A quarter of a century or Twenty-five years and counting
Dear Readers, Editor Kristiaan Rawlings (affectionately known as Skeeter to me and Earl) called me the other day to tell me two very important things.
That today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of my column.
He was starting a daily e-version of Saturday Shelby.
Skeeter thought that I might want to write something special for the quarter of century edition. He was right. Most folks agree that there is nothing more special than a little trip down memory lane, or we wouldn’t all still be watching Andy Griffith reruns on TV. Mr. Peabody, have Sherman set the Wayback machine to 1992 and let us time travel. Arriving in 1992 we find a different America. Candidate Bill Clinton claims to not have inhaled. Now in Colorado, California, and several other states, you can inhale all you want. In 1992, actor Jack Nicholson, in the movie "A Few Good Men" famously says, “You can’t handle the truth.” Candidate Ross Perot proclaims that if NAFTA is passed, there will be a giant sucking sound from all of our American jobs going to Mexico. Rodney King says, “Can we all just get along?” and singer Sinead O’Connor, in a bit of DA DA performance art, tears up a photo of the Pope on the TV show Saturday Night Live. In 1992 I was practicing law at 505 S. Harrison St. with my partners, Chuck Bate, Denny Harrold and Jeff Bate. Today, Jeff Bate continues to practice law in the same office and the building remains unchanged. My secretary was Kim Medsker, and she is now Jeff’s secretary. When I left, Jeff just closed the door to my office and, similar to Miss Havisham’s wedding reception, it remains untouched today. Some local lawyers have speculated that Jeff has left my office untouched all of these years just in case I decide to return to private practice. I think that Jeff hopes that I become famous and then he can retire from the practice of law and make a living by having Kim give tours of my old office. My writing process in those days was simple. Kim would come into my office and bring her steno pad and pencil. I would ramble my usual gibberish and she would write on her steno pad a bunch of little squiggles. Secretaries in those days knew a secret code called short hand. It looked like a bunch of little squiggles on the page, but they could take those squiggles and turn them into a letter, or for me, a newspaper column, by using a typewriter. Kim would use this method to turn my rambling into a newspaper column. Note: Any of you millennials who are skeptical about this shorthand stuff, just look it up on the information superhighway. If I hadn’t lived during this period of time, I wouldn’t believe it either. Anyway, Kim would type the column and then I would drive it over to the Shelbville News and hand-deliver it to the editor. An old man wearing a linoleum visor would somehow set lead type on a cylinder and crank out my column along with the rest of the newspaper. It has been fun taking a little trip back in time. A special thanks to Skeeter because, without him, I wouldn’t have had this 25th anniversary. Note: Today at the Bookmark Coffee Shop our favorite barista, Marie, will be featuring café lattes with a Schwinn Stingray in the milk foam to commemorate the anniversary.