Friday, October 22, 2004
I column as I see 'em
By The Erudite Redneck
Dave Barry, syndicated humor columnist based at the Miami Herald, is taking a hiatus after 30 years. In all that time, he said, he hasn’t missed a single weekly column.
Good for him. That is one heck of a feat — IF he has had other responsibilities in addition to his column. Anyone who can write at all can come up with one column a week, if that’s all that’s required.
Forgive my hooseyness.* But it took an act of war for me to miss filing a weekly news column — and I have never had the luxury of just writing a column.
Writing news and editing copy or leading a staff or editing a newspaper section has been my real job. Writing a column has always been something I "get" to do on top of everything else.
The Saturday following 9/11, there was a little box on the page in the paper where my column should have been that said I was absent. It didn’t say why, although my closest friends and kin knew I was in D.C. on 9/11 and it took me until that Saturday, the day my column runs, to get home.
That broke the spell. Until that point, I hadn’t missed filing a column in just more than 10 years of writing them, first in Texas, now in Oklahoma.
That’s not to say one of my columns ran every week. Once in Texas, the person laying out the op-ed page ran what she thought was my column, with my mugshot and byline — but it was a column by the food editor. Not a food column, although it did have to do with food, but an op-ed piece.
The writer is a Texan by way of Alabam, and she and I share fundamental world views. We both had been to some small-town to-do and both of us had decided to write about it. It was the ... um ... Buford Strawberry Festival in Buford, Texas.**
I forget what I wrote about, but she wrote about how one of the TV newsbabes who’d also come out from town to a farm at Buford went on and on about how she’d never seen homemade ice cream being made.
The newsbabe — clearly a Yankee, or worse, a Southern girl who’d lost her dang roots — made out like she’d never even heard of anybody chucking ice and rock salt into a big wooden bucket with holes in the side and a small revolvin’ chamber filled with secret ingredients that you hand-turn with a hand crank until, lo and behold, it makes ice cream.
And she wrote it in that oh-so-slightly condescending way that only a matronly Southern woman can get away with when talkin’ oh-so-slightly down to a younger woman, Southern or otherwise.
Think "Steel Magnolias" zeitgeist. With the Erudite Redneck’s picture and byline by it, not the Southern matron’s.
Nothing untoward happened. Turned out that the voice and views of the woman who wrote the piece were so close to my own that nobody noticed the columns had been switched! (My Lord, if that means I write like a Southern Erma Bombeck, then just shoot me now). But I went the next few days keepin’ an eye out for hitbabes sent out by the Lone Star Chapter of the National Organization few Wimmin to come around and knock me on the noggin and set me straight.
That was in the early ’90s, and until 9/15 of ’01, I never missed another column.
Some months after, when space was tight in the section of the paper where my columns runs, when I had a particularly hellish week, I volunteered to sacrifice my musings for the good of the team — which freed up space for real news and gave me a break. Later, I was ashamed. I got over it.
Last month, on a week of vacation (a vacation from payin’ work only), I fully intended to send in a column. Between work on my master’s thesis and the can’t-miss-a-column spell bein’ broken, I begged off the day before it was due. I told myself it was OK, since I wadn’t goofin’ off, I just had other chickens to fry.
Then I read where Dave Barry had never missed a column in 30 years. I won’t be able to say that. Right now, I can say I haven’t missed but three columns in 13 ½ years. I reckon that ain’t bad, considerin’.
-----
* "Hooseyness" is a family word. It means "uppity" or "snobbish" or "to be on one’s high horse." One of my little nieces used to call horses "hooseys." To be "hoosey" is to be on one’s high horse. "Hooseyness," of course, of course, is the noun form.
**Name of town and fruit changed to protect all involved. But some of y’all know what and where I’m talkin’ about.
END
Dave Barry, syndicated humor columnist based at the Miami Herald, is taking a hiatus after 30 years. In all that time, he said, he hasn’t missed a single weekly column.
Good for him. That is one heck of a feat — IF he has had other responsibilities in addition to his column. Anyone who can write at all can come up with one column a week, if that’s all that’s required.
Forgive my hooseyness.* But it took an act of war for me to miss filing a weekly news column — and I have never had the luxury of just writing a column.
Writing news and editing copy or leading a staff or editing a newspaper section has been my real job. Writing a column has always been something I "get" to do on top of everything else.
The Saturday following 9/11, there was a little box on the page in the paper where my column should have been that said I was absent. It didn’t say why, although my closest friends and kin knew I was in D.C. on 9/11 and it took me until that Saturday, the day my column runs, to get home.
That broke the spell. Until that point, I hadn’t missed filing a column in just more than 10 years of writing them, first in Texas, now in Oklahoma.
That’s not to say one of my columns ran every week. Once in Texas, the person laying out the op-ed page ran what she thought was my column, with my mugshot and byline — but it was a column by the food editor. Not a food column, although it did have to do with food, but an op-ed piece.
The writer is a Texan by way of Alabam, and she and I share fundamental world views. We both had been to some small-town to-do and both of us had decided to write about it. It was the ... um ... Buford Strawberry Festival in Buford, Texas.**
I forget what I wrote about, but she wrote about how one of the TV newsbabes who’d also come out from town to a farm at Buford went on and on about how she’d never seen homemade ice cream being made.
The newsbabe — clearly a Yankee, or worse, a Southern girl who’d lost her dang roots — made out like she’d never even heard of anybody chucking ice and rock salt into a big wooden bucket with holes in the side and a small revolvin’ chamber filled with secret ingredients that you hand-turn with a hand crank until, lo and behold, it makes ice cream.
And she wrote it in that oh-so-slightly condescending way that only a matronly Southern woman can get away with when talkin’ oh-so-slightly down to a younger woman, Southern or otherwise.
Think "Steel Magnolias" zeitgeist. With the Erudite Redneck’s picture and byline by it, not the Southern matron’s.
Nothing untoward happened. Turned out that the voice and views of the woman who wrote the piece were so close to my own that nobody noticed the columns had been switched! (My Lord, if that means I write like a Southern Erma Bombeck, then just shoot me now). But I went the next few days keepin’ an eye out for hitbabes sent out by the Lone Star Chapter of the National Organization few Wimmin to come around and knock me on the noggin and set me straight.
That was in the early ’90s, and until 9/15 of ’01, I never missed another column.
Some months after, when space was tight in the section of the paper where my columns runs, when I had a particularly hellish week, I volunteered to sacrifice my musings for the good of the team — which freed up space for real news and gave me a break. Later, I was ashamed. I got over it.
Last month, on a week of vacation (a vacation from payin’ work only), I fully intended to send in a column. Between work on my master’s thesis and the can’t-miss-a-column spell bein’ broken, I begged off the day before it was due. I told myself it was OK, since I wadn’t goofin’ off, I just had other chickens to fry.
Then I read where Dave Barry had never missed a column in 30 years. I won’t be able to say that. Right now, I can say I haven’t missed but three columns in 13 ½ years. I reckon that ain’t bad, considerin’.
-----
* "Hooseyness" is a family word. It means "uppity" or "snobbish" or "to be on one’s high horse." One of my little nieces used to call horses "hooseys." To be "hoosey" is to be on one’s high horse. "Hooseyness," of course, of course, is the noun form.
**Name of town and fruit changed to protect all involved. But some of y’all know what and where I’m talkin’ about.
END
Comments:
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At least I can say I know how to make homemade ice cream, and not with some sissy electric machine neither!
When we lived on the egg ranch during my youth, we had a cow that gave half-and-half. You had to be careful making ice cream with her cream. Paddle it too long and your spoon got a coating of butter, which coating got thicker as you ate the ice cream.
Ahhhhh, those were the days! :)
When we lived on the egg ranch during my youth, we had a cow that gave half-and-half. You had to be careful making ice cream with her cream. Paddle it too long and your spoon got a coating of butter, which coating got thicker as you ate the ice cream.
Ahhhhh, those were the days! :)
# posted by 
: 1:03 PM
: 1:03 PM
Oh yeah, the post I read about weekends away is now totally MIA. It really must be your personality or the Blogger monster holds something against you.
Wish I could help with your computer. :(
Wish I could help with your computer. :(
# posted by : 1:05 PM
: 1:05 PM
Those of us that have known you(prior to
all that education) have know you were
just a little hoosey. But we love you
any way. Who else would give us that
wonderful just off center prospective
of life. I for one will miss you not
being here on weekends. We'll just
need more during the week.
all that education) have know you were
just a little hoosey. But we love you
any way. Who else would give us that
wonderful just off center prospective
of life. I for one will miss you not
being here on weekends. We'll just
need more during the week.
Man! That is my kind of cow! ... The only thing I can think of that would beat it might be a bovine that gives Dickel! LOL. FLASH: The modern digital version of Doc Adams is comin' to the house at high noon tomorrow to apply leeches and bleed my computer! Might even make it bite a bullet while he pokes around in there! Maybe I'll be heard from again after all! :-)
The dedication it takes to write a weekly column somewhat misguided. There's having a week to formulate ideas, contact folks, etc. But when you've been at it 30 years, you get something like 10 weeks vacation, and you still have to have a column in when you're gone.
Nice tradeoff, I guess.
But ER is correct in saying that it's a little more difficult for most journalists. At The Oak, our sports columnists file three or four (occassionally five) columns a week. Sometimes that's good. Sometimes not.
I enjoyed reading Dave Barry, but as time went on and he went on and his words went on, there were times he continued to write so much that a one-sentence paragraph contained 400 words. See what I mean?
But we all have those days. Good columnists are hard to come by. Fortunately, I like the way ER writes, even though I don't agree with how he thinks. :-)
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Nice tradeoff, I guess.
But ER is correct in saying that it's a little more difficult for most journalists. At The Oak, our sports columnists file three or four (occassionally five) columns a week. Sometimes that's good. Sometimes not.
I enjoyed reading Dave Barry, but as time went on and he went on and his words went on, there were times he continued to write so much that a one-sentence paragraph contained 400 words. See what I mean?
But we all have those days. Good columnists are hard to come by. Fortunately, I like the way ER writes, even though I don't agree with how he thinks. :-)
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