How a paper told you what happened — and reminded you who lived nearby
There was a time when the paper did not arrive every morning.
It came once a week — sometimes folded neatly, sometimes creased and softened by many hands — and it usually ended up on the kitchen table, beside a coffee cup or under a pair of reading glasses. You did not rush through it. There was no need to. It would still be there after supper, and often the next day, and sometimes the day after that alongside the easy chair or rocker.
Before you reached the end of the first page, you had already seen names you knew.
Someone had a new baby. Someone else was celebrating a long-awaited anniversary. There would be a church supper on Saturday, a school program midweek, and a notice about a lost dog that everyone hoped would turn up before the next issue came out. Someone’s daughter had been mentioned for her playing at the spring recital, and the high school team had won on Friday night. And sometimes — quietly, respectfully — there would be a name you recognized for a different reason, and the house would grow a little still as you read.
Those small-town papers were not trying to impress anyone.
They did not shout. They did not hurry. They did not pretend that every day was historic. What they did, instead, was tell people what mattered right here — the kind of news that lived just down the road, in their own streets, their own schools, and their own kitchens. Who needed help, who was being celebrated, who would be missed, and what the coming days might hold. News and events close enough to touch, and familiar enough to care about.
They gave ordinary lives a place to be seen.
A person did not have to be famous to appear in print. You only had to belong. A spelling-bee ribbon, a new porch, a good harvest, a bad winter — all of it counted. The paper did something quiet but important: it slowed time just enough for people to recognize one another and remember that they belonged to the same place.
Somewhere along the way, those kinds of papers grew thinner — or quieter — or disappeared altogether.
It did not happen all at once, and it did not come with ceremony. One week there was a paper, and then one week there wasn’t. Or there was one, but it felt different. Faster. Louder. Less familiar. And without anyone quite meaning for it to happen, a small and steady way of keeping track of one another slipped out of reach.
This winter, I found myself missing that kind of paper.
Not the headlines — but the notices. Not the urgency — but the presence. Not the noise — but the quiet. Not the crowd — but the community.
The kind of paper that does not hurry, does not shout, and does not forget the small things. The kind that assumes you will sit with it awhile, maybe pass it across the table, maybe read a bit aloud.
So, missing all that, I decided to create one.
Not to recreate the past exactly — but to borrow its patience. To gather stories the way they used to be gathered. To leave room for observations, oddments, wanderings, and the sorts of things that never make headlines but somehow make up a life.
There are always stories circulating around a town, after all — if someone is willing to go looking for them. Some are found by a roving squirrel reporter with a knack for being in the wrong place at the right time. Others are sniffed out by a good-natured news hound who never missed the scent of a good story.
If this feels familiar, that is no accident.
Some things were worth keeping. And we’re in Little Red Bear’s “Honey Hill Country,” after all.
— Jim (and Red!)
In the days ahead, I will be sharing more of the people and small happenings that make a paper like this feel alive — the kinds of names and notices that once filled the margins and gave a town its own sense of place and to know itself a little better.
There’s more to come — not all at once, and not in a hurry.
P.S. from Little Red Bear —
Little Red Bear says if a paper feels close to home, it probably is. It tells you what happened and reminds you who lives nearby.
Pen-and-ink illustrations created with the assistance of AI and lovingly styled for Little Red Bear Land.
against the early dark, as though each home were setting out a small welcome for travelers on the road.
them clear to the horizon. And along the wide rivers, the old steamboats travel slow and steady, paddlewheels turning like great clocks while calliopes lift their bright notes over the water. Folks talk face-to-face because there is no other way worth mentioning. A pot of beans on the stove counts as good hospitality, and neighbourliness is something you do, not something you merely talk about.
gentleness, as though the whole world were taking a long breath before rushing onward. It feels like the right place to set down our stories — far from the noise of modern life, but close enough to recognize ourselves in the faces around the hearth.
Ozarks Mountain Region, where the kettle always seems to be singing, the porch is always open for settin’ a while, and kindness hasn’t yet gone out of fashion. And yes, it is “settin’,” and not “sitting,” around these parts. Settin’ is something folks in the Ozarks and Honey Hill Country do — we “set.” City and modern-day folks “sit.” And there is a difference. Many readers have told me they come here for a bit of comfort, a chance to slow down, to reconnect with a gentler pace of living. And truth be told, I write for the very same reason.
within easy reach.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “The holler’s barbers have nothing to fear from me.”
things are about to get exciting as the “Louisiana Purchase Exposition” is scheduled to open in St. Louis soon!
a weekly ramble down a simpler path. And if you choose to subscribe to the Gazette when it launches, you will be joining us not only in reading the stories, but in living a little with us each week — stepping into 1904 with Clara Thimblewick, Little Red Bear, Cinnamon Charlie, and all the neighbours who call this place home.
James Milson - The Writing Pages 