That led to a job with the Western-Star newspaper in Bessemer, in which I worked free-lance as a court reporter on a two-week grisly murder trial that was the talk of the town. Not my favorite career move, but it paid the bills.
I put in for a job at the Cullman Times up in Cullman, AL, and became a reporter once again, this time on a daily newspaper. I enjoyed the daily deadlines and the out and about taking pictures.
For a couple of months, I lived at the Hurricane Creek Park, a nature trail featuring rocky ledges and a swinging bridge over a rushing creek.
But after several months, the publisher offered me the editor's job for a weekly newspaper he owned in Pell City, AL. It was called the St. Clair (County) News-Aegis.
So I made the move to Pell City, a nice place on the interstate just east of Birmingham. The work was back to a weekly schedule and that was fine. There I wrote many interesting stores of wrecks, fires, a couple of tornadoes, and feature articles about a variety of fascinating folks.
After two years, I became homesick for Covington, LA, so I moved back to southeast Louisiana and started re-drawing updated maps that I had already done of local cities. Then the editor's position at the St. Tammany Farmer opened up and I once again joined the staff there.
