From our weekly issue dated August 20, 2008

My mind is quite clean because I change it so often. Such is the case this week, as the errant editor has decided to postpone his column about a trip to visit family. Instead, I want to share some of “the stuff” that happens around here. It’s all true; none of it is made up.

Couple weeks ago we checked the phone messages, and found one from a man who sounded intoxicated. His anonymous, complete message: “Bob, you are a racial piece of s _ _ _.” Then he hung up. We determined that he used a public telephone in O’Brien, and so we could not return his call to discover what he was talking about.

A couple days later, the same man phoned to threaten us with a lawsuit in connection with our printing the name of a young person in Police Blotter. He ended his second contact after being asked to identify the appropriate state of Oregon rule. He would not identify himself, and denied making the earlier call. And he again used a public telephone.

Another recent phone contact was from a rude and belligerent woman, who would not identity herself, calling about what she claimed was a major health hazard. She claimed that hundreds of people had been made ill by eating packaged food from a valley store. She informed us that it was our responsibility to check it out, and that she would be monitoring us to see that we were doing our job.

Subsequently, we checked with the county health department, which had no reports of illnesses as asserted by the discourteous woman. We found though, that the Oregon Dept. of Agriculture had investigated the woman’s claim and “found nothing there” to substantiate her charge. The ag agent stated that there had been no reports of food-borne illnesses, and that there might be a quality issue, but not a health hazard.

Another recent situation involved a reader who sent a note after I wrote here, that in trying to determine the distance from John Wayne Airport to the closest Amtrak station and what the taxi fare would be, I had phoned several possible sources, including the Santa Ana Fire Dept. The writer essentially asked why I was dumb enough to contact that agency about Amtrak tickets.

The response I sent to him: “Obviously I was unclear. Reason I phoned the SAFD is that I was sure that an agency that responds to all locations for aid would be able to advise on the distance between two locations. I did not think for a nanosecond that the FD would provide tickets or bookings. Thanks for writing!”

Last Friday we received an irate phone call from a person who had placed a classified ad for a yard sale. The customer was angry because we obviously had screwed up the ad because people were already at the site and the sale wasn’t until the next day. So we dutifully checked the ad, and it listed only the correct day. It was a trifle difficult to make clear to the caller that the ad was correct, as placed, and that we did not know why people were already trying to attend the sale.

So there is a handful of experiences showing what it’s like here. Ah, the fun we have at the valley’s community newspaper. And we’re going to keep producing it every week, despite anonymous and angry individuals.