This Was the Weekly That Was, And Is   

These papers are "in," and good ones are packed full.

We did have competition. There was the Dickeyville Gazette, owned by Preacher L.B. (for Love Bird) Harrell, which reported all the news fit to print and a lot more from Dickeyville, Pennville and other communities near us, partly for the benefit of Preacher Harrell's other soon-to-go-busted enterprises, including his religious practice and his county bus line (Love Bird's Bluebirds, we called them).

We also were up against the formidable Bob Baker, 17, who pioneered radio in Summerville by reporting for another town's station from his newsroom above a store on Commerce St.

The Summerville News, where I spent that summer down the street from the house my grandparents had built, was the big game in Chattooga County. For me, at 16, it was an opening to the world. And at 15 cents per column inch, it was a start, not to mention an inducement to write long.

D.T. Espy gave me the job. He owned the paper, as his father had.

I never saw him in a necktie. He edited my stories while setting them 7 points on 7-1/2 on the Linotype, wrote the eight-column format heads on another hot-type machine without ever putting the words on paper and grumpily took in ads from customers who had the nerve to interrupt while he was doing it all.