Nico van Thyn posted this decades-old sports front from The Shreveport Journal on his Facebook page during the holidays. It’s me and Nico — our boss man at the Journal then — future Hall-of-Famer Jerry Byrd, Harriet Prothro, and fellow DW co-founder John James Marshall.

I’d forgotten about JJ’s glasses from the pre-contacts days. Also no idea why he is in a coat and tie; must have had a meeting with his probation officer. Looks really good though!

This page is 1986 or more likely 1987. Harriet started working in the spring, I believe. Nico had told us he was hiring a girl, which was not cutting-edge back then but it was close. Harriet was smarter than any of us and more efficient and a joy and we didn’t get on her nerves as much as I was afraid we might. I don’t think. That spring Harriet and me and JJ each got a binder Day-Timer thingy; we’d take them to lunch with us, to every place we went. More about that at another time, but it was a Bonafide Big Deal Then and we were so proud. We called them Organizers. “Anybody seen my Organizer?” “Wait: I gotta go back and get my Organizer.” (People call such things ‘cell phones’ now.)

I wanted to think I helped cut those mugs out and put them in the little ornaments, but now I’m pretty sure I didn’t see that front until it was actually printed. Seems like my reaction was, “What the hell?” I talked like that back then. A lot. Anyway, did I think that mustache looked good? That’s too bad. Why would anybody put my mustachioed face on an ornament and think that such a thing might actually make someone’s Christmas more joyous? I’ll have to ask Nico. Anyway, that apology from me was 30 years coming. Sorry it took me so long.

More on this group later but it was a special bunch, hard-working, wrote clean and presented clean (not necessarily with this front!), everybody did a little of everything, checked their egos at the door — even, 95-percent of the time, Mr. Byrd! (HA!) I’d spend a lot of money if I had it to spend for just one more of those days with these people and at that time.

Wild Card Weekend

It’s Wild Card weekend in the NFL, which the networks keep trying to convince me is so significant that it rivals watching man walk on the moon. But it’s been almost that long since a team playing on Wild Card Weekend did anything other than become cannon fodder for the teams sitting at home with a bye week.

I’ll save you the trouble of looking it up. The last time it happened was in the 2012 season when the Baltimore Ravens went from Wild Card to a confetti celebration in the Superdome (once the lights came back on). Here’s the slate: