When it comes to newspaper anecdotes,from the days of Barbara and Julie,  there's no end to the supply and as  will become evident, no timeline. 
None of this is in chronological order.

 Items of note...Grant Mabry, who married a Seguin woman also with the last name Mabry,was ad director and  part of the "new regime",when the "grande dame and elderly  blue-haired lady", The Seguin Gazette, then owned by John Taylor, was sold to an outside company which then   became the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise. Bill Slaughter was editor.  I also recall somewhere among those years I met a fine young gentleman, with emphasis on the word "fine and gentle"... Mr. Bill Muelker, our pressman. 

Our esteemed photographer Bill Schroeder was responsible for making many moments memorable in those days. He and Staff Writer Linda Rogers had the (in) auspicious duty of going to ALL the schools who submitted Santa letters and taking multitudes of class photos.  This added to the already hefty supply of pan developing tasks Schroeder had to accomplish. (more about pan developing later)

 Embittered by his newfound title, "Photographer to the Santa Letter Stars", he was always in the darkroom, never to see the light of day.  One day with the ever-present cigarette dangling from his Santa-induced frown, Schroeder was handing out photos to the editorial staff and someone commented that one of the names might be wrong on the cutline...his response?....."don't worry about it...they know who they are".  We all laughed and in those days we did that a lot, because if you didn't laugh, you'd definitely have to cry~

Another "country column" x 7 carried the byline, The Seven Timmermann Sisters.  One column, seven writers. This did get wordy, but always informative, popular among the readers, amusing and definitely interesting.....it was called,  "Along the Geronimo Creek".

Barbara and I had a standing joke.  It was a tossup as to who was going to edit Janelle's column.  Janelle was a very nice "country columnist" who wrote lengthy, wordy columns.  Well the idea behind a column is to not be lengthy  or wordy but clear, readable and concise.  So every so often it was our job to make sure her column followed that criteria.  The only problem was....Janelle's husband....he was the editor and when he'd look up from pasting his editorial together with rubber cement and notice that you had "cut" his wife's copy, there would be Hell to pay!

Barbara's first taste of Texas was all about a job . She was hired at the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise as a Staff Writer. So she packed up her family, her "typewriter" , her dog and headed south from NYC and parts adjacent, including Ohio.  No sooner did she sit down at her desk in the newsroom than the Managing Editor told her, due to budget cuts, since she was "last in", she'd now be "first out".  Laid off, before she ever covered a beat. Canned before she ever had a good whiff of newsprint. This was in the late 80's, so she  packed up her "reporter's notebook", one of the "gifts" when you are hired at a newspaper and headed down the street to start her career as a freelancer.  Many years and many stories later, part of her "free lance" career was to open a gift shop on West Court St., just across the street from KWED Radio.  The name?  Why Ever Not?  A phrase she lived by, always seeing the positive in every situation and usually laughing about the situation, whether good or bad.....in those days for her....it was usually bad!

WhyEverNot? Juliane Sullivan...This Blog is dedicated to my former colleague who coined the phrase and to my fellow Journalists who may...or may not be a part of the content... Anecdotes from the "real journalists of small town Texas"...
Well, Why Ever Not? Thank You Barbara Taylor!