Farewell to Star delivery

Dear editor:

Beat the drums slowly. The death knell has sounded for the Kansas City Star daily delivery in Nevada after who knows how many years, and do we loyal readers ever miss it.

My goodness, for some of us it had become almost one of the family since the day it was the old Journal-Post. After that came not only the Star, but its morning edition, the Kansas City Times, which disappeared when the feds cracked down on newspaper monopolies in metropolitan areas and the Star dropped the times to keep WDAF-TV. I've always read the Star, since I could read. I even remember a newspaper strike in about the late '40s when we had to hear the funnies on the radio read to us over the airwaves until the unionized star press crew went back to work.

For several decades the late Jay Stafford ran the Star's circulation in our neck of the woods. It also was sold at Mike Hammer's store on East Cherry Street and later at the coin-operated street curb boxes.

It is such a pain not to know what's going on in Missouri's largest city: what's playing on the fields and in the theatres, the news, opinions, foods, recipes, sports, political cartoons, the funnies, the crossword. One remedy for its loss that I heard was from a group of readers who proposed to start a carpool, driving up to the city to buy a carload of newspapers to distribute.

There are alternatives, of course. We've been promised e-Star, an Internet download of the entire newspaper. Or, you can download an abbreviated edition on the Internet. One clever reader successfully downloads the crossword to get a paper copy to work on.

Others have opted to subscribe to another morning newspaper. But pity us wordsmiths who are linked to the big city. You can't take a computer screen to bed with you and catch up on the news, or line the birdcage or any other such useful thing you can do with newsprint.

I guess technology rules, but, oh how I want my Star back.

Donna Logan

Nevada