As I sat reading my email and the news online this morning I had visions of reading the news not all that many years ago. Newsprint and ink stains…Reading the daily news was much more a hit or miss affair. What started this muse was reading Leon Hale’s column from today’s Houston Chronicle. As I was reading through his column today my mind had visions of sitting in my dad’s kitchen with the paper folded back to read Leon’s pieces. Pieces about sitting in a roadside park on the Devil’s Backbone on Highway 32 in Blanco County tapping out a column on his portable typewriter and watching the travelers stop for a rest. Pieces about chasing south every year to find Spring…Primavera Leon called it, his yearly trip with Old Friend Morgan. Pieces about the yearly fishing trip on the James River with a bunch of old buddies.

The mind rambling brought back memories of the summer visits to my father’s older sister and her family in a small country town out west of here. Once a week while I was visiting I would go down to the local weekly newspaper and pick up a bundle of that weeks news and wander around town hawking the important stories. If I recall correctly, I paid a nickel a paper and they sold for a dime…budding entrepreneur that I was as a preteen, I thought that was great pay for an afternoon of wandering around town…The thing I really remember though was the ink stains when my sweaty arm made the ink run as I carried my “News” about my rounds…

Which all in all made me happy to be able to read the “paper” on the screen of this electronic tablet instead of the remains of dead trees. Besides, in the days of memory I didn’t have access to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle much less the Watauga Democrat or the Floyd Press or even the El Campo Leader – News, my long ago newspaper of stained arms…