It was just about ten years ago to the month that I gave notice of my abandonment of a perfectly secure semi-retirement job as a public school bus driver in the Southern New Mexico desert city of Las Cruces. It was my plan to finally birth a brainchild, the design for which I had been tinkering for upwards of a year. It was called The Piney Woods Journal, and I meant to do it from my old high-school alma mater village of Dodson, Louisiana--population more or less 350, not counting "local" citizens in nearby nursing homes.

One of my first stops in the territory was at the Dodson post office, where I rented a mailbox, and checked on the prospect of taking out a bulk mail permit. The lady postmaster whose name I have forgotten, gave me the info, and I said I would be back to do the deal in a few weeks. I continued to commute between New Mexico and North Louisiana for a time, and on the next trip "back east" I went again to the Dodson post office to close the deal on the bulk mail permit. When asking for the lady postmaster with whom I had dealt earlier, I was told she was no longer there. I was referred to the new permanent post master, who came forward and looked at me in a friendly manner. "Hi, Tom," he said, with a smile and a twinkle in his eye. I mumbled something in reply, and started laying out my project. But the guy seemed to want to chat, not do business in a hurry. I was slightly puzzled, since I did not recall introducing myself, which I then offered to do.

He replied "I'm Glen Fogger . . . " Well. What to say? I hadn't a clue, but upon a closer look, yes, that could be Glen Fogger, the high school kid I worked with back at the old Winn Parish Enterprise in Winnfield, oh, 40-some years earlier. Glen? Sure. (This was the first of several times that scene has played out in the ensuing ten years, as I continue even now to encounter acquaintances from the past in various situations).

We spent a few minutes getting up to date on 40 years worth of careers which went on two different trajectories. He began working part-time at the Enterprise right around the time he was finishing high school in Winnfield. It was sometime in the early 1950s. I had already been around a couple of years or so as an early-20s news reporter, and Glen became the latest "printer's devil," breaking up the lead pages, melting down used type, sweeping up, and after graduation learning to operate the beastly old eight-page web-fed printing press and the Rube Goldberg-like Linotype machines. (Probably no one remembers the Rube Goldberg cartoons; trust me, they were bizarre.) It was hot, nasty, sweaty work in an un-airconditioned building crusted with years of old ink, oil, cleaning fluids, and the aroma of warm rolls of newsprint paper, the clinging smell of which rolled out at you like an invisible thick fog when opening the building early on a late-summer morning. Within the next few months, we produced the first edition of the then-brand-new Piney Woods Journal, and began using the Dodson post office as our gateway to the big, wide world on a monthly basis. Throughout the next years, it was easy to work with Glen, who made the rules easy for us. And occasionally, when we'd meet in his office lobby, Glen and I would take a few minutes to visit and recall some of the nutty things that happened during our mutual time spent at the Winn Parish Enterprise in bygone days. We both had experiences with Mary Riser, George Larson, Chester Derr, D.G. Boyett, Glenn Page, and a few others who drifted through from time to time. No one who was not there at the time would believe some of the things that happened. But Glen and I know they were true, and even today, we can't explain them to outsiders.

After a time, Glen began working odd hours at the Winnfield post office, maintaining some part-time work at the paper. And then, he finally had sense enough to go full time at the post office, leaving his printing career behind. In early 1960, I left Winnfield for the final time, and as far as I know, never saw Glen again until that day at the end of 1996 at the Dodson post office when he said, "Hi, Tom."

During the past ten years, our offices were across the street from each other, and it became an easy working relationship again in a different setting. And then, one day a little over a month ago, Glen met me in the Dodson post office lobby, and said, "Friday is my last day. I'm retiring!" And just like that, Pffft! he was gone again.

And so now, we have a new lady post master at Dodson, at least temporarily: Mrs. Frankie Hammons Turner, who also sees after the Sikes post office, ten miles east of Dodson. We're not sure if she's the final answer, but things seem to be working OK so far. Maybe I'll retire again before a new post master shows up. Maybe not.

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