I've watched a lot of athletes carry the ball, and perhaps dropped it myself

I timed myself this past Friday. It takes me exactly four minutes to get from my back porch to the 50-yard line of the Mustangs football field.

The only reason I timed myself on Friday is because for the second consecutive week, I made the walk back and forth, prior to kickoff, because I had left something vital to any reporter at home before the kickoff of each game.

Two Fridays ago, said vital important was a pen. A reporter at an event without a pen is about a useful as a fork in a sugar bowl. The item I forgot this past Friday prior to the start of the Malta Roundup contest was bug spray. Now don’t get me wrong, I applied a healthy coat of the vanilla smelling spray my wife recently purchased, but when I reached the 50, my neighbor, Trevor, told me that spray was good for flies and gnats, but the vulture mosquitoes that were airborne on that night? Not so much.

Trevor told me that in the cab of his rig was a knock-off brand of bug spray that contained Deet, or DDT, napalm or some such agent. I made the walk of shame back to my house, found his stash and sprayed myself down (a bit of the spray missed its mark, found the front fender of Trevor’s Ford and peeled a large amount of brown paint off the bumper...sorry T.)

While I have watched at least four football games in the past 12-days in Malta, I find that perhaps I have dropped the ball in other areas of reporting around the county.

There was a plethora of informative items to cover in Phillips County this week, many of them not sports related. In the pages of this very newspaper are stories of a Museum dedication, town council meetings, a history lesson and so much more. But with that said, there are probably another dozen things that happened in Phillips County that I didn’t have time to make it to or wasn’t aware of.

It is a blessing to be the publisher of a newspaper in a community having so much going on. Any given time of the day I can walk smack-dab into the middle of a news story.

At the same time, that blessing can also be a curse as I am just one person and can’t make it to every event, each time, though I do try.

Like I said, I have spent a lot of time watching Malta football games of late...and to be honest I have had a blast. The proximity of my home to the football field only makes it that much easier to attend.

However, as I head into my eighth month as a member of Phillips County, I make the pledge that I will get out to Saco for more stories, visit Whitewater and Loring for the first time (shame on me) and continue to give each and every story that falls in my jurisdiction the kind of attention it deserves.

Thanks for reading and Aloha.