Cow slips in the bathtub, needs help

Dear Editor:

I don't know about you, but this headline and story about the poor bovine falling into a bathtub to get the last drop of water put me in stitches. It's why I love to read country correspondence, which was not always the case.

Mary Shead's story from over at Arcadia, Kan., which ran Tuesday, Oct. 1, brought to mind my experience as a cub reporter in Colorado Springs, long before that beautiful place had grown to be Colorado's second largest city. We carried several country columns.

One day a long time ago, shortly after I started my first job as a cub reporter at the Gazette Telegraph fresh out of Missouri's Journalism School, the editor handed me a sheaf of country correspondence columns to edit. Eagerly, I took my copy pencil (yes, PENCIL) and went to work, cutting the copy down to a page or two and handed it back to the editor, a mild-mannered gentleman who led the troops with soft voice but iron will. (I don't remember any big stick.)

"Donna," he said, "you've squeezed the juice out of these stories. Go back and put the color back in. That's what people like to read. That's why we carry country correspondence. Those columns are POPULAR."

Lesson learned. Newspapers will always be around in some form or another because people love to read about folks they know. Think of Facebook, Twitter. We could do with a lot less gloom and doom and a lot more humor these days and I'm glad Mary Shead told us about the cow slipping in the bathtub and rescued when a front-end loader dumped the tub on its side, so she could jump out. What would be more country?

Donna Logan

Nevada