WHO YOU KNOW

I started this blog almost five years ago to try to learn to type better, and to try to improve my writing skills to where I didn't send out as many dipshit unreadable E-mails as my co-workers. The next thing I knew, I had myself a full blown hobby. At times I may have written myself out of some dark and misty places. Along the way I picked up some pretty good friends that I will likely never meet, yet we may know each other in ways that folks that see us every day do not.

But writing, it was fun. I had a run a while back where I did like 320 posts in 340 days. Then I slowed considerably on the blog, but continued pretty heavy on Facebook.
And like anything else in this world, its who you know  as much as what you know.
I met a woman on Facebook a while back, and she became Editor of a weekly newspaper, the Alvarado Star. And she saw some of my stories, some of which take place around Alvarado and she wanted to use some of them in her paper because of that. My grandparents lived in the vicinity for 60 odd years, and I have relatives around Alvarado dating to 1850.
Yesterday, they published one of these stories. Here is the link, and a picture of me large enough that it looks like I could eat Tokyo, or at the very least a Bowling Alley.

I do not get paid. . My hope is that I will get to do more stories for the Alvarado Star. The payoff is that sometimes I can write a story that will bring fond memories back to folks that read them. That always makes me feel good, and I usually know it when I have done it, though I don't really know anything about writing
But the Grand Prize for me will be when someone that knew my grandparents, or their parents that settled and lived and farmed and died here; or my father when he was a boy; or Uncle Harry who allegedly never drove a car but preferred to ride his horse right up till 1970; the Grand Prize will be when someone reads a story of mine and says:
 "I knew your grandparents Steve, I remember them well "
and then, THEY can tell ME a story. I would like that maybe more than anything in the whole wide world, so much the thought brings a lump to my throat.
Yessir, that would be the day!