I checked out the alternative paper available at the U.C.S.C. library. This is a sample. It is plenty legible, but I don’t thing the quality of the news is up to our standards. So I will stick to the NYT for the time being. It was interesting to come across an early Herb Caen column though. He started with the Chronicle in July 1938, so he was still a rookie at this point. I was a Chronicle reader for many years and grew to dislike him. He once included a humorous poem my grandmother wrote and sent him in his column. It was about birds eating fermented pyrocanthus and getting drunk. The title was “Crocked Robins.” Grandmother was the classic San Francisco little old lady. She lived in a tiny flat on California Street and would never be caught dead outside without white gloves and a hat.
Wow, I never realized Herb Caen went back that far.
Regarding the Cotton Bowl, I attended my one and only Cotton Bowl in 1989 working security, exactly 50 years after that story (and 20 years ago today - how time flies!). A kid asked me if I could help him get Troy Aikman’s autograph, and all I could think of was, “Who the hell is Troy Aikman?”
As a teenager (way too many years ago) I was a paperboy, delivering the rival San Francisco Examiner. In those days I couldn't understand Cain's appeal. Still can't. ;-)
I live in Durham, and you can’t see the Blue Ridge Mountains from here, not even on a clear day. :)
The Duke football program was actually respectable this year—not good, but respectable, not the doormat they’ve been for so long. They’re making headway in the Almost Competitive Conference. It’s tough getting people here to care about college football, even with North Carolina doing much better and Duke and NC State resurgent a bit; everybody’s just waiting for basketball season. It’s the opposite of how things are in South Carolina, where it’s football first and everything else second.
}:-)4