A blizzard of replies

We've been asking readers to give us their storm stories from the Blizzard of '78 -- and here we are digging out from under a pile of responses.
It is great to have readers interact with us. I think you'll enjoy reading about babies being born, weddings being performed and lots of digging out in our packages of blizzard stories on Sunday.
If you haven't sent us your story, we're still prepared for a late flurry. But send them by Thursday noon.

If only civilized society was a little more civil

Being in the news business means having to deal with the underbelly of the human race.
And I'm not talking about murderers and rapists.
I'm talking about people who weren't paying attention when their parents were teaching them manners.
I'm talking about people who call the newsroom to scream (and that is no exaggeration) profanities about something we did or didn't write.
Here's what happened today:
We had a story in the paper about an Elyria truck driver who was killed in an accident.
It's tough getting details about a fatal car accident.
It's even tougher getting details about the person who was killed.
On deadline. When no or few family phone numbers are listed.
Well, our reporter, Steve Szucs, got the details of the crash.
But he was determined to get more, to tell the whole story -- of not just the accident itself but of the man who lost his life in it.
Steve got lucky. He went through the phone book, dialing numbers until he found the victim's aunt.
She seemed close to the victim. She was broken up about his death. She had a photograph of him that she gave us to put in the paper.
And she told us he didn't have any kids.
Well, guess what? It turns out the victim had a son, a 10-year-old son.
How did we find that out?
By someone who called this morning after reading the story to tell us how incompetent we were.
By someone else who called to tell us to get out stories straight.
And by a dozen other people with similar sentiments -- none of them, to my knowledge, family of the victim.
And finally, in the capper this evening, by a woman who called us every name in the book with f'ing as an adjective for each of those names.
Who ARE these people?
They walk among us.
Let's just hope they aren't walking behind us down a dark alley.

By the way, we made plans to recify our error after the very first phone call.
While we feel bad about the error, frankly, I don't know how we could have done anything differently. Or if we will do anything differently next time.

Soon you'll call -- and someone will answer

Guess where I'm going tomorrow?
To training for our new phone system.
Yes, soon, very soon, you will be able to reach us on our phones again.
Or at least leave us voicemail.
For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, we have had only a very limited number of phones since the roof leaked over our phone-room months ago.
Worse, we have had no voicemail.
If you've tried unsuccessfully to reach any of us recently, you know how frustrating it can be.
Imagine how things have been on our end. I have a cell phone and that is the number I list in the paper. That one I pick up. That one takes voicemail.
But sometimes people call my old number, the land line.
Which rings on a phone across the room, a phone that also rings a couple other numbers. Sometimes I get up to answer it and sometimes I don't (sorry).
But soon (I've been assured), there will be a phone on every desk.
A phone that works.

Gay guy furious we reported he was HIV-positive

I got an e-mail today from a very angry man who is HIV-positive.
He was mad because we put his name in a story.
"He had no right to disclose legally protected information," he wrote about our reporter.
Then the HIV-positive man demanded I fire the reporter and advised me to contact our lawyer.
Well, here's the problem. I don't think we did anything wrong.
You see, we included his name in the story because his mother was talking about him during an event to mark World AIDS Day. We covered the event.
What his mother said was compelling: She said she had trouble dealing with it when her son told her 15 years ago that he and his partner were HIV positive. She also said she was shunned by some of her friends.
"I couldn't believe it. I walked out of the room. I couldn't talk to him that day," she said. "I had to learn to love him, accept him and not point any fingers."
We named her and her son in the story because she named her and her son at the event.
I e-mailed the son a response to his note.
"At the event, several people spoke about their loved ones," I wrote. "Our reporter wrote down what was said at the public gathering and then wrote a story about it.
"If I was at a public event such as that – and I am a longtime journalist – I would assume that anybody whose name is mentioned has given the person mentioning it permission to do so. Why would a reporter think otherwise?"
The son phoned me before he got the e-mail.
The only non-hostile word he spoke was "Hello, my name is ..."
And then he started yelling. Not a good approach when you are trying to get a point across.
And then he called me "sweetie." Not a good thing to call a stranger you are trying to convince of anything.
Then he called the reporter the OTHER f-word, the racial slur for homosexuals.
I threatened to hang up on him and he settled down.
He asked to have his name pulled from the story that was online.
I agreed to do it -- without reservation. I understand the situation it put him in.
I also understand that when we cover an event or a meeting, it is our job simply to report what we saw and heard there.
And the more specific we can get, the better.

Even more trash talk in Lorain

The phone rang today.
It was Helen Goldberg, a 90-year-old resident of Lorain's 1st Ward who calls me occasionally.
"I have a good idea for a story," she said.
"Write about what's going on with the trash pickup in Lorain."
Yee-ouch.
We have been writing that story for a long time now and yet sharp-as-a-tack loyal reader Helen has looked right over it -- or has not understood a word we have written.
Chuck Camera, street supervisor, told me after I talked to Helen yesterday that it isn't a fair program for Lorain, the city with a lot of renters (landlords evict them and pile all their belongings in the street) and streets lined with parked cars (so the automated arms on the garbage cans can't get at the bins).
He estimated that of the 22,000 households in Lorain, only 13,000 to 16,000 pay to have their trash picked up.
What about the other 6,000 to 9,000 people?
They either live in apartments and use the apartment Dumpsters or they throw it anywhere they can find -- including the middle of the street, Chuck said.
After I taked to Chuck, I asked our courts and county reporter, Brad Dicken, to write a trash story explaining what's going on but with a bit more of a human angle.
"Talk to the people," I said, "not just the bureaucrats."
Brad told me that the pilot program Lorain is being asked to join is for only two years and 900 households.
After those two years, Lorain can keep doing what it's doing, convert the whole city to the new program or dump the program all together.
If it dumps the program all together, its grant money from the Lorain County Solid Waste Commission would drop minimally (from $250,000 to $225,000), Brad told me.
So, I think that's a small price to pay for a greener planet.
Well, at least a greener county.

(By the way, if you don't understand what's going on either, you're in good company. Lorain Mayor-elect Tony Krasienko was quoted in our story today as saying, "We still never got a complete answer on everything. It's still a little fuzzy.")

Sorting through the trash (collecting)

As a person who faithfully recycles, I was a little dismayed to find out the only thing that stood between me and a healthier planet were six city councilmen in Lorain who last night voted no on "pay as you throw."
For those of you who have been living in a Dumpster for the past few months, "pay as you throw" is a program (being pushed by the Lorain County Solid Waste Policy Committee) in which households are limited to the amount of trash they can put on the curb.
The common way to do this is to give every household two containers. One for trash and one for recylables. The theory behind this is that people trying to save space in their limited trash bin will throw recyclables in the other one, where they belong -- instead of between the coffee grounds and banana peels in the garbage.
Sounds like an idea that should have no opposition, right?
Well, it did. In Lorain. Where I live. The city council vote was 3-6 against the program.
Lorain has to approve it by Wednesday in order for the county to get $1.5 million in recycling incentives.
How could they do this, I thought ... when every other city in Lorain County has approved it?
And then I got this interesting e-mail from Rocky in LaGrange where "pay as you throw" has already been implemented:

"i am a resident of lagrange and have been on the "pay as you throw" program for a few months now. i have received zero cost reduction, actually my last bill went up and i am giving less trash. not to mention i no longer have the ability to throw away large objects or construction material, unless i rent or borrow a truck to load up and take into town to designated area which allows you to throw away such items. i live outside the city and i am truly considering dropping my trash pick-up completely and just burning everything i can and dropping what i can't off at the designated area when needed. to me lorain did the right thing. the program needs to revised to accommodate their issues, but also issues they have not brought up. the designated dumping area needs to be dropped. a monthly or bimonthly or quarterly pick-up for large items and construction material at our residence would be a better solution. also the price needs to go down for people to accept this. throwing away less trash and recycling more should mean we pay less. i am 100% behind the decision that was made in lorain, things need to be improved drastically in my opinion.
also i wish the other city councils would have been as smart as the lorain council in trying to get this program improved before implementing it!
kudos to lorain!"

And now I'm all confused. You mean the trash collectors will never take that old couch or that broken lawn chair if you put them out on the treelawn?
Well, shoot, sometimes you have stuff that won't fit in a garbage can but I don't want to have to haul it to a dump. It's tough enough to do that with tree branches.
And for all this inconvenience -- and the number of trash collectors it should eliminate -- I should see cheaper bills.
We have to do some more reporting on this story, I think.
The only problem is I won't know before I go to the polls today whether to reward or punish those Lorain politicians who voted down the program.

Countdown to elections

There is a lot of last-minute scrambling in the newsroom on the day before elections.
We got our manifest for Wednesday's paper this afternoon. (You know the newsroom gets to fill around the ads, not the other way around, right?)
We usually have an entire section of the paper designated for election results -- but not this year. They are installing a new press and until it is fully functional, we can only get four sections in the paper.
It's true, sometimes you get a paper with more than four sections but that only means some of those were printed ahead of time and then stuffed into the paper (as was our 44-page election preview). Kind of tough to do that on deadline, though, so the election "section" will actually be the back of the A section. Hope it's easy for you to navigate.
We've talked a little about what will go on Page 1 on Wednesday. Like I said in a previous post, we like the county sales tax hike and the Lorain and Elyria mayoral elections for Page 1. But we also like any upsets, any unseated incumbents. They'll be considered for the front page, too.
We also plan for photos and -- much to the dismay of our chief photographer, Bruce Bishop -- we set up assignments for just about everyone since we don't know who the winners will be. He'll bring in his entire crew to help out election night.
Almost everyone in the newsroom will shift their hours to work Tuesday night. There will be a skeleton staff around during the day in case any other news breaks. We've always joked that election day would be a good day for a criminal to rob a bank -- at least as far as newspapers are concerned. I think the police are still at full shift that day.
But I'll be in early and take a break in the afternoon before coming back for all the excitement.
Our Gal Friday, metro desk assistant Paulanne Oakes, always makes sure everyone in the newsroom has plenty to eat on election night. She plans and cooks and orders and no one ever goes home hungry.
Exhausted, yes, but not hungry.

Nobody's perfect -- especially around elections

I walked into the office Thursday and all hell had broken loose.
Everyone in the newsroom -- all six of them at that point -- had logged one complaint or another about our Special Election Section that had come out in that day's paper.
Ooh, that hurts.
There are not words to describe how tough it is to put out one of those election guides -- especially when we have to gather information on 60-plus races involving some 300 candidates.
There are no big, flashy races coming up Tuesday -- my apologies to Bill Grace and John Romoser and Bonnie Ivancic and everyone else who is slighted by that comment.
The race we are looking at for the top of Page 1 the day after the elections is the countywide 0.25 percent sales tax increase. That is what we see as our biggest election story.
Oh, and any incumbent mayor getting unseated. Those stories will get prominent play, too.
Oh, and the school issues -- such as the 4.99-mill bond issue in North Ridgeville.
Oh, and the 0.25 percent income tax increase in Avon to build a YMCA rec center.
And that about sums up why it is such a bear to mold an election into something our readers can -- and want to -- read. Nothing is that important and everything is very important.
Christina Jolliffe, the metro editor, is point person at election time. She is the epitome of organization (God love her) and manages to keep everything straight.
We decided for this year's election preview to give all the candidates the same questions to answer. We thought that would give voters the most accurate picture of the differences between the candidates.
And for the most part, it worked out. The races were divvied up between the reporters (God love them) who managed to quiz the candidates while maintaining their already big workloads.
I say it worked "for the most part" because some of the complaints were "you didn't run everything I said."
Well, here's the deal. We only have so much room. We -- news editor Ben Nagy, that is -- had to do some creative cramming to get all the information we had into the 44 pages allotted to us for the section.
Ben figured out how everything would fit. We decided it would be more useful to readers to group cities -- for instance, all the races in Amherst -- rather than topics -- for instance, all the school board races. Ben and his copy editors had four days to do this.
We checked it and checked it and checked it again, Ben graciously fixing all the problems we found.
But, as usual, we did not get it absolutely perfect. (I actually think it might be the quest for that elusive perfection that keeps journalists coming to work everyday.)
We left out some photos (they were misplaced in our electronic archive) and we misspelled one candidate's name (sorry Bob Slovak, candidate in North Ridgeville's First Ward).
But, I think we now have everything straightened out and we can relax.
Until Tuesday night, that is.

How could Sabrina get kicked off?

Before I start ranting about "Dancing with the Stars," I guess I better 'fess up to watching it.
I tried not to get hooked but it's pretty hard.
Go ahead, I dare you, try to watch it for only one dance.
Wait, no sense watching it now.
The best dancer got booted from the show, Sabrina Bryan of the girl band, "Cheetah Girls."
Here's the deal for the uninitiated: Celebrities are paired with professional dancers and each week one couple is eliminated based on how the judges vote on the show and how the viewers vote -- over the phone and online -- in the half-hour after the show.
Usually, the couple that gets the boot is the couple that should get the boot. As there are fewer and fewer contenders, better and better dancers get kicked off. But, up until last night, it has always seemed to me that the weakest of the remaining got kicked off.
But after what happened last night with Sabrina, it seems that was just because we have been lucky up to this point.
There are some major problems with the voting.
First, the show's judges do not hold all contestants to the same standards. Wayne Newton was an original member of this year's show. What he had to do to get a "7" from the judges is nothing like what Sabrina Bryan had to do to get a "7."
In the show that led to her ouster, Sabrina got pretty low marks for an almost perfect performance.
Not fair.
Then, although the audience has a half hour to vote after the show, I defy you to try to cast the seven votes allowed to you. It is impossible to get through on the phone. Hang up that option.
But it is also nearly impossible to get onto the Web site to vote because it is experiencing so much traffic.
Some of the comments burning up online fan sites the day after blame Sabrina's defeat on people not voting because she was so good, they didn't feel the need to cast their vote. She was a lock.
Guess not.
I don't know about you but I want the most talented person to win a talent contest.
If that's what "Dancing with the Stars" is all about, they need to fix their voting procedure.
Still on the show is Jane Seymour. Not for anything, and God love her, she's even older than me, BUT she isn't as good as Sabrina Bryan -- by a long shot. Perhaps more Dr. Quinn fans watch the show than Cheetah Girls fans but that shouldn't keep the best dancer from winning.
A lot of people are saying they are done watching the show.
I'm not ready to say that but it sure has lost a lot of its magic as far as I'm concerned.

Daniel visits his mother

Daniel Petric, the 16-year-old son of a pastor, accused of killing his mother and shooting his father, was granted private visitation at his mother's casket today.
His attorney had asked the court if Daniel could have a furlough to go to the funeral on Saturday. Instead, private visitation was granted.
We went to cover the private visitation but by the time we got there, the van that had brought Daniel from the detention home was pulling away.
We have been given permission by the family to cover the funeral tomorrow so you can read about the ending of a tragic story in Sunday's Chronicle.

Wait, it's not the same old Lorain ... maybe

In the last blog item, I was lamenting the loss of what I thought was a new and improved working relationship with the mayor of Lorain.
When John Romoser was appointed to the seat Craig Foltin vacated in August, we all breathed a sigh of relief.
We couldn't catch a break -- or a fair shot at the news -- with Mayor Foltin.
But with a new mayor, we thought we would be back on even footing.
And then, we read -- in the other paper -- about Mike Kobylka leaving the safety-service director post, a story we knew about but were holding up on reporting as a courtesy.
Shoot, still getting shafted by the mayor's office.
But wait.
I got a call from Mayor Romoser today. He assured me that he is not like Craig Foltin.
"I don't know what happened. There was a breakdown in communication.
"I thought Mike had already called Adam (Wright, our Lorain reporter)," Romoser said.
"I never intended to shut you guys out," he said.
OK, I'll buy it. Anyone can make a mistake.
But this is the one and only "breakdown in communication" excuse that I will believe.
Because, as George Bush would say, "There's an old saying in Tennessee ... I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee ... that says, fool me once, shame on ... shame on you. Fool me ... oh, you can't get fooled again."

Same old, same old in Lorain

So we here at The Chronicle were all hoping that when Craig Foltin left office, it was the end of an era -- an era of getting our clock cleaned by the other paper on Lorain stories.
It was no secret that Foltin had no use for us and therefore spoon-fed all Lorain scoops to the other paper, leaving us -- time and time again -- running to catch up.
And now it appears the new mayor is up to the same old game.
You may have heard -- or read in the other paper -- that Lorain Safety Service Director Mike Kobylka is quitting to take another job.
Well, guess what? We have known about this for a little while but were honoring a promise we made to hold up on it until the job deal was finalized.
So, imagine our surprise when we opened the other paper this morning and there was the story. Silly, silly us.
Here. We. Go. Again.
The scuttlebutt on the street is that newly appointed mayor John Romoser urged/ordered/demanded that the other paper get the story first supposedly to get in the good graces of the hometown paper.
Hmmm. That's a little puzzling to me because the other paper has already endorsed his November opponent, Tony Krasienko. We haven't endorsed anyone.
Yet.

How we found out about the gun threat

This afternoon we got a tip that Daniel Petric, the 16-year-old accused of killing his mother and shooting his father, had been in trouble before.
He brought a gun to school, the tipster told me.
That was a little puzzling because we were told by the schools yesterday that he had been home-schooled until recently. This gun incident supposedly happened two years ago.
We didn't think we would have much luck getting information from the school -- and not because they told us something different yesterday. We thought we would get stymied by privacy issues.
"How about the police?" reporter Shawn Foucher said. "If he brought a gun to school, there should be a police report."
Isn't it great to be surrounded by resourceful news people?
Sure enough, Shawn got the Wellington police to provide us with a police report.
The incident, as you probably read on our Web site, actually happened four years ago ... and he didn't bring a gun, according to the police report, he threatened to bring a gun.
The home-schooled allegation? We're still trying to get to the bottom of that.
But the anonymous tipster did set us on a path of discovery and for that I'd like to thank him or her.
And if you see something or hear something about anything you think could be newsworthy, please let us know.
If there is something there, we'll track it down.

What does a teenage murder suspect look like?

Here is a picture of Daniel Petric, 16, who today was charged with murder and attempted murder in the shootings of his parents.
A picture of the back of Daniel Petric, that is.
We fought all morning today, with the help of our lawyer, to be allowed to take his photo at today's hearing. Daniel, according to police, is the only suspect in the shootings of his parents, the Rev. Mark and Sue Petric.
This afternoon's hearing was at the detention home where he is being held.
Our argument to take his photo was based on court rulings giving us the right to have a photographer at such hearings.
The court's argument against allowing us to take his photo was that the suspect is a juvenile who has not yet been charged.
He's a juvenile, yes, but he was charged at the hearing -- with murder and attempted murder. His mother is dead and his father is in critical condition.
In the end, we were allowed to shoot him from the back ... no photos that can identify him.
But we are not done fighting.
We believe we have the right to photograph a person charged with killing his or her parents -- regardless of age -- because we believe our readers have the right to see the face of the person charged with such a crime. What he looks like is part of the story.

Indians at bottom of totem pole

The Indians have been the underdogs the entire American League series — and that’s OK.
But now, the Tribe is up 3-1 going into tonight’s game — which will be played on its home field with its ace on the mound — and it is still the underdog.
Everyone from the ESPN "Sports Center" gang to the Vegas oddsmakers are giving the edge to Boston in Game 5 tonight.
How can that be? What does Cleveland have to do to get a little respect around here?

L.A. crash scary but not surprising

I was throwing clothes into my suitcase and watching the local news Saturday morning in Burbank, Calif.
The TV news guy was talking about an accident in an underpass on an interstate.
He cut to a film clip of the crash.
A ball of flames filled the screen. Every once in awhile the flames would lap and you could see a truck cab.
The TV news guy didn't know how many people were dead or injured. In fact, he didn't even know how many vehicles were involved in the crash that happened around 11 p.m. Friday.
Then the camera was back on the news guy in the studio and he was very seriously telling viewers that rain-slicked roads can be slippery and cars often cut off semi-truck drivers.
He said it is hard for the semi drivers to brake without losing control of their rigs.
So, please, he implored viewers, don't cut off big trucks on rain-slicked highways.
Oh, yeah, I'm sure Los Angeles drivers will heed that request.
Cars cut off everyone there. I found that out during last week's business trip. It seems other drivers are never going fast enough.
In tie-ups when cars are at a dead stop, drivers honk.
If you are waiting for oncoming cars to go by before making a lefthand turn, drivers honk.
Cars clog the streets and highways and drivers honk and drive dangerously.
I'm surprised there aren't more horrific crashes in southern California.
You probably read about Friday's fiery accident on I-5 north of Los Angeles. According to information in today's Los Angeles Times, at least three people are dead and at least five big rigs and multiple cars were involved.
There is a company in Grafton called Introtech Crash Reconstruction. Its employees go out to crash sites to try to figure out how they happened.
Dale Dent, chief of operations for the company, said it won't be involved in the California crash. Introtech works mostly in Ohio and rarely in other states.
He did say however that a crash in which all the vehicles are burned up, as this one was, will be very hard to reconstruct.
"All the evidence is gone," he said. "Evidence from the roadway is gone. Evidence from the vehicles is gone.
"If they are able to put together what happened, it will take a very long time," Dent said.
The California interstate, I-5, remained closed around the crash site this morning sending drivers scurrying to find alternate routes to work.
I can't imagine the honking that is generating.

Black, white -- and read all over

You have probably read the stories we've been running about a black teenager getting beat up by the two men on the north side of Elyria.
If not, here's the story: 17-year-old Travis Noble was walking on Metcalf Road last Friday night when some white kids called him a racial slur (yes, THE hate-filled racial slur). Travis ran toward the other teens but apparently thought better than to start a fight, turned to walk away and they smacked him on the head. He fought back -- and ended up with a broken jaw. His white adversaries, 21-year-old James Machovina of North Pasadena Avenue and Kenneth Tackett II of Grafton ended up with felony assault charges.
We ran the story Sept. 27.
Why did we run the story six days after it happened? Because that's when we found out about it. Every single day, sometimes twice a day, we check the police reports at the police station. This report was not in the pile. We found out about it because someone called to tell us about it. Then we looked into it. Then the police gave us the information. Then we ran the story.
We did not hold back the information because it was a white-on-black crime.
We did not run the photo of the charged guy small because he was white.
We would not have run the photo of the charged guy big if he would have been black.
Here's the deal: We are not racist. Seriously. We newspaper people live in a black and white world -- figuratively and literally.
Last I looked there were 19 comments on the first story we posted.
We heard from the kind and the hateful, the wise and the ignorant.
But this sentence written by one reader was my favorite: "I am appalled, sick to my stomach and my heart is aching. I have no answers. These are our children … Black, White and Brown!!!!"
If only that were the sentence we were all scrambling to write.

The judge and the belt

Here's the story:
An 8-year-old boy has red marks across his back made by a belt.
(The photo at right, taken by the police sometime after the beating, shows the marks on the boy's back.)
A teacher sees these marks and reports it to authorities.
The boy's father, a 28-year-old Lorain man, is charged.
Lorain County Common Pleas Court Judge James Burge clears the man of wrongdoing.
The prosecution, Burge told our reporter, failed to prove the necessary element of the crime — that the 8-year-old boy had suffered serious physical harm and that the punishment was excessive.
I guess "excessive" is the key word here.
Burge said the marks looked worse than they were.
“Cosmetically they were bad, but I didn’t see any deep tissue problems,” he said. “I didn’t see bruises. I saw red marks. I didn’t see any welts where the skin was raised.”
Yep, "excessive" is definitely the key word.
While Burge said he probably would not have done what this father did, he said he is in favor of corporal punishment.
“I think that we would have far fewer juveniles in the system if their parents and teachers could correct them,” he said.
Most of us in the newsroom were shocked that a dad would do such a thing to a child -- and a judge would think it's OK.
But comments to the story posted on our Website this morning show that readers agree with the dad and the judge.
"If parents didn’t have to worry about going to jail for wooping the kids butt then I believe many more would and there would be a little respect in these kids. Also PLEASE get it back in the schools," writes Steve D.
Well, my kids are out of school but if they weren't, I wouldn't want no wooping of them there.
Meanwhile, Becky writes, "WE ALL WANT RESPECTFUL CHILDREN, NO ONE WANTS TO SPANK THEIR CHILD, BUT IF THE NEED PRESENTS ITSELF WHAT ARE WE TO DO? CALL THE POLICE BECAUSE THEY ARENT CONTROLLABLE, OR BEAT THAT ASS? I’LL TAKE THE LATTER, AND BEAT THAT ASS!"
What can I say to that?
What can I say to any of this?

Just what is good, clean fun?

I opened up the paper this morning and there -- across the top of a photo of comedian Bill Engvall -- was a headline that said: "Good, clean fun at the Fair."
I read the accompanying story. I like Bill Engvall. I mean I like Bill Engvall as part of the "Blue Collar Comedy Tour." (The one I like best is Ron White but that doesn't really matter to this story.)
Bill Engvall, the story began, lived up to his reputation as "a clean and family-friendly funnyman." There was some yada yada and then, toward the end of the story, the writer detailed the jokes Engvall had told Monday night at the Fair. They were about, among other things, constipation and diarrhea, getting a cramp during sex, flatulence and Viagara (including the downside of a man's 36-hour arousal).
None of this crude, bathroom, junior-high humor offends me particularly but I did wonder how it could be categorized as "good, clean fun."
I was able -- through the wonders of modern technology -- to find not only the original version of the story but also a couple other versions along the way to the final edit that appeared in the paper.
It seemed to me that all that was missing was a good strong paragraph to explain things -- the kind of good, strong paragraph I found had ended up on the editing room floor.
The original story had contained a paragraph that said, "Arguably the cleanest funnyman among his "Blue Collar Comedy" brethren -- Jeff Foxworthy, Ron White and Larry the Cable Guy -- the Arizona native (Engvall) doesn't use f-bombs or expletives to punctuate his material. He doesn't need to. Instead, he uses something far more shocking: Real life."
So there you have it.
Good, clean fun.
Relatively.

Here a chick, there a chick in Key West

Well, just got back from a whirlwind vacation to Key West.
I wrote a column about a restaurant called "Blue Heaven," an eclectic eatery with a tie-dyed hippie kind of feel.
My column was about searching for a table in the outdoor seating area in 95-degree heat and 95 percent humidity. Yes, the question you ask is valid: "Who in their right mind goes to Key West in August?" Since it was my husband and me, I guess the operative words are "right mind."
Anyway, in the column I didn't mention the chickens that eat with you at Blue Heaven.
Not the chickens in the caesar salads or on the restaurant's scrumptious chicken sandwiches. No, I didn't talk about the live chickens that wander around the tables begging for scraps like very skittish little feathered dogs.
You see, there are a lot of chickens roaming around the Key West. They stomp around flower beds, mill around in front of restaurants, lead their chicks across courtyards and run across the streets.
But, by far, the largest concentration of roosters and chickens I saw there was on the outdoor patio at Blue Heaven.
And it wasn't until an e-mailer brought to my attention the fact that I wrote a column about the Blue Heaven without mentioning the winged dinner companions that I realized what an inaccurate picture I painted of the place.
For that I am truly sorry.
I think the reason I may have put those birds out of my mind is that I happened to order one of their famous caesar salads -- with chicken.
Needless to say I had a hard time eating it, looking at the grilled bird atop my greens and wondering if yesterday it had been walking around on the ground with its buddies begging for food from diners.