The Weave of Life

Small Towns and their Newspapers

Dec 31, 2024

As we step into the eve of the night that transports us from one year to the next, let’s dip into some small towns and their newspapers. The latter hold a mirror to residents’ stewardship of their communities, their struggles and successes. Each paper’s mirror also extends outwards to strangers who choose to look for it. I looked – and found stories that differ significantly in topic matter; but, at their cores, they voice the rich and colorful weave of human life that binds us together.

From the Reporter-Statesman in Spearman, Texas comes word that the “My Plates Great Plate Auction 2024” has concluded. Drivers across the state bid on the rights to “highly sought-after” license plates. This year’s most expensive bid of $20,500 for “ACE” didn’t hold a candle, though, to the $115,000 paid in 2013 for “12THMAN.” (That’s nearly $16,500 per character!) But - just maybe - that price was worth it. A tale from 1922 explains why “12THMAN” has such resonance.

The Texas A&M Aggies were playing the Praying Colonels (who presumably practiced more than they prayed because they were the team to beat). Sadly, the Aggies were peeling off, injured, making it a challenge to keep eleven players on the field. In a moment of inspiration, the coach – Dana X. Bible – summoned an ex-team member, E. King Gill, to his side and recruited him to put on the hurt Heine Weir’s uniform and stand on the sidelines as a substitute. Gill stood – quite literally – through the game. It ended in an astounding upset by the Aggies!

To this day, at A&M home games, fans stand, 38,000-strong, from start to finish. E. King Gill’s position as “12THMAN” endures as a symbol for the “loyalty and willingness of Aggies to serve...”. And, somewhere in Texas, a driver stands proud beside a vehicle with one very expensive license plate.

In the northeast, ski slopes this winter have been as ‘injury prone’ as that long-ago Aggies game was. Mountain towns rely on tourist-generated revenues and jobs. In the prized Christmas season, though, there are some days when snow features more prominently in the ski resorts’ names than it does on the slopes. Mount Snow’s recent report to the Manchester (VT) Journal aptly reflects the prevailing climate instability. The resort called the heavy winds, lightning and possible flood conditions that prompted a recent closure a “weird weather Wednesday.”

At Peru, Vermont’s (pop. ~526) Bromley Mountain, Marc Folts is the lead snowmaker, and he clearly has the grit needed. He tromps the mountain in the dark of evening hours checking hundreds of snow guns and their hoses. He decides when to activate them (computers are not part of the package yet for snowmakers). When temperatures are suitable, the guns use compressed air to shoot water up toward the sky. The “perfect” flakes for Folts are not too wet; rather, they bounce off his jacket, signaling good powder.

Challenges at Camden, Maine’s Snow Bowl are compounded by a busted snowmaking system. Still, the resort’s manager, Jeff Nathan, avows to the Penobscot Bay Pilot that he has the “confidence to move forward.” When conditions shift, his “incredibly talented” crew will likely work through the night to transfer snow from higher up the mountain down to the ski trails. And, once the $70,000 repair is completed, the snow guns will be firing away again to mitigate what the climate has wrought on the slopes. (A foundation has stepped forward to cover half of the repair costs. Camden will help, too.)

Camden has had some good news recently. Let’s turn our attention to a small white building with orange and yellow trim on Elm Street, The Place Bakery (TPB). We are not inside, but in a car in the parking lot with TikToker Mackenzie. After tearing into a long-awaited TPB bag, Mackenzie raises a jelly-filled croissant to her mouth - there’s no way the pastry, curved and elegant as a shell, will fit! Still, she exclaims “Oh my god.” That’s what the New York Times thinks, too, having just named TPB one of the U.S.’s 20 best bakeries. A photo of its “laminated pastries” reveals six golden-brown butter-sheened masterpieces. “The crunch omg!” writes one TikTok viewer; “I’m so hooked,” another. Emily simply cuts to the chase: “Any suggestions on where to stay in Camden?” My sentiments exactly!

Across the country, near La Conner, WA, Rosi Jansen ducks behind a tree to snap an elusive Belted Kingfisher against the azure waters at Hope Island Beach. There’s a touch of blue, too, in the article she writes about her outing in the La Conner Weekly News. At the end, she bids the paper’s publisher, Ken Stern, “the best” for his retirement.

What, the staff must wonder, is to come? So many small papers today ride a fine line – really, a tendril - between barely making it and closure. Any change, whether a major player leaving or price increases, can auger the end. According to the Medill School of Journalism, in 2023 an average of 2.5 local papers closed each week in the US. (Oh, the rich and colorful weave of life that now goes unrecorded!)

Ken Stern calls his more than 7 years at the paper the “best job ever,” but acknowledges the heavy wear that came with managing the money end. He’s been trying for a while to find a buyer. His best hope now is that the community will purchase the paper.

Local papers can take some encouragement, though, from the Nevada Appeal. Despite numerous name changes, the paper’s been “serving Carson City for over 150 years.” The paper still features its history in its “Past Pages” section. In 1894, when the town had only a few thousand residents, a report was posted that all was rosy for, it seemed, all in Nevada:

“The children of the Orphans Home had a Christmas tree. Nearly 60 children sat at their little desks and gazed at the tree with open mouths, and dancing eyes. There were dollies and books and horses and jumping jaw candy and nuts, and all the bright pretty and useful things that make children happy. ‘Tis said that no state in the union is as kind and generous to its orphans, it’s insane and its convicts as Nevada.”

That may have been a stretch…

My bet, though, is that Ordean Kabrick, who was born in tiny Bancroft, Iowa and recently died there, would have praised his state, too. According to his obituary in the Kossuth County Advance/The Algona Reminder, life in Iowa met Ordean’s interests in farming, metalwork, and painting. There was the time, as a friend noted after Ordean’s passing, that painting a dried-out barn became a Sisyphean task for Ordean, sucking up every gallon he threw at it! Ordean and his wife, Opal Shyrock, managed seven decades of marriage, three kids and eight greats. He must have practiced kindness on his family because he was known for that - and a good bit of chuckling! – out in the community. In free moments, Ordean collected coins and served as president of the cemetery in which he now rests.

And in North Dakota, “That’s Life” columnist Tony Bender, whose picture in the Devils Lake Journal strikes me as both elfin and amiable, shares his reaction on the morning after the election that may feel familiar. “I went to bed early Election Eve [night?] after practicing for the passage of Measure 5 before waking with a start in a sea of Oreo crumbs, clicked on the news, and wondered how I could have been so out-of-touch with half of the country.” As for Measure 5, Mr. Bender’s “practicing” must have paid off: the possession of small amounts of marijuana is now legal in North Dakota.

“The Blonde on the Prairie” recalls in another Devils Lake opinion that the best gift at Christmas came from her Norwegian grandmother, who “used to knit me mittens that were pointy at the end because she didn’t know how to make them round. She would fill them with Juicy Fruit gum and pennies. It was the most coveted gift of any Christmas and I would do anything to go back to those days!” Ms. Blonde, it seems, is seeking refuge from the consumerist devolution of the holidays. Black Friday, she writes, is “the Hunger Games of shopping, and only the strongest will survive the electronics aisle.” Ms. Blonde is the owner of Monkey Balls food truck and is a Joyologist.

I intend to carry the grit, humor and personalities that emerged from these newspaper pieces with me into ‘25. I’ve enjoyed “dropping in” on these communities, thanks to the folks that write up their stories and put out their papers. I’m of the everlasting hope and belief that many communities will, with time and effort, find a way to continue doing so.

With that, and one eye on the electronics aisle, I wish you much Joy in the New Year!

Thank you so much for reading Mining the News and many appreciations for referring others. Please comment below the source list, if you like.

Sources: Note: ~ = approximately

Spearman, TX (pop. ~3,037)

https://www.reporterstatesman.com/articles/487/view/capital-highlights-week-of-nov-25-29 :

https://www.tamu.edu/campus-community/traditions/gameday/12th-man.html#:~:text=The%20power%20of%20the%2012th,peers%2C%20community%20and%20the%20world. “loyalty and willingness…”

Ski Resorts

https://www.manchesterjournal.com/mountaintop_news/ski-resorts-adapt-to-weird-weather-wednesday/article_5946c832-b8b1-11ef-a632-3790df598e38.html (Manchester, VT. pop. ~4,481)

https://www.penbaypilot.com/article/rain-falling-camden-snow-bowl-close-until-jan-2/253698 “confidence to move forward” “incredibly talented” (Camden, ME, pop. ~5,224)

https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/snow-ice#:~:text=The%20amount%20of%20snow%20on,percent%20during%20this%20time%20period. With a significant … past decades.

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2024/02/ski-resorts-snowmaking-climate-change-adapting/ “perfect” flake

The Place Bakery