Backwards Type

Dear Reader, Oops.  Last blog Taverna, we chopped off the chorus borrowed from Peggy Lee’s song “Manana.” Glitch reminded me of my 1940s newspaper days.  Back when the linotype operator set in lead–a ‘slug’–my words on metal about eight inches wide and two inches high.  Then the printer, who wore a leather apron and usually hung a cigarette off his lower lip, stacked the reversed words into a steel frame the size of a newspaper

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Taverna

In the late 1970s, Margaret and I enlisted Austin married couple, Lela Jane Akin and Bob Tinsman, as crew.  We joined other Flying Scot skippers to charter 30-foot sloops and cruise the Grecian Islands. Because Greece and Turkey were at odds, the charter company proscribed that we sail similar routes that ended each night at the same dock.   A Greek restaurant was always located near the pier.  We were invited to their kitchens to see

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Pajama Party

They organized a pajama party at the Old Folks Boarding House where I live. Began at 11:08 pm.  Know time because I had just gone to bed when the ringing started.  Alarmed me.  Oh No, don’t want to go the hospital.  Thought the ringing was in my head.  Started to telephone son-in-law, a retired physical therapist, for guidance.  That’s when one of the staff appeared at my bed.  Said I had to get up and

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Raised Up

We youngsters were invited to her 105th birthday party.   We arrived wheeling wheelchairs–some battery-powered, pushing walkers, leaning on canes. Don’t know about the other old timers at our Old Folks Boarding House, but I did the math.  Joyce Ruminer is 13 years older. When people compare ages, I can get a bit smug.  After all, my oldest great-grandson just graduated from Mississippi State.  Now working at an engineer’s job in North Carolina. Who knows?  My

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Blame Game

 ‘Tis the season when the ‘blame games’ begin.   Most of the votes have been counted. Time to put the blame on…. Turnout?  Pass outs?  Debate bouts? My close friend Alex and I–shipmates on our high school Sea Scout ship, high school debate team partners–started arguing politics in high school.  When Christine and Alex eloped, they asked me to attend their small church wedding ceremony. Still, the political arguments continued through our years together: Dick Elam,

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Emojis

 “Boil the fat out of the copy,” said Journalism Professor Ken Byerley.   He taught “less is more” to we students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. When I was a cub reporter, my Abilene Reporter-News editor Frank Grimes constrained himself to one typewritten page when he typed an editorial.  Yes, he did keep margins wide. If ‘Mister G’ still had more to say, he twirled another piece of paper into his typewriter

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Tom Kraycirik -30-

“This is the eleventh hour,” Tom said that morning in Chapel Hill.  My student and a classmate–Community Journalism 301–needed to pay $500 for his University of North Carolina final semester’s tuition. Tom arrived at my 1972 teaching assistant office (I was a Ph.D candidate) seeking a loan.  He knew I owned half interest in a Texas semi-weekly.  I didn’t say no, but suggested he might indenture himself—go to work at his hometown newspaper if the publisher

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‘A’ is for Agent

You bet, I read all of the story about the entrepreneurs who financed one of year’s best movie—“Maverick”, the Top Gun military flying sequel—and raised more money to make more movies. At my most recent birthday, I wore the printed sweatshirt a clever daughter gave me. Large words on shirt read Used to teach, but now I have no class. One semester I taught entrepreneurship to broadcast and film students.  Money raising was part of

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Mickey and Me

Mickey Mouse and I share the same birth year.  In 1928, cartoonist Walt Disney gave the movie world a mouse at the wheel of a steamboat.  Same year Lena and Red (aka Albert Richard Elam) gave birth to ‘Junior’ in Pecos, Texas. Mickey and I have been animated ever since 1928. Last month, I gave myself a Mickey Mouse wristwatch.  Sometimes, I have trouble determining which is the ‘big hand’ and which is the ‘little

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