Sequel: Why do I write for The Stockton Record? Or: The column that strayed from the fold

Today, I am probing into a mystery. Maybe you can help:

Several years ago when I started to write for The Stockton Record, my first effort was to tell why I was there -- just like the piece in this blogspot that I wrote several weeks ago. I carefully detailed how the lady who delivered my North County Times started it all by never managing to hit my garage door with the morning paper.

I rambled on about how I sought help from Above (that doesn't always mean Godallmighty, but sometimes, the managing editor), and my appeal finally reached Rob Wagner at The Record. He was working there, having left the NC Times earlier. Rob hired me to write the column. You know the story by now.

Rob was kind, suggested I not get so personal in my first column, so I reversed field. I wrote about walking to school with Johnny Lewis when I was in Lincoln Junior High in Albuquerque in 1932. Now, THAT was far enough away from Stockton that Rob shouldn't mind. Right? Good enough. John Lewis went on to musical fame, celebrity as a composer, leader of the now legendary Modern Jazz Quartet. I quit beating my junior high drum and took up the typewriter.

Now for the mystery: My blog on, "Why I Write for The Stockton Record" -- virtually a rewrite at the one that failed to pass muster -- showed up, lo! Like magic. In The Stockton Record. Vintage for July 2005.

The blog had been my usual venting of words -- no editor to slice my rambling back to common sense. The blog didn't know that it couldn't get into real newspaper print without an editor to make it shipshape. It was properly shorn of excess verbiage.

Ordinarily, I don't see my column on the first day it reaches print, but get it a day or two later on the Internet. On July 5, however, I got a sweet fan letter from a lady in Martinez named Patti, saying she had read my column and wondered how I had corrected the problem of getting the carrier of the North County Times to hoist the paper to my garage door. She posed a similar problem with her delivery of The Record, to which she had subscribed for 58 years.

(I don't question her sweetness, but I recognize an old trick of mine to tell someone what I nice piece they've written -- and now would they deal with my problem?)

You don't know how fast I wrote to everyone on The Record about the lady's problem -- everyone, that is, who has found him or herself into my address book: The webmaster, the lady who edits my piece, the lady to whom I send my invoices for my monthly paycheck, a couple of fellow columnists whose addresses loom, as mine does, at the bottom of their work.

I was amazed at the number of them who answered and assured me that they had passed Patti's problem on to the circulation department. You see what I mean when I say it is a nice place to work?

But who leaked MY blog to The Record? Who am I to ask? Didn't the new York Times' Judy Miller choose going to jail rather than reveal the source of the leak to her of the name of theCIA spy? Didn''t newspapers generally come to the rescue of the New York Times when that rascal Nixon got the Supreme Court to find them in contempt of court for not disclosing the source of the Pentagon Papers -- and got a restraining order to keep them from continuing the story?

Freedom of the press is the holiest of holies of democracy. Mainstream newspapers picked up the story, flouting the court. I shall not seek court action against the leaker of my blog. (Actually, dammit, I ought to be thankful, shouldn't I?)

Anyway, Patti, is The Record's carrier now tossing your paper where you want it?