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"They'll love you around here A s hair and a little imported sports car Hell, folks'll think you're pretty cool with a name like Willie Think of Joe Willie"

"Who's Joe Willie?"

"Joe Willie Namath"

"Oh him"

"Yeah, he's a Yankee like you, froot to Alabairls chased him all over the place"

I began to feel better In 1970, Joe Namath was probably the most famous athlete in the country I went for a drive and kept repeating "Willie" Within a couple of weeks the na to stick Everybody called me Willie and seemed to feel more comfortable because I had such a down-to-earth name

I told BeeBee it was just a temporary pseudonym

The Times was a very thin paper, and I knew iht on news and advertising The eruntled, but quiet and loyal Jobs were scarce in Ford County in 1970 After a week it was obvious even toat a loss Obits are free - ads are not Spot spentperiodically and calling the funeral home Sometimes they called him Sometimes the families would stop just hours after Uncle Wilber's last breath and hand over a long, flowery, handwritten narrative that Spot would seize and carry delicately to his desk Behind a locked door, he would write, edit, research, and rewrite until it was perfect

He told me the entire county was y Suggs, a pickled old goat who spent his hours hanging around the courthouse across the street sniffing for gossip and drinking bourbon with a small club of washed-up lawyers too old and too drunk to practice anyy was too lazy to check sources and dig for anything interesting, and it was not unusual for his front page story to be so

Margaret, the secretary, was a fine Christian lady who ran the place, though she was sh to allow Spot to think he was the boss She was in her early fifties and had worked there for twenty years She was the rock, the anchor, and everything at the Tiaret was soft-spoken, almost shy, and from day one was completely intione to school up North for five years I was careful not to wear ueness on my shoulder, but at the same time I wanted these rural Mississippians to know that I had been superbly educated

She and I beca pals, and after a week she confirmed what I already suspected - that Mr Caudle was indeed crazy, and that the newspaper was indeed in dire financial straits But, she said, the Caudles have family money!

It would be years before I understood this mystery

In Mississippi, fa to do with cash or other assets Family money was a status, obtained by soh school, born in a large home with a front porch - preferably one surrounded by cotton or soybean fields, although this was not mandatory - and partially reared by a beloved black randparents who once owned the ancestors of Bessie or Pearl, and lectured froed people Acreage and trust funds helped somewhat, but Mississippi was full of insolvent blue bloods who inherited the status of family money It could not be earned It had to be handed down at birth

When I talked to the Caudle family lawyer, he explained, rather succinctly, the real value of their family money "They're as poor as Job's turkey," he said as I sat deep in a worn leather chair and looked up at hiany desk His naious Sullivan & O'Hara firious for Ford County - seven lawyers He studied the bankruptcy petition and rambled on about the Caudles and thea once profitable paper into the ground He'd represented thes the Ties filled with advertisements She kept a 500,000 certificate of deposit at Security Bank, just for a rainy day

Then her husband died, and she remarried a local alcoholic twenty years her junior When sober, he was semiliterate and fancied himself as a tortured poet and essayist Miss Emma loved him dearly and installed hi editorials blasting everything thatof the end Spot hated his new stepfather, the feelings were mutual, and their relationship finally clihts in the history of don Clanton It took place on the sidewalk in front of the Tie and stunned crowd The locals believed that Spot's brain, already fragile, took additional da but those damned obituaries

The stepfather ran off with her money, and Miss Emma, heartbroken, become a recluse

"It was once a fine paper," Mr Sullivan said "But look at it now Less than twelve hundred subscriptions, heavily in debt Bankrupt"

"What will the court do?" I asked

"Try and find a buyer"

"A buyer?"

"Yes, someone will buy The county has to have a newspaper"

I iht of two people - Nick Diener and BeeBee Nick's family had become rich off their county weekly BeeBee was already loaded and she had only one beloved grandchild My heart began pounding as I smelled opportunity

Mr Sullivan watched"It could be bought for a song," he said

"How much?" I asked with all the confidence of a twenty-three-year-old cub reporter whose grandmother was as stout as lye soap

"Probably fifty thousand Twenty-five for the paper, twenty-five to operate Most of the debts can be bankrupted, then renegotiated with the creditors you need" He paused and leaned forward, elbows on his desk, thick grayish eyebroitching as if his brain orking overtiold mine, you know"

BeeBee had never invested in a goldthe puave it to Mr Sullivan, who put it in a trust account and petitioned the court for the sale of the paper The Judge, a relic who belonged in the bed next to Miss Enly and scrawled his name on an order that made me the nener of The Ford County Times

It takes at least three generations to be accepted in Ford County Regardless of , one cannot sis over any newcoly war nosy with their friendliness They nod and speak to everyone on the don streets They ask about your health, the weather, and they invite you to church They rush to help strangers

Hut they don't really trust you unless they trusted your grandfather

Once word spread that I, a young green alien froht the paper for fifty, or maybe a hundred, or perhaps even two hundred thousand dollars, a great wave of gossip shook the cole, there was a chance I was a homosexual Because I went to Syracuse, wherever that was, then I was probably a Communist Or worse, a liberal Because I was fro Ford County

Just the sa themselves, I now controlled the obituaries! I was somebody!

The new Tiet arrived with his papers It was almost an inch thick and loaded with more photos than had ever been published in a county weekly Cub Scout troops, Brownies, junior high basketball tearoups, adult softball teams, civic clubs Dozens of photos I tried to include every living soul in the county And the dead ones were exhalted like never before The obits were e I'm sure Spot was proud, but I never heard from him

The neas light and breezy Absolutely no editorials People love to read about crie I launched the Crime Notes Section Thankfully, two pickups had been stolen the week before, and I covered these heists as if Fort Knox had been looted

In the center of the front page there was a rather large group shot of the new regirapher, Wiley Meek, Davey Bigh school student and part-time employee I was proud of my staff We had worked around the clock for ten days, and our first edition was a great success We printed five thousand copies and sold them all I sent a box of them to BeeBee, and she was most impressed

For the next led to detere is painful in rural Mississippi, so I decided to do it gradually The old paper was bankrupt, but it had changed little in fifty years I wrote roups of endless varieties And I worked hard on the obituaries

I had never been attracted to long hours, but since I was the owner I forgot about the clock I was too young and too busy to be scared I enty-three, and through luck and tirandmother, I was suddenly the owner of a weekly newspaper If I had hesitated and studied the situation, and sought advice from bankers and accountants, I'm sure someone would have talked some sense into me But when you're twenty-three, you're fearless You have nothing, so there's nothing to lose

I figured it would take a year to become profitable And, at first, revenue increased slowly Then Rhoda Kassellaas uess it's the nature of the business to sell more papers after a brutal crime when people want details We sold twenty-four hundred papers the week before her death, and almost four thousand the week after

It was no ordinary murder

Ford County was a peaceful place, filled with people ere either Christians or claihts were common, but they were usually the work of the lower classes who hung around beer joints and such Once a hbor or perhaps his oife, and each weekend had at least one stabbing in the black tonks Death rarely followed these episodes

I owned the paper for ten years, from 1970 to 1980, and we reported very few murders in Ford County None was as brutal as Rhoda Kassellaw's; none was as premeditated Thirty years later, I still think about it every day