Valedictory to my online newspaper subscriptions.

 

I have always been an inveterate newspaper reader. When I was a kid my parents got the Minneapolis Star in the morning, and the Minneapolis Tribune in the evening. I devoured both -- for the comics, the movie ads (back in those days they were gigantic, garish, and promised unbridled sex and incredibly scary monsters), for stories of murder, arson, and exotic monkey business in foreign lands, and even for the  opinion pieces, which often told me things I never knew, such as the Park Board was riddled with crooks or that Mayor Art Naftalin was a saint.

When I left home to join Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus as a First of May (new clown) I got a day old copy of the New York Times each day from Prince Paul, a dwarf clown. He struggled with the crossword puzzle mightily, but never completed it. So I would finish it and show it to him, just to hear his sizzling blasphemy against those fiends incarnate who designed such byzantine and misleading clues.

As a domesticated family man with many mouths to feed (eventually there were eight children) I found it behooved me to take a second part-time job, so I got up at 4 each morning to pick up, fold, and insert in plastic bags the local newspaper, and then take the station wagon around town, tossing and aiming for porches but most often sending the daily news into the forsythia.  There were always one or two papers left over -- so, as time permitted, I'd settle down in the evening, with a cup of chamomile tea to peruse the latest scandal and folly.

Ever since I retired seven years ago I've subscribed online to no less than three newspapers at a time. Not only did I read and enjoy them thoroughly, but I also began responding to some of the reporter's stories with light verse, which I called timericks. And sometimes a reporter would reply via email that they appreciated my little ditties. I guess it was a welcome change from most of the kvetching and threatening messages they were getting. I became online friends with about a dozen of 'em. 

But recently I came down with the COVID 19 virus, and after it was all over and the bills  started coming in, my modest finances (meaning Social Security) were insufficient to pay my current expenses. Something had to go.

And I'm truly sorry to say that it was my online newspaper subscriptions that I decided to let go. 

I hope all my reporter friends will understand, and forgive me for abandoning my financial support of their fine enterprises. I feel like I've betrayed one of my oldest and most trustworthy of friends . . .