Word: bowmans
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Time to Go. Bowman began to dream. And his was a dream familiar to newsmen everywhere: he would buy himself a small-town newspaper and become a country editor, writing whatever he pleased and raising his family in a pure, pastoral setting. Unlike so many of his colleagues, though, Bowman was determined to turn his dream into reality. In 1960, he went into debt to buy an abandoned 67-acre farm in Washington County, Va., an area known for antique shops and country hams, hurley tobacco and beef cattle, spoon bread and purple, mist-hung hills. Five years later...
...title is a vast understatement. Bowman is also the paper's only staff reporter and photographer; he writes a signed column as well as the editorials, even helps distribute the twelve-page publication by car. He works twelve to 15 hours a day, seven days a week, has stopped playing bridge on Saturday nights because "now I wouldn't dream of killing that much time." His family pitches in with wrapping and labeling, and Daughter Elizabeth, 10, has been enlisted to review local children's plays under her own byline...
Time to Be Cantankerous. So far, Bowman's editorials (on such subjects as local taxes and the school system) have been consistently cautious. "I haven't figured out yet just who the ungodly are around here," he says. "I have plenty of time in which to become cantankerous." Meanwhile, he fills the paper with his own handsome pictures of rustic Washington County scenes-meadows, old mills, derelict wagons-and reaches back into history to print county records from the 1700s. His column is his special joy, and he manages to make it personal and folksy without being corny...
...poison ivy or of his own desperate search for the family cat during a blizzard; he tells how to talk on the party line without revealing secrets to eavesdroppers, devotes a whole page of sensitive text and pictures to the juvenile joy of playing in a hay-filled barn. Bowman prefers to think of himself as "a sort of would-be farmer with typewriter...
Look Who's Laughing. Quite obviously, Bowman figures he has it made. And it is equally obvious that his pals in Washington figure he has made a bad bargain. They told him, he reported in one of his columns: "You are burying yourself in the wilderness. What will you do for entertainment? Who will you talk with about Viet Nam?" His answers were refreshingly direct. "Gentle reader, I haven't found time enough even to think about such things. Who do I talk with about Viet Nam? The boys who have been there and have come home...