I’ve always enjoyed publishing weather news to the masses, even when it was on paper my audience was only Mom & Dad. I’ve started to scan these “newspapers” into my blog. These entries will have “[NEWSPAPER]” appended after their titles. This is the first “newspaper” that I wrote in 1985 (at age 11), reporting on the Cold Outbreak of 1985 in the foothills of North Carolina (that’s right, the extreme weather spurred me to start publishing). Little did I know, ten years later I would write my first weather report (complete with photos) on the Internet, for the world to see.

This first “front page” was done on a Commodore 64 dot matrix printer. The “Emergency Edition” (which was issued later in the day) was printed on an ancient typewriter (yes, one you had to jam the keys down on) — ironically I must have found this quicker than loading the word processing program (from cassette tape) on to the computer and composing it there.

– CLICK TO READ ALL “NEWSPAPER” ENTRIES

ABBREVIATIONS, NAMES & PLACES:

• D.E.R./ DOWN_ERE_RES.: “Down ‘Ere Restaurant,” a fictitious business that I ran when I was 10 years old.
• Shanberg & Pink Island were designations for certain areas of the 50-acre forest where I lived as a child.
• WWX & WWXY (Channel 5) were a fictitious radio and television station to which I “broadcast” local news & weather (to cassette tape).
• Frank (Ferrell) was my father
• Sally (Ferrell) was my mother
• The Site / The Shop refers to the workshop building behind the house.