Did he say, “Can we run your column on Wednesday instead of Thursday?” Or was it, “We’re going to run your column on Wednesday instead of Thursday?” I wondered after the call, was it a question or a declaratory statement?

It was the Herald’s publisher calling.

I was stunned. What were they thinking? My column has always been in Thursday’s Herald since the days of Irish Ed Smith at they publishing helm.

Publishers came and went. Managing editors, too. Heart attacks sidelined me, but I came back…ON THURSDAY.

Maybe, some misguided editor or a publisher who got an earful from his wife censored a few of the columns, but there was always the next time, the next THURSDAY, when I got even.

Cheers and Seinfeld, pay day at Hormel’s and Big Lee’s THURSDAY column were an Austin tradition.

Pray tell, “Why make the move to Wednesday?  Haven’t I been punished enough for my loyalty to the Herald? Boring 401-K meetings, those ubiquitous ‘In the quest for quality there is no finish line’ signs, day-old donuts and cold pizza at rally-the-troops meetings, harassment from the ad staff. Those annual Strides story assignments – “I don’t care if the story has been done before, do it again” and – this much is true — two bikes stolen from the Herald parking lot in broad daylight. Never solved. Cold cases getting colder all the time.

I knew it was time to retire, when they started to make a big fuss about facts. I never let facts stand in the way of telling a good story.

I got out when the getting was good.

Then, a Herald publisher invited me to write a weekly column on THURSDAY, during my retirement and I accepted.

Ironically, that publisher is no longer with the Herald.

Then, the new publisher calls me to say the Herald wants to switch my column to Wednesday.

“Wednesday?” I wondered. “Is he joking?”

I asked the publisher why he was making the switch. “George Will’s column is written to appear in Thursday and Sunday editions,” he told me.

George Will, my aspirin.

Sure, he’s won a Pulitzer Prize, but I’ve got the coveted Golden Shovel Award from Mower County 4-H for being able to shovel it better than anybody else.

Does George Will tell blonde jokes in his column?

A blonde and her husband are lying in bed listening to the next door neighbor’s dog. It has been in the backyard barking for hours and hours.

The blonde jumps up out of bed and says, “I’ve had enough of this.” She goes downstairs.

The blonde finally comes back up to bed and her husband says, “The dog is still barking, What have you been doing?”

The blonde says, “I put the dog in our backyard, Let’s see how THEY like it!

You ain’t going to find classic blonde jokes in Will’s column — or Ole and Lena humor:

Ole was arrested one night while walking naked down the streets of Adams, by an alert dairy farmer trying to blow out the street lights after an ADA meeting at the Legion Post.

The dairy farmer, who was a good friend of Ole’s, said, “Ole, what in the world are you doing? Where are your clothes? You’re naked.”

“Yah, I know,” said Ole. “You see, I vas over to dat ‘playboy’ Sven’s for his birthday party. Dere vas about 28 of us. Der vas boys and girls.”

“Is that right?” his Little Cedar Lutheran friend said in amazement.

“Yah, Yah, anyway, dat Sven, he says, ‘Everybody get into the bedroom!’  So we all go into the bedroom…. den he yells ‘Everybody git naked!’ Vel, vee all got undressed. Den he yells, ‘Everybody go to town!’ ”

“Oh, my!” exclaimed the friend.

“Yah, Yah. I guess I’m the first one here,” Ole said.

Why, my column has saved lives. Can George Will make that boast?

“Have it to me by noon on Tuesday,” the publisher demanded.

“Oh, yeah?” I shouted into the phone, ready to blast him with one of my rants.

I was talking to a dial tone. He had hung up on me.