So sorry, but it looks as if September will be dark.

But feel free to tell deadline stories on yourselves. I'll tell a quick one. When I first came to the Evening Sun, I had never worked for an evening paper before and was a little fuzzy on the deadlines. (The San Antonio Light was a former evening paper that published on an "all-day" schedule, which meant one could update until 8 a.m. or so, but it was basically a morning paper by my time there.)

So, the first weeks at the Evening Sun, alone and friendless, I'd come to work and listen to my colleage Frank D. Roylance type endlessly, filing, filing, filing. (Frank was once described to me as the Brooks Robinson of the Evening Sun, fielding anything that came his way.) Eventually, the city editor, Wayne Hardin, would come by and ask me in his soft Arkansas accent if I could do "a little story." Sure, I'd say, the eager beaver. When do you need it? "Noon?" Wayne always made it sound optional. And I'd report and type it up and away it would go and the next day, I'd check the paper, but it wouldn't be in, and I would feel like a failure.

After about two weeks of this, my sister said: "Wow, you've had a lot of stories. Even some page-ones." I have? Turns out I was filing for the seven-star and the final editions, but I never knew that.

See you in October.