does it all” at the Index-Press, one of the state’s smallest newspapers.

John writes a weekly column, reflecting often on childhood memories — as well as providing helpful suggestions concerning health and safety — and other items of current interest.

I take the liberty re-printing a paragraph from his recent column: “A few years ago, we had an incident where a visiting school bus took out the power to the newspaper. We ended up using a little 350-watt inverter I had connected to a Chevy van by the office door to power the newspaper office with its two desktop computers, two printers, a waxer, a fan, and lighting so we could see what we were doing.” Now that’s beyond resourceful!

The London Lobo, perhaps the state’s smallest newspaper, is printed on both sides of 8.5”x11” sheets of paper, stapled in the upper left-hand corner. Available free, this “labor of love” is published monthly by Brian Jeter.

Each issue includes an article that appeared some 60 years ago in London School’s prize-winning newspaper, The Flash. Following is a piece lifted from a 1962 issue. (I committed my first public speech there in 1962, and the school closed a few months later, hopefully not for anything I’d said.)

“Look in your cabinets! Maybe you have a bowl or a pan that belongs to the school. Some are missing, Mrs. Lucy Koerner, who is in charge of the lunchroom, says.”

Dr. Newbury, a speaker in the Metroplex, may be reached at 817-447-3872; email: newbury@speakerdoc.com. Audio version at www.speakerdoc.com.