Louisiana Voice

It was back in 1966 that a young telephone installer-repairman realized that climbing telephone poles was not his cup of tea. The hot summers and cold winters perched atop some utility pole in rural Union Parish attempting to resolve repeated outages in the Truxno community held no real appeal for him.

That, coupled with the fact that he was a terrible telephone technician and more than a little put off by real work, prompted him to start looking elsewhere for gainful employment.

It was about that same time that The Ruston Daily Leader was looking for an advertising sales rep. So, with zero experience, the 23-year-old man walked into Publisher Tom Kelly’s office and applied for the position. Kelly, at the time only 36 himself, gave him the job at a whopping $65 per week—a $5 cut from what he was making with what was then Southern Bell.

It didn’t take Kelly long to realize he’d made a grave mistake. It turned out the kid couldn’t sell mittens to an Eskimo. But he had been dabbling with writing a sports column on the side and Kelly spotted something, some quality still unknown to this day, and as a consolation prize, offered him the job of sports editor.

And that’s how my journalism career was launched. A few months later, while I was sitting at my desk, I got a call from then-Louisiana Tech assistant football coach George Doherty. “You want to take a ride with me tonight?” he asked.

“Where’re we going?”

“We’re going to Shreveport to sign a future NFL number-one draft choice.”

And that’s how I came to be sitting in the living room of one Bill Bradshaw when his son Terry signed his grant-in-aid scholarship with Louisiana Tech. I ran a photo of Terry signing his scholarship, beating The Shreveport Times in its own back yard. I wish I still had that photo. He had hair then.

And, of course Doherty was correct. Terry was the first player selected in the 1970 NFL draft and went on to win four Super Bowls as the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback.

Earlier, in 1968, I left The Daily Leader for a job as news reporter for the Monroe Morning World where I worked for an outstanding editor, the late Jimmy Hatten. It was the same year I married my wonderful and beautiful wife Betty and sitting in the church during the ceremony was Tom Kelly. Hard to believe it’s been half-a-century.

Kelly would soon bring me back as city editor of The Daily Leader and while there, I wrote a short booklet about outlaws Bonnie and Clyde to coincide with the showing of the movie of the same name starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. It was also during that time that I made the decision to go back to school. I’d flunked out of Tech in 1962. Seems the importance of going to class didn’t really register with me then. But Tom Kelly taught me something that they didn’t teach in Tech’s journalism curriculum and that is, to paraphrase former House Speaker Tim O’Neill, all journalism is local. Tom drilled into my head that there are three critical times in a person’s life that must never be ignored: his birth, his marriage, and his death.

While pursuing a degree in journalism, was recruited by The Shreveport Times to run the north Louisiana bureau for The Times and Morning World in Ruston. Both papers were owned by the Ewing family and were good, solid publications, not the sorry excuses for newspapers they have become under the mismanagement of Gannett. (The Morning World has since consolidated with its afternoon sister publication and taken on its name, The News-Star.)

From there, my journalistic odyssey took me to Baton Rouge to work under the tutelage of Jim Hughes at the State-Times, the now-defunct sister publication of the Morning Advocate.

But Tom Kelly wasn’t quite finished with me yet. In 1976, he brought me back home to work as Managing Editor. I’d barely been there a week when there was an awful pipeline explosion in the Jackson Parish community of Cartwright that killed a retired couple and a mother and three of her children. As I walked up to the crater created by the blast, I could see a group of first responders about 200 yards away frantically waving and shouting to me. The heat from the ground around the massive hole in the ground began melting the rubber soles of my shoes, so I moved away quickly and started walking toward the group of men to learn what they were trying to tell me. And their message was there was another 30-inch gas line right next to the one that exploded. My knees immediately turned to something akin to Jell-O.

For New Year’s Day 1977, Tom Kelly sent out special invitations to the inaugural All-American Redneck Male Chauvinist Spittin’, Belchin’, and Cussin’ Society and Literary Club’s All-Day Poker Game and Dinner on the Grounds.

There were few rules but some of the most important ones:

• Lots of music by Willie, Waylon, and Hank Williams;
• No guns, knives, or other sharp objects allowed at the poker table;
• The only hand to beat a Royal Flush was a real good redneck bluff;
• Wimmenfolk was invited to do the cookin’ and bridge playin’, but they was forbidden to come into the poker room, sigh heavy, roll they eyes or say it was time to go.

At the time, The Daily Leader had an editorial writer, Rudolph Fiehler, PhD, a retired Louisiana Tech English professor.

Doc Fiehler knew nothing about poker, so he remained in the dining room playing bridge with the wimmenfolk. At one point, he got up and wandered into the poker parlor and stood watching us gambling away our life savings in nickel-ante poker.

Tom Kelly, spotting Doc, got up and offered him a seat at the poker table. Doc initially refused, saying he knew nothing about the game.

“We’ll tell you,” the five of us volunteered at once, smelling fresh blood for our game.

Doc did finally consent to sit in for a few hands. He was so foreign to the rules that we had to tell him when he had won.

And we had to tell him that far too often. Before the session was over, he possessed every nickel, dime and quarter at the table. We were busted he was $17.85 richer. One player threatened to ambush him on his way home. I still hold fast to the conviction that we were sandbagged.

As it is with life, we all moved on. I moved back to the Baton Rouge area, settling in nearby Denham Springs and Tom Kelly ended up back in Winn Parish where he had begun. A native of Gaar’s Mill, his first job was with the Winn Parish Enterprise. It was only natural that the yellow dog Democrat (a phrase coined by Harry Truman’s mother, who said she’d vote for a yellow dog before she’d vote Republican) would return to his roots. He founded The Piney Woods Journal in 1997. The monthly publication was geared to, but certainly not restricted to, Louisiana’s timber industry.

Earlier this week, I received an email that Tom sent to his correspondents:

This is to notify you officially that The Piney Woods Journal will cease operations under my ownership with the edition of May, 2019, completing 22 years of continuous publication. As of now, there are no buyer operators waiting in the wings to take over, and unless one steps up in the meantime, we will be closed.

This decision has not been made lightly. The Journal has become a part of the landscape in the region, largely because of your commitment to writing on subject matter that is of particular interest to a readership that has grown and remained loyal from the beginning. However, after several false starts, there appears to be no ready buyer waiting outside our door, and I am not able to do the things that I once did to contribute to the news/editorial/advertising mix that has made The Journal a unique media presence in what many continue to say is a dying industry. I would make a point that if it is dying, it is due to many self-inflicted faults (think Gannett, etc.) by a generation that believes that nothing is real except Google and Facebook.

This month, if I live to see it, I will be 88 years old. I have continuing health issues that prevent me from doing things I used to do on behalf of the paper, and which others are not in a position to do, for various reasons. My wife Miriam is entirely home bound with her own ailments. We have been at this together for thirty-five years. We live with pills and potions by the hour, and spend our most creative energies seeing after ourselves and, of course, our current “family” of growing puppies and their mama.

As the saying goes, it’s been real. And now our participation will end; unless there is a knock on the door down at 104 North Third, the Piney Woods Journal’s residence, with someone bringing a check to purchase our operation, we’ll see y’all in the funny papers.

 Good luck, good writing, and good life to all of you.

Needless to say, the announcement was like a punch in the gut. It caught me by surprise and produced an instant wave of nostalgia. The two of us had been through too many battles together and too many battles with each other for his message to be dismissed lightly.

I immediately fired off this message to Tom:

Tom, this truly saddens me on so many levels. Obviously, I share your sentiments about the death throes of news publications and I, too, place much of the blame on the Gannet and Facebook mentality. It’s an industry that I literally grew up in—as a man and as a journalist. But more than that, you and I have a connection that goes back more than 50 years and nothing can ever replace that. You took me under your wing and taught me about journalism. How you managed to have enough patience to do that I will never know, but know this: I will be forever grateful for that education and your tutorship and guidance. You are one of only a handful of people whom I admire and look up to and you will always be an inspiration and a source of encouragement to me. At the risk of sounding too maudlin, your announcement makes me feel as though I’ve lost something very personal—and I have.

Take care, my friend.

az

This was his response:

My greatest pride in the personal achievements in this profession that we follow are not in the words I write, but in the people I have been fortunate enough to bring in and help to grow as practitioners of our craft. Bill Davis. Eric Mahaffey. Nick Drewry. Jerry Pye. Derwood Brett. Buddy Davis. David Widener. David Specht. Several whose names have slipped my mind. And a brash, talented, industrious achiever of the writing arts named Tom Aswell. We called him Az. If I have left anything behind, it is in the talents of those who carry on even now. They all made me look better that I could have been alone.  Several of a new generation joined up as contributors for this latest enterprise, which has provided me a new level of satisfaction. 

Keep the faith. 

TK 

What you leave behind, Tom, is a legacy that no journalism class could ever hope to teach. You taught integrity, dedication, and a love for the written word to dozens of fortunate reporters, editors and interns who had the good fortune to walk through the door of the Ruston Daily Leader. I was one of those and I will be forever richer for the experience.

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(Editor’s note to Trump supporters: before you go bat-s**t crazy and start pounding me with your rants, please click on the links in boldface blue. In the past, it seems LouisianaVoice critics haven’t bothered to read the material I’ve so generously provided for them in the knowledge they won’t find the material on Faux News. Of course, when you read the linked stories, you’re free to comment as always.)

Just when you think it can’t possibly get more bizarre with this POTUS….it does.

His latest tweet seems to somehow infer that the government shutdown is okay because most of the furloughed workers are DEMOCRATS—as if that justifies the cessation of services or the loss of pay.

It’s not enough that his White House has the highest staff turnover in history—after he made an issue during the campaign of the fact that Obama had three chiefs of staff in his eight years (Trump is now on his third in less than two years).

It’s not enough, apparently that:

He says he “barely knows” Saudi Crown Prince MOHAMMED bin SALMAN, even after having boasted earlier of his “excellent” relationship with the Saudis.

He says he “doesn’t know” MATT WHITAKER, the man he named as interim attorney general to replace Jeff Sessions, despite having said earlier that he did know him. Whitaker, it was revealed after his brief promotion, had served on the advisory board of a major scam operation.

He says he “didn’t know” about the hush money payment to STORMY DANIELS.

He says he “barely knew” his own former campaign manager PAUL MANAFORT.

He claimed he “knows nothing” about former KKK leader DAVID DUKE, who said he supported the Trump candidacy and told listeners of his radio program to “get active” for Trump. Like him or loathe him, it would seem anyone running for President would know everything there was to know about the guy.

He said he “does not know” JARED KUSHNER very well. (Hint: he’s your son-in-law.)

He says he “barely knew” MICHAEL COHEN, his personal attorney of 12 years.

He says he “barely knew” Felix Sater, the Russian who worked for Bayrock, whose headquarters were in Trump Tower. Sater spearheaded negotiation, unsuccessfully, it turned out, to construct a Trump Tower in Moscow.

He said he “barely knew” MICHAEL FLYNN who, despite that one handicap, still managed to lead crowds with chants of “lock her up” at the Republican National Convention and who managed to get himself named National Security Adviser by Trump.

He claimed he “barely recalls” meeting with GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS, a foreign policy adviser for his campaign and who was the first to suggest that the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Coincidentally, he was also the first to be arrested and the first to plead guilty in connection with the Mueller probe.

Do we detect a trend here?

Apparently not, because no less an authority than Donald Trump himself says he has “ONE OF THE GREAT MEMORIES OF ALL TIME.”

Except when he DOESN’T.

But the one thing he does not forget is his wall, though he does seem to not remember that he promised during the campaign that MEXICO would pay for the wall because now he’s insisting that Congress pony up $5 billion or he will keep the government shut down.

Border Patrol, TSA, air traffic controllers, etc. are being required to work without pay but Trump says it’s all good because—again—most of the furloughed workers are Democrats.

As is that should matter. Ever.

And disregarding for the moment the fact that he has not a shred of evidence to support that absurd tweet, Trump should realize (except it’s obvious by now that his cognitive dissonance is such that he simply is incapable of stringing together a logical line of reasoning) that Republican or Democrat, they’re all Americans. They work for the American government, they buy goods and services in America, and they pay taxes in America.

Perhaps he’s a bad example when reflecting on how his presidency ended, but as a U.S. Senator, Lyndon Johnson was an ardent STATES-RIGHTS advocate, opposing every civil rights proposal to come down the pike, even calling efforts for federal legislation “a farce and a shame.”

But when he became President following the assassination of John F. Kennedy 55 years ago, he personally muscled the 1964 CIVIL RIGHTS ACT through Congress. Asked why the sudden departure from his Senate days, he said instead of reflecting the sentiments of his Texas constituents, “I’m everybody’s President now.”

That’s a lesson Trump should consider during his lucid moments, rare though they may be.

Memories like the corners of my mind
Misty water-colored memories of the way we were

                                                                                    —The Way We Were

(Thanks to Stephen Winham for passing along the lyrics)

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Read these stories:

(CLICK HERE).

(AND HERE).

Now close your eyes. Now imagine the face of your daughter, your granddaughter, your niece, your girlfriend, your sister, or your wife as one of these victims.

If you still support Donald Trump, then you’re a hypocrite—or worse.

And you’re part of the problem.

It’s that simple.

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A few years back I had the good fortune to sit on the reviewing stand at a Texas A&M football game. It was Thanksgiving Day and the opponent was the University of Texas Longhorns. I was on the reviewing stand with good friend Jack Thigpen, one of the nicest, most genuine people I’ve ever had the good fortune to know. If Jack has ever said a disparaging word about anyone, I’ve never heard it.

We were seated in that special area because our host was a major donor to Texas A&M. Another personable and genuine person on that same reviewing stand that day as the cadets marched into the stadium was George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41^st President of the United States.

I had Jack photograph me shaking hands with President Bush—several times. I kept coming back and the last time, he recognized me, laughed and said, “How many times are you going to do this?”

“As many times as you’ll let me,” I replied. He laughed again—and posed for the photo.

When I heard on Saturday morning that Bush had passed away, I couldn’t help but reflect back and marvel at the contrast between the political landscape of his time and today.

The comparison isn’t pleasant.

One can set down on just about any day of the Trump presidency and find plenty at which to be both appalled and disgusted.

There is his appointment of WILBUR ROSS as Secretary of Commerce. Ross, you may or may not know, was head of the Bank of Cyprus before joining the Trump disassembly of democracy. The primary function of the Bank of Cyprus, of course, was to LAUNDER DIRTY MONEY for the Russian Mafia.

There’s Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, about whom you can by clicking HERE.

And a guy named STEVEN HOFFENBERG, a $475 million Ponzi scheme operator who the late Ruston weekly newspaper publisher John Hays exposed several years ago. It would stand as the largest Ponzi scheme ever until Bernie Madoff came along. The resulting investigation by Hays resulted in a federal prison sentence for Hoffenberg, who surfaced a quarter-century later as a major fundraiser for Herr Trump.

But that wasn’t the end of the Hoffenberg SAGA. It seems he was a running buddy of Wall Street prodigy Jeffrey Epstein who worked for six years for Bear Stearns before launching his own financial investing firm in 1982.

Prosecutors tried to offer Hoffenberg a deal if he would give them information about Epstein and his part in the scam but he refused only to later file a $1 billion lawsuit accusing Epstein of running the scam through Hoffenberg’s company, Towers Financial Corp.

So, what’s the big deal about Epstein? There are lots of scammers on Wall Street. Madoff himself called Wall Street the biggest Ponzi scheme of them all—and he may have been correct.

And how does Epstein tie into the Trump administration?

Well, before I go any further, all this story circles back to a member of Trump’s cabinet and if you can, in any manner, rationalize anything Trump or his subordinates do, don’t read any further.

If you have a propensity to overlook Trump’s transgressions with a shrug and the (very) lame “well he’s doing what he said he’d do,” don’t read any further.

If you call yourself a Christian but are willing to look the other way while Trump appoints, crooks, thieves, scam artists, money launderers, and enablers of sexual perversion, don’t read any further.

And most of all, if you have high blood pressure and are easily angered when people play you for a fool, don’t read any further.

But if you have a conscience, please read what comes next.

If you are a Trump devotee (and even if you’re not), you’ve most likely heard the preposterous claim that Hillary Clinton was part of a pedophilia ring run out of the basement of a Washington, D.C. pizza parlor. Commonly known as Pizzagate among the wild-eyed zealots of the Alex Jones ilk, the absurd rumor was proven to be just that—a groundless rumor.

But there was a child sex ring before the Pizzagate story lit up the Internet.

It was back in 2005 and would include a lot of bigly—very bigly—names. Names like Epstein, Bill (not Hillary) Clinton, Prince Andrew, Kevin Spacey, Chris Tucker and….Donald Trump.

Epstein would be charged with sex trafficking. Many of his victims, most likely in the hundreds, were juveniles, some as young as 13. Virginia Giuffre, formerly Roberts, said in a lawsuit filed against Epstein that she was 15 and working at MAR-a-LAGO when she was recruited by Epstein’s girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.

One story had both Epstein and Trump engaging in sex with a girl they knew to be only 13.

The Miami Herald, in a SICKENING STORY published last Wednesday, said a 53-page indictment could have sent Epstein to federal prison for the remainder of his life.

Until, that is, U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta stepped in and negotiated what has been called the “deal of a lifetime” for Epstein. A non-prosecution agreement was reached whereby the ongoing FBI investigation into whether there were more victims would be terminated. He would serve 13 months—13 months—in the county jail (where he would be housed in a special wing and allowed to work part-time in his office). And contrary to federal law requiring that victims of his crimes be notified of the agreement, the deal was sealed and kept from them.

And Acosta?

Well, he’s now Trump’s SECRETARY OF LABOR and until recently, was on the short list to replace Jeff Sessions as attorney general.

And if you think I’m being overly hard on Acosta and by association, Trump, if you think that I like to cite the so-called “fake news” in making my points, you may wish to check out this story by…. FOX NEWS.

Such are the daily stories coming out of the Trump White House. There’s seldom a day that something sleazy doesn’t ooze from under the Oval Office door. The man is simply unable to display even an inkling of class and he has surrounded himself with those who are but mirrors of his own shortcomings.

And then there was GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH who was the very personification of class.

The LETTER he left for the man who defeated him for reelection in 1992, Bill Clinton, reveals the type person he was.

Volunteering for the military just before Pearl Harbor, he was shot down over Chichi Jima in the Pacific in 1944. He is the last combat veteran to hold the office of President. Trump, on the other hand claimed a stone bruise on his heel as a way to avoid the draft but when later pressed as to which heel, he couldn’t remember.

Bush and wife BARBARA were married an incredible 73 years. She died in April, he seven months later.

Writer Matthew Walther, writing for THE WEEK, said Bush was not a “movement” conservative, a trait that is lost on state politicians like Cameron Henry, Taylor Barras and Conrad (buy stock, then vote for state contract with that company) Appel. Bush’s willingness go back on his “read my lips” pledge and raise taxes “for the good of the country” likely cost him the election to Clinton. Walther pointed out that Bush had “little patience for the antics of Second Amendment absolutists and other loud-mouthed enthusiastic types in the conservative caucus.

“He spoke the old-fashioned language of solidarity with ease, though he had little patience for the empty self-aggrandizement that is expected of modern politicians.”

And he didn’t mind crossing the aisle and working with Democrats when the country stood to benefit from it. Gen. COLIN POWELL said Bush believed that politics shouldn’t be nasty.

My God, Trump, are you listening? (No, of course not.)

“Bush was the last important politician to embody all the old WASP virtues—decency, stoicism, self-denial, gentle wit, skepticism, and courtesy,” Walther said.

And would Trump skydive on his 80^th and 90^th birthdays?

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“I pledge to continue diligent enforcement of our Open Meetings Law.”

—Attorney General Jeff Landry, in an effort to grab a share of the spotlight following a judge’s ruling that the Vermilion Parish School Board acted illegally in having a teacher arrested and ejected before approving a $30,000 pay raise for the board’s superintendent. (Landry is mandated to defend state agencies, boards and commissions in litigation over open meetings and public records and is prohibited by that same constitution from interfering in local matters unless requested to do so by the local district attorney.)

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