Publisher's Point Of View
Robert Allan Hooftallen

Mac's column got me thinking about that old saying about the 11th hour and I realize that it's my favorite saying, as well as my favorite hour. I like that it connotes negativity to a lot of people. It humors me that it generates excitement in me.

The eleventh hour is not only when I like to do things, it seems these days that it's the only time I can do anything. But when I say "anything," I mean anything of any substance, something that's not what everyone else does and tries to pass off as unique, or genuine.

I'll put it this way: the eleventh hour is the only time I can do something I'm proud; of the only time my ideas are actually mine and not some coughed up regurgitation or someone else's regurgitated idea.

As you can imagine, professionally, then, I don't get a whole lot done some weeks and not a whole lot more other weeks. Generically stated, I guess it's a case of quality, not quantity.

It's a hellish way to live, frankly. I am less and less able to compromise these days, particularly when my ideas are at issue, or worse, at stake.

That's why I am on the edge of getting out of public service, that place where individuality breeds suspicion and ideas are the enemy. I sit on Austin Borough Council and have for the most of six years enjoyed doing so. But lately, I've learned that my ideas rarely find their way to reality and when they do, it's four years later, they're watered down to a fat-free version and no one, even I, can recall the vision.

My personality is such that I am not easily entertained and it's hard for me to convince myself that anything tainted with the potential to harbor tedium, deserves any of my mental or physical resources. There are just so many other things that do interest me, things that seem to have some potential for originality, that I really need to get to before I die.

And so I get behind on nearly everything, or so it seems, but the eleventh hour, thankfully, ticks at different times for nearly all my projects. It's ticking for this one now.

This encroaching lifestyle, habit or whatever it is, though, is worsened by my obsessive search for originality in the things that do interest me. Take this letter for example. It has taken me eight hours of complete silence to write this before and I didn't find it to be a waste of time at all. Everyone around me sure did. The front page? Some days 10 hours on it alone. Those are long eleventh hours… and sometimes it costs me.

But that's what I get out of this thing, my profession- that weekly chance of doing something unique, something original.

Because the burn out stage for me passed in about 2004 and I don't work any better for money than I do for fun, so motivation is hard to come by these days.

I do still have a passion for presentation of the news, because in my mind the news itself never changes- only the names and faces, protagonists and antagonists change. And apart from the fleeting times when a story can touch the readers' hearts or change their lives, writing the news can at times, be very unglamorous and a lot like making widgets.

So I see our job a lot of the time as this: taking a big ball of pooh, rolling our sleeves up, running it through the strainers of our minds and then presenting it in such a way that its easy to understand and hopefully doesn't resemble pooh again in its visual form.

So it's partially a job of invention- inventing originality. And that's where this business still holds my attention and challenges me.

But, invoking original thought is never easy and at times, frankly, can be dangerous and self-destructive, depending what lengths one is willing to go to summon it.

If the eleventh hour stretches long enough to charm me, I'll have created at least a page worth of promotion for what we are calling the Big Woods Whitetail Classic, a celebration of what is arguably still the area's most exciting hunting tradition of the year- the rifle deer season.

And, yes, there's a biggest buck contest mixed in there, as well as several littlest buck contests. There's even heaviest coyote contest. Keep in mind, though, that all these animals have to be dead and registered at our contest. The law requires that you kill them legally, but we won't have time to ask those kinds of questions.

The eleventh hour has arrived on this project. The Sweden Feedin' Club and my wife have been kindly prodding me since about the first of September and today is my last chance to put something on paper that will create the excitement the event deserves.

The event is going to be original in that it isn't just a big buck contest, but what makes it most original is that it is going to deserve the attention of all sportsmen and women, as well as people who just like to nib around- particularly for the first three days.

Because when we sat down with our partners in this, the Sweden Feedin' Club, we discussed what type of event this should be, it was clear to us that it needed to appeal to more than just successful buck hunters, mainly because there are fewer and fewer of those and more and more of hunters, like myself, who have to find enjoyment in seeing what others have shot.

As you'll see, there are many great prizes for the hunters and the potential for everyone to win prizes, not just the people who kill the biggest and smallest bucks.

There will be interesting stuff for spectators, too, like our roster board (complete with photos of the hunters, where the deer was shot, who shot it… you name it).

The contest is for both Potter and Cameron County hunters. It'll be held at the Beef And Ale House, located at the intersection of Routes 6 and 872. There's more information somewhere inside.