Road Apples
March 6, 2006

Back by popular demand -- sort of

By Tim Sanders

Today I’d like to once again address the serious threat posed to society by dangerous, pooping dachshunds. That’s just in case you didn’t read last week’s column, or the February 20 column which preceded it. Both columns were similar, in the sense that they were exactly the same, and when that second pooping dachshund column appeared, readers got a bit restless. I know they did, because a friend called and suggested that if I couldn’t find anything different to write about, I might at least consider changing the punctuation a bit.

But I am only kidding about writing another pooping dachshund column. Instead I’ll attempt to explain why you were afflicted with two identical columns within two weeks, despite the fact that every humorist knows that (and I may have mentioned this before) repetition is to humor what the 2-lb. bean burrito is to ballroom dancing.

I honestly did write a new, non-pooping dachshund column last week, but like everything else on page 2, it disappeared. It was a good column, at least by my standards. My wife gave it a 9.5 on technical merit alone. It dealt with a serious statistical analysis of the dwindling number of Mexican jumping beans due to excessive deforestation of the endangered Mexican jumping shrub forests. It proved conclusively that over 1,400,000 acres of jumping shrubs had not just hopped off to new locations, but had indeed been decimated by greedy black market bean barons. It had pathos, it had human interest, it had ecological sensitivity. It even had moderately good grammar; I used fourteen semi-colons. I put a lot of sweat into that column, and it had Pulitzer written all over it–I used a red magic marker. Had that column only been published ... ah, let’s not dwell on what might have been.

And of course it wasn’t just my column that disappeared. A fascinating page 1 story concerning disputes within Centre’s Volunteer Fire Department was to be continued on page 2, but the rest of that article never appeared. Readers, all in a frenzy to find out about harassment charges and warrants and brass knuckles and eye-gouging and serious cases of the Cherokee County hot-foot, were left with only continuations of articles from the previous week about George Wallace, Jr. and the recent spate of church burnings in the state. And while the poor reader might have been able to draw a tenuous connection between volunteer fire departments and church burnings, the possibility of spontaneous combustion where George Wallace, Jr. was concerned seemed mighty slim. It was all very confusing.

Perhaps a little county history will put all of this into perspective, and help explain what may have happened. Many old timers will remember the name Tol Shropshire. Some of those old timers may even remember who he was. Tol Shropshire edited The Coosa River News here in Cherokee County from 1893 until his death in 1942. His editorials were appreciated for their peppery style, rich in the local vernacular. Tol was known as a "real character," which I believe means that he took an occasional nip of whiskey for health reasons. One famous Shropshire anecdote tells how he returned late from a fishing trip to discover that he had but a few hours left until the paper was to go to press. He pondered his predicament, and then decided to print the previous week’s issue, changing only the dates. When his readers perused the paper, with "BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND" atop the front page, they were satisfied that Tol knew what he was doing. Today Centre still has a street named in honor of that venerable journalist–Goofy Street.

So what does all of that ancient history have to do with last week’s page 2 switcheroo, you ask? Well, I’ve looked into it, and after a lot of probative questions and serious, journalistic research, I can honestly say that I am not sure. I can only speculate, and my speculation is that the managing editor, Scott Wright, was influenced by the Shropshire tale. Although he swears this isn’t true, I think that while the idea of substituting every bit of the previous week’s paper for last week’s might have seemed a little drastic, Scott may have thought the notion of trying it with page 2 might just work. And if that worked, the next obvious step would be to switch pages 3 and 4 the following week, and then add a couple more, increasing those switches incrementally so as not to be too obvious. Great ideas never really die, and if recycling the news worked eighty years ago, why not now? Think of the time and labor it would save.

Oh, I can hear the wheels turning. "If it’s a week old, it isn’t really news anymore, is it?" Well, you may have a point there, but on the other hand, no news is good news, and if week-old news is no news, then that’s ... uh ... good, right?

I will be interested to see how all of this resolves itself. And pooping dachshunds notwithstanding, I hope the page switcheroo concept catches on. I have even suggested to Scott that he might want to consider doing old Tol one better, and dragging up a few pages from the late ‘90s. I have several serviceable Clinton/Lewinsky columns from that era. After all of these years, it would seem fresh and new, and nobody would be the wiser. Of course, we’d have to leave the obituary page alone. There are laws on the books against double jeopardy, after all.

So check your paper carefully this week. If you get the eerie feeling you’ve read something quite similar before, don’t be surprised.