It all started when I met the editor. He was a particularly handsome fellow who was constantly being pursued by various starlets and supermodels. I remember when Julia Roberts first wrote in. Then it was Cindy Crawford.

In fact, we had barely started publishing the Register when letters started coming in from all sorts of famous people. Many of them were dead.

J. S. Bach wrote in complaining about our coverage. Rush Limbaugh penned a childish attack on our editor and Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones sent a rave review of a Festival Hill performance. Liberace challenged James Dick to a grocery sacking contest. John Phillip Sousa, Toscanini, P. T. Barnum, Bill Clinton... the list was endless!

One day, while fishing in Cummins Creek, the editor met an elderly but eccentric gentleman who claimed to be 191 years old. His given name was Sackfield Brewer but he preferred to be called “Uncle Sack.”

His editorials began to gain a certain following but we remained a small, struggling publication.

Then we got our big break. Our business reporter heard rumors on Wall Street that North Pole Enterprises (NPE) and it’s CEO, S. Claus, were considering relocating their North Pole operations to Round Top. Despite the odds, we were able to secure an interview with the elusive Mr. Claus, an interview that none of our larger competitors had been able to acquire. That interview was our first big breakthrough in the news business.

Success sometimes makes others jealous. The next thing we knew, we were embroiled in a vicious print war with the New York Times. Refusing to be intimidated by the 2.4 billion media conglomerates, we challenged them to a circulation war. Their petty attempts to suppress us continue to this day but we have somehow risen above these childish efforts and continue to thrive.

Next, we were confronted with a story that tested our mettle. A letter came into the newspaper from a citizen of a small town named “Impact.” The letter alleged that Round Top’s claim to being the “smallest incorporated town in Texas” was a fraud. We leaped to the defense of our community’s long-standing public relations slogan only to have our hopes dashed on the rocks of the 1990 census. It turned out that Round Top was only the eighth smallest incorporated town in Texas. As the woman from Impact so rudely pointed out, Round Top is actually “the second largest two-digit incorporated city in Texas.”

It was a time of crisis and civic humiliation but somehow we were able to survive it. Looking back, I see that dark trial somehow strengthened us and brought us together.

We started distributing my issues farther and farther from home. My pages and the number of copies of me that were printed continued to increase with greater and greater demand from an adoring public.

Okay, I admit it. The editor and I let it go to our heads. We got a little full of ourselves. We started an investigation into an alleged international conspiracy in the media to suppress good news.

We grilled the city editors of the Austin American-Statesman and the Houston Chronicle about their part in this conspiracy only to find out that our source, who we thought to be a highly placed media executive, was a local paperboy. We were humiliated in front of our peers. It was another difficult time.

Still, we soldiered on. Some issues met with great success. Our food critic, Chef Herve Raconteur, released a secret eating plan called the “Diet Plan of the Stars.” The breakthrough diet suggested that people move away from the city and live some place where they could see the stars, eat all and anything they wanted and “always have dessert.”

Thus they would, according to Chef Herve, “put a little meat on their bones.” The diet plan must have had a major impact on the dietary habits of people in our readership area because after the paper came out, we noticed that almost everyone was following it.

But the big feature stories are not the only things I remember. The ongoing exploits of Zapp Luger, Round Top’s legendary Town Marshal have often graced my pages. We covered his finding of the Holy Grail, the time he rode a tornado from Round Top to Warda, and the time he shot speeding 18-wheelers with a bazooka.

He’s such a colorful lawman. It’s a shame his tawdry past is getting him in so much trouble lately. But I don’t know why I’m feeling sorry for the Marshal. It’s me that has such a short time to live. It’s me that is gasping a last breath … and it’s me that was betrayed by my best friend.

That’s right! Dark and brutal betrayal … by the one I trusted the most! The Editor of the Round Top Register, who I let cover me with all manners of childish fiction, is my murderer!

It is he that has cast me aside for a bigger, slicker, more frequent publication. It is he who has decided to publish monthly and leave me behind.

Oh, I understand how it can happen. Sure, the new monthly format has a four-color front page. Sure, it has a classified section. I know it will have more features, more columns, more humor and more interviews than I could ever boast.

I know all about the expanded Texas Fun section that replaces my popular event calendar by listing all of the area’s fun events by community. I’ve heard it all a thousand times. I could see it coming long before the day he announced his plans.

And after all I’ve done for him.

Now he thinks he’s some kind of media big shot but everybody knows he was a small time carpenter with almost no newspaper experience before I came along. He was an amateur, a pretender! I made him what he is today and look how he throws me away like a cheap flyer caught under his windshield wipers at a football game. How soon he forgets.

That article in Editor and Publisher, the Arts column on the New York Times Internet Site, that upcoming PBS documentary, Digital Nation … I got him all that PR! It was me! Me! Not some slick modern hussy of a newspaper.

Oh the injustice of it all. Cast aside like a cheap advertiser. Me, a literary masterpiece. How can he forget those great interviews, Dr. James Ayres, the founder of Shakespeare at Winedale; James Dick, founder of The Festival-Institute at Round Top; columnist Leon Hale; Round Top Mayor Dave Nagel; LCRA head honcho, Mark Rose; District Judge Dan Beck and Fayette County Judge Ed Janecka; Sister Angela, Abbess of the Monastery of St. Clare; Blue Bell Ice Cream’s top dogs, Ed and Howard Kruse; defense attorney Dick DeGuerin and all the other interviews of interesting and notable people?

And what about all the homespun local history features? Who can forget old Harry Graeter or the Girls of Round Top, the Bodo Kraus interview, The History of the Round Top Café or M. E. Schulze and his “last store in Round Top.”

How can he forget George Kudelka, the Round Top Brass Band and those stories of the Canadian wilderness?

What about Deadspace Poetry? Wasn’t that enough? Didn’t I do everything I could? Could I have given any more? Cough…cough.

Ooooooooooh ... It’s growing dark. I can feel those last few issues slipping out of the rack ... the last few chuckles coming from the last few lips. My newsprint is yellowing in the cruel sun. It won’t be long now and I’ll be only a memory … the last great Texas quarterly … cough … hack … the Don Quixote of the print world … cough …. tilting at windmills.

I tried so hard …goodbye …so long …farewell …arrivederci …Mother! Mother! Is that you? No …no … it’s no use …not with a bang but a whimper …cough …cough …Poor Yorick, I knew him well …Good night Irene, I’ll see you in my dreams … to sleep, to sleep … perchance to dream … so dark … dark … It is a far, far better thing I do, than anything I have ever done … cough, cough … Swing low, sweet chariooot … comin’ for to … hack, cough, wheeze …What’s that? A light? So bright … beautiful light … cough, cough …............ So Long, Texas!