One Nation, Under God

Barb Says It All Has To Go

My wife tells me I need a special counsel. Apparently, she’s fed up with all the documents I have stored in the basement of her office. She insists a special counsel is necessary to move all of my important papers to a Dumpster in the alley.

I’m pushing back. This is important stuff.

Since entering the newspaper business in 1985, I’ve kept a lot of paper. Boxes of newspapers, photographs, correspondence, and media guides are stored neatly in the basement of the old telephone company building we own in Malta.

Barb says it all has to go. She doesn’t want our kids to have to deal with it once we’re gone.

I disagree, imagining instead the girls’ delight at digging through the detritus of their old man’s career in a dying industry.

“Look,” one might say. “Here’s a letter from an angry reader demanding Dad be fired.”

“Wow,” another exclaims, “What a nicely designed local news page. He sure knew his fonts.”

Somewhere in the collection is a menu signed by legendary basketball coach Bob Knight, a snapshot of a wind-blown Jamie Lee Curtis when she was filming a bad movie in Livingston, and a note from rocker Ted Nugent inviting me to share his campfire.

There is also a front page from Sept. 12, 2001, that has a bit of historical value, and another concerning the conclusion of the first body-less murder conviction in the nation.

I have a copy of a story I wrote about the first public hunt for Yellowstone Park bison, along with an invitation to the governor’s mansion in Helena, and a press pass for a Lady ‘Cats/Lady Griz hoops matchup in the late 1980s.

Barb is seeking a special counsel to dispose of it all.

“Nobody cares,” she tells me.

I worry, though, that something of value will be lost, some bit of trivial information found only in my collection of old newspapers.

I knew going into this business that the product I worked so hard to produce would eventually end up lining the bottom of a bird cage.

That was when newspapers were thriving.

They’re on life support now.

My arrival on the cusp of the industry’s demise only makes this collection more valuable. Perhaps somewhere buried deep in the pile is the reason why.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]

 

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