Press & Testimonials

“This post is about a newly published book by my first best friend in Texas. But first, I give you some background. It’s a long post, so forgive me my trespasses. My writing could be better.

One day in 1979 after I had accepted (and then turned down) a newspaper job in Picayune, Mississippi, a new reporter named John Toth entered the newsroom of the Bay City Daily Tribune to begin his first journalism job. He’d been hired to take the position I’d had since June 1978.

I’d decided to stay in Bay City when Tropical Storm Claudette hit the Texas coast, dropping more than 38 inches of rain in the Bay City area. By phone, the newspaper publisher agreed to take me back. I got a promotion, allowing John to keep his job. I rushed back to Bay City from San Antonio, where I had been visiting my parents before departing for Mississippi.

For the last 30 miles, I was escorted with red lights flashing and sometimes a siren blaring by a sheriff’s deputy whom I met at a Walmart store where I had stopped to buy rain gear and boots. He was headed to Bay City, too. I soon found myself on a National Guard truck headed to the battered coastline to report on the damage. First stop was the trailer along the Intracoastal Canal that I had rented a few months earlier and where all my belongings remained. My roommate and Indiana childhood friend Tim Costello, also a reporter for the Bay City paper, was stranded there. The emergency generator was on. Tim was blasting “Riding the Storm Out” by REO Speedwagon as a Coast Guard boat dropped me off on the top step of a three-level stairway to the trailer door.

A day later, I found myself reporting on the storm for both the newspaper and the Associated Press. I traveled by boat, with a constant sound of rattlesnakes popping their heads above the floodwaters to take in air. Ah, but, sorry, this is not my story …

Back at the paper, I met John Toth, who is two years younger than me. He had tiny shoes to fill, i.e. my former reporter position. He had just arrived from New York City and spoke with a heavy Eastern European accent. To my Midwest ears, he sounded weird, like, well, a foreigner. We quickly became friends. Our connection was sealed when my cat Daiquiri and John forged a bond. John gradually told me bits and pieces of his immigration journey to the United States, occasionally as Daiquiri stole pieces of cheese from John.”

Jim E Barlow