FNP 51
Page 13

 around the clock, and I was going to a lot of these bad wrecks and murders and stuff like
 that. Then I went and bought a twin-lens Yashica, two and a quarter [x two and a
 quarter], and converted my bathroom into a darkroom/bathroom and started shooting on
 negatives and started with that. Then I went from there to the single-lens Nikon, which
 I've been with ever since.

P: Tell me a little bit about as you got established, let's say six months later. What would a
 typical issue contain? What kind of stories? How was it laid out--still an eight-page
 tabloid?

G: Yes, sir. We went from eight, and we got on up to twelve. You know, I sat down and
 looked at that other newspaper, and, again, there's never been two nicer, more pleasant
 gentlemen in this country than the two Mr. Merchants. There was T. C. Merchants, Sr.
 and Curry Merchants, Jr. Young Mr. Mercher now is in ill-health, but to this moment,
 neither one of those two gentlemen have ever said a bad word against me, and I opened
 up a newspaper in their town. That's the reason that as many newspapers have tried to
 come and go out of this town and has failed, I don't get out there and say anything bad
 about another newspaper opening up in this town. I know what they [have] got ahead of
 them. But it was rough.

P: What was the name of your paper when you first started?

G: The Madison County Carrier, and people told me, as bad as I spelled, I probably meant
 to say Courier and did not know how to spell it. I put a back slant on it, also, a left-
 handed slant. I'm left-handed, and I just wanted something different. I named it that
 because we [were] going to be carrying the news and the advertising and the information
 for the people of the county. I didn't realize that the word carrier also meant some other
 bad things. You know, I was a country boy come to town. I was just short of being
 webfooted when I got up here.

P: Is there a point where your circulation matched their's?

G: It started off greater because I was mailing free to everybody.

P: But once you were charging for the paper?

G: We still continued to print more papers, because I was working stuff as I studied his
 newspaper. He was a social-type newspaper. He had a more liberal slant than a lot of
 country crackers of Madison County liked, which wouldn't be considered liberal under
 today's standards but, back then, it was. Almost no pictures because they were hot metal.
 So I looked at him and I [said], you know-and he had column called "Passing Parades"
 that was as good as has ever been-his newspaper was a carnival-type makeup, and I'm
 not saying that anything other than complimentary. That was his style. He would have