Almost never nice

I wish I could be fulfilled by writing inspiring and entertaining articles, like journalists Tumbleweed Smith, Don Newbury and Chet Garner. I enjoy their stories about human interests and humor, but my style tends toward looking for a fly in the ointment; the rule that is broken; the lie that is told.

I do have some funny family stories that have no foe in them. 

There's the year my mom and dad were stripping cotton by themselves. My mom's job was to stand in the trailer and distribute cotton while Dad drove the stripper. Well, they had a bumper crop that year, some unbelievable bales per acre. Dad said he was going along when he looked back to see Mom covered nearly to the top of her head in cotton. He said she was pretty mad about that.

Or the time my dad sent my son chasing an armadillo. Dad, my son and I were down in the pasture when we spooked an armadillo. My dad said "Get him!" and my son, being about 11 or 12, tore after it. It went down a hole and sonny boy had tight hold of that critter's tail. I was alarmed, but my dad was laughing himself silly. He said, "He'll never be able to pull that armadillo out of that hole!" He was right.

Then there's the one about when my grandpa decided he was going to be independent. He had been living with and working for his grandfather. My grandpa took a lease on a farm on the river, north of Rotan. "I'm going out on my own," he declared. But every Saturday he would be downtown asking his grandfather for some money to get him by.

There are so many stories: the time Grandpa decided to neuter all the cats; the tribulations of Oscar the cat; escapades about the dogs Spot and Lightning; coon hunting incidents; the day the goat disappeared, and on and on.

Hey, maybe I can write about something without a cynical view or skepticism. I've just written this, haven't I?

Mr. Biggers had a lot to say

I was looking for something, who knows what, in the Texas Tech online digital world, when I came across a publication called The Lone Coyote, published in 1908. I couldn't make out what it was about, even though it purported to be "The Official Howler for Fisher and 247 other counties". The office location was reported as being in the first dugout, south side of Double Mountain Canyon.

After reading several articles and realizing it was all tongue in cheek, I saw the name Don H. Biggers listed as "by". A little searching revealed that Biggers was the publisher of the Rotan Advance 1907-1909, as well as many other undertakings, which is putting it mildly. He was a prolific writer of west Texas life and politics. He owned, wrote and published several newspapers, and was the author of many articles and books. He was also a farmer and a Texas House Representative.

What caught my eye in this second issue of The Lone Coyote was his definition of a newspaper, thus follows:

"If I were writing a dictionary for academic and family use, and came to define the modern daily newspaper, I should endeavor to briefly cover the subject about as follows: 

"A medium the chief mission of which is to declare dividends, disseminate accounts of degrading crime, demoralizing scandal, and shocking casualties; a panderer to the stupid mental cravings of mankind; the champion of partisan politics and a producer of prejudice; a plaything for plutocrats and a stranger to principle; a debaucher of morals; an advertising directory of frauds; the apex of folly and the parade ground of vanity; the product of brains; the output of peons and the servant of scoundrels; a revealer of infamy and a concealer of sin; the megaphone of demagogues; a saint in pretensions and a hypocrite in performance; a reeking, putrid mess of mankind's filthy conduct, paraded without shame as the triumph of enterprise; the moulder of men's nations, yet a meddler rather than an agency; a fusion of facts, fiction, falsehoods, folly and indigestible bombast; the cheapest excursion route for busy people to migrate to uttermost realms of ignorance."

I wonder what he would have thought about presidents, governors and law makers "tweeting" and the loss of gravitas in those high stations? He may not have been surprised.

Biggers was a clever satirical writer and many of his works, serious articles as well, can be found in the Texas Tech University Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library.