Photo by Phyllis Stokes
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that in the manner of country-copy reporting there would be the following item: “Mr. and Mrs. William Stokes enjoyed dinner Thursday at the home of Mr. Stokes’s son Michael in Sac Prairie. A delicious sauerkraut, biscuit sausage dish was served, after which Michael talked about the motorcycle parked in his kitchen.”
Editing country copy had been one of the keeper’s early jobs in newspapering and it was always a delight to read through the hand-written submissions from the ladies of the various central Wisconsin communities who were paid by the column inch for “news” about who went where and when and why.
The keeper remembers an item, which he mentions in his forthcoming book–“Treeson,” in which the country correspondent wrote that so-and-so fell off his roof and “broke a limb.”
The keeper flunked editing 101 and the item did not make the paper due to smartass commentary.
“A good time was had by all at Michael’s.”
