FNP 51
Page 11

 sold canebuck during cane season. That was a good winter drink.

P: So you had saved enough money over the years to start your business.

G: Every time I'd get ajar of money, I'd bury it, and I had money buried. I was going back,
 digging up jars of money I had buried. I knew I didn't have much because a lot of those
 silver coins and stuff, I've still got. I wasn't going to spend those.

P: You started very quickly after you got this idea.

G: Yes sir.

P: Because your first edition is August 5, 1964. What was your first paper like? What did it
 look like, and what was in it?

G: It was an eight-page tabloid. We laid the first paper out on the wrong side of the layout
 page and didn't know it till we got over there and Mr. Thompson like to have [gone] into
 a back-flipping fit. It was all black grid, and we were supposed to put it together on a
 layout table, a light table with the black grids on the bottom side, and we had them up on
 the top side. We put an index in it because the other paper didn't have an index, but we
 forgot to put any page numbers in it. We had a complete page just left vacant, so I took a
 black magic marker and announced our grand opening, come by for some free drinks and
 hot dogs. I'd [gone] out and bought some hot dogs and worked a deal with Coca-Cola to
 furnish them. [I] looked down in, [and] there was no address or nothing after it got back,
 so nobody knew where we [were] open. Nobody knew anything. It was a...well, we look
 back now, and that first paper was quite a joke.

P: You were the only two people, right?

G: Yes.

P: You didn't have anybody else working for you?

G: My wife was teaching school, so, yes, sir, I had gotten one of my friends I hired. She
 came in to do the typesetting for us. So I started off with one employee, and I was selling
 advertising through the daytime. When my wife would come in after school, she'd come
 straight back and she'd proof the ads that I'd brought in [and built. If I wrote it,
 something was misspelled.] Then the stories I'd bring in, she'd do [the same].

P: So you were the reporter and the ad salesman, and you did everything. How did it go
 initially? Did you get ads right away?

G: The first edition, we got a good many because [it was our first and they were] going to