Doin' the Sales with Rusty Pails

Some friends and I started a small town newspaper in 1987. During that time I was an elementary school principal, so my work on the paper was limited to a few tasks. I sold advertisements, very poorly, every Saturday morning, and spent the rest of each weekend chained to a table in the darkroom getting photos ready for the weekly edition.

I also penned two columns for the newspaper. One was an Ozarks genealogy column called Rootbound in the Hills. That column was being published in fifteen small area newspapers when I finally retired it four years later. Eventually I will preserve the back issues of Rootbound in a separate blog.

The other column was an attempt at rural humor called Doin' the Sales with Rusty Pails. That column only ran for about a year until my involvement in the original newspaper came to an end. I have recently run across the old Rusty Pails columns (36 in all), and after airing them out for awhile and making some revisions and repairs, I have come to the conclusion that most would fit nicely into this blog. They will run on an occasional basis when things at Pa Rock's Ramble are slow. If Rusty Pails is well received, I may even scribble a few new ones. So, sit back and (hopefully) enjoy!

Pa Rock
aka Rusty Pails