Simply Put- "YesteryearJackson County Style"

7/17/08

First and foremost let me say that I welcome getting e-mails or phone calls from our readers. And while most comments that I receive are positive and indicate our readers enjoy the sports section, as you might expect I occasionally get comments in which readers express a disagreement or a preference for something different.
I recently got one of those comments, by e-mail, in which a longtime reader very tastefully pointed out that much of the recent sports news was concentrated on the Marianna community. The reader expressed, again very courteously, that there have been some outstanding teams and players from the remainder of the county as well as Marianna. In my response to the reader I mentioned my efforts to ensure that the sports coverage was equally balanced among the different communities. I mentioned that during the school year this was especially true and that I felt I had done a fair job of covering the different high school teams throughout the county during the past school year.
But I also acknowledged to the reader that one of our weekly summertime features, Yesteryear, had in fact so far been exclusively about Marianna. And I’m sure that this reader is not the only one to have made note of this fact.
This is my dilemma. If you recall the way Yesteryear works is that folks send, bring or e-mail old photos to The Times. They provide some background information and then we run the picture. The following week we run the information after we have had folks try and guess who is in the photos. And so far the only folks bringing or sending in old pictures are the Marianna folks.

But, as I acknowledged to the reader, I need to work harder to get more Yesteryear features from throughout the county, not just Marianna. And as you see in this week’s Yesteryear I have gotten an old photo from a non-Marianna team. It’s up to you to guess which school it is from. But, Simply Put, I need your help!! I need to get more old sports photos from teams and athletes from the other communities throughout Jackson County. Please send or get me some old sports photos. While the Yesteryear feature has been even more popular than I could have ever imagined, I never intended for Yesteryear to just be about Marianna. I know that there are some great sports teams and stories out there from the communities of Malone, Greenwood, Bascom, Grand Ridge, Sneads, Alford, Cottondale, Campbellton and Graceville. So dig through your closets and scrapbooks. Get me some old sports photos and let’s make it where we can rightly proclaim the feature "Yesteryear, Jackson County Style". And keep those e-mails and calls coming, it will make me and our sports section even better.

From the front porch: Uncle Bob said he still carries a little black book, only now all the numbers are for his doctors.