The news that a baseball card collection worth millions was found in an attic in Ohio this week was yet another painful reminder of the loss of my boyhood baseball card collection.

Unlike many lost baseball card collections, it wasn’t foolishly sold before its time to earn money for a bike or hot rod or other treasure of youth. It was thrown in the trash by an unlikely villain — my mother.

My mother was a good woman, a good mother and a better than good housekeeper. Everything in its place, and nothing that wasn’t needed. If it wasn’t being used, out it went. I don’t know this for a fact, but I think that when I left for the Navy my mother had a truck backed up to my room, threw everything I valued into its bed and drove it straight to the dump.

When I returned from the Navy, my clothes were gone. My catcher’s mitt signed by Bob Uecker, then of the Boise Braves, was gone. My baseball card collection was gone. My record collection was gone.

“You weren’t using them and I didn’t think you’d want them anymore,” she sheepishly explained. “They were taking up space, and you know how I hate clutter.”

Clutter. The baseball card collection wasn’t large compared with some, but it was big enough to fill a shoebox and included many of the big names of the 1950s, when I was a kid bewitched by baseball. I had Earl Wynns, Yogi Berras, Bob Fellers … I know for a fact that I had three of my hero, Mickey Mantle. Today, those cards would be worth thousands of dollars each.

The crown jewels of my record collection were the infamous Beatles albums with the butcher block covers. One I’d tried to peel, but the other was in close to pristine condition. There may have been a third; not sure about that. I am painfully sure, however, that, like the baseball cards, those records today are worth thousands.

My mother’s biggest blunder, from a collector’s point of view, was the Fiasco of the Gold Coins. My father had invested in gold coins, which he sealed in Mason jars and buried in the basement crawlspace. He’d been dead several years when my mother hired some men to fix a problem with her lawn sprinkling system one summer. Mucking  around in the crawlspace, they found the jars and showed them to her. She’d all but forgotten them, and as a reward for their honesty gave them each a jar of solid gold collector’s coins, leaving herself with a single jar.

Later, my sister and I checked on the coins’ value. They were then worth $2,200 apiece — making the afternoon’s work the most expensive sprinkler repair in history.

As I slip into my antecdotage, I’ve grown philosophical about such things, or at least come to grudgingly accept them. After all, it’s only money. Some people are destined to fall into it; others aren’t. There’s not much we can do to change that, and a lot of rich people don’t seem to be any happier than the rest of us anyway. Maybe it’s all for the best.

But I sure do wish I had my Mickey Mantles back.

HAMMETT — At a Main Street  bar in downtown Boise this week, Pinto Bennett will perform the songs that made him an Idaho musical icon. Fans eager to hear their favorites might want to take advantage of the opportunity because, as he himself might put it, God knows when or if it will happen again.

The occasion is the annual reunion of the Famous Motel Cowboys, the group Bennett fronted and that shared stages with Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and other country stars while enjoying fleeting star status itself in England in the 1980s. Band members will be coming from as far away as Nashville to play at Hannah’s Friday through Sunday.

I’m not a huge fan of country music, but to me Bennett is a musical treasure. His best songs, especially the lyrics, are as good as just about anyone’s.

Until 2007 he was a regular on Boise stages, playing, drinking and charming his way into the hearts of admirers. Now, for the most part, he’s a man of solitude.

His home these days is a sheep wagon parked on a horse ranch near Hammett, in Elmore County. The prevailing sounds are the music of birds and the song of the desert wind. A small sign with “God Bless” burned into its weathered wood hangs above a corral gate. Decorative rocks dot the sheep wagon’s porch. On one is a painted message:  “My help comes from God.”

When he built the sheep wagon and pulled it to a lonely patch of desert, many of his fans and friends thought it would be a passing phase:  there was no way the onetime Navy bosun’s mate and hard-living country singer — a man who had partied with celebrities from the Everly Brothers to Bonnie Raitt — would remain a born-again desert solitary.

For five years, he’s been proving them wrong.

“People keep telling me I should do another honky-tonk album,” he said during a recent sheep-wagon interview. “I probably have enough of that material for three or four albums, but what I like to do now is take Bible stories and twist them. It’s still Pinto Bennett, but it’s Christian.”

Beside him on his bunk was his constant companion Daisy, a border collie-mix. A crucifix hung from a nearby wall. Absent from the decor were photos, posters, bumper stickers and other trappings from his years with groups from Tarwater to Trio Pinto.

“A lot of the honky tonk seems redundant to me now. It feels like the same stuff over and over. It just doesn’t move me like it used to.”

What does move him is his faith, which he found late in life but embraces the way he once did groupies and Jack Daniels.

“It’s been an evolution,” he said. “I’ve gone from being a shepherd to a fleet sailor to a road musician to a Christian, and it’s all seemed natural. I don’t see myself ever going back to my old lifestyle. I’ve come home.”

His home on the range recalls his early years as Fred Bennett, Elmore County sheep-camp denizen. His rancher grandfather saw to it that young Fred learned to handle a horse, tend a camp and herd sheep, but  the rock and roll bug bit early. He served a term in the Navy and considered making it a career, but what he really wanted was to be the next Elvis.

Instead, he became Pinto Bennett, playing “hard country music” in Tarwater and other groups. He spent five years in Nashville, where his friends included Chet Atkins, Don Everly, Lyle Lovett and other stars, but remained an outsider with the Nashville establishment. Returning to Idaho, he became a fixture of the Boise music scene, continuing to write and record until a heart attack and a television commercial changed his life.

The commercial, for a Boise church, was the beginning of a conversion. He quit drugs, cut back on alcohol, became a churchgoer. His talents as a songwriter remained undiminished, but the songs changed from country to gospel. The move to the desert, far from bars and boozing buddies, completed the transformation.

Visitors to the sheep wagon assume that a “Back Soon” sign beside a window is to let people know when he’s out, but it’s also the name of his newest gospel CD, now in record stores, and a profession of faith.

“The title means that Jesus will be back soon,” he said. “I really believe that.”

He’s lost count, but in the last five years Bennett has had at least four heart attacks and two strokes.

“My heart sounds like tennis shoes goin’ around in a dryer.”

A 2010 operation in Portland to correct his heart’s rhythm almost killed him, and a stroke two years ago impaired the use of his left arm and hand.

“I can’t hold a pick or get my arm around my big acoustic guitar and strum like I used to,” he said. “I had an epiphany that I’d be playing an electric guitar the same color as my sweaters. (The gray cardigans he wears onstage.) My next stop was Old Boise Guitar.”

As if from his epiphany, a thin-bodied electric with silver metal-flake paint was waiting. Sliding a strap emblazoned with a crucifix over his head, Daisy watching intently from the bed, he finger-picks it as if he’s done it for years.

“I can still play,” he said. “It’s just different than the way I’ve played most of my life.”

Now 65, he spends his days tending horses and irrigating for a local rancher, playing and writing gospel songs and reading from the Bible, a dictionary and Bowditch’s American Practical Navigator, the sailor’s bible.

“You can get an education from those three books.”

He still plays an occasional honky-tonk gig, proving to fans and himself that the magic isn’t gone.

“I played on at the Egyptian last winter with Reckless Kelly,” he said. “Four generations of women were coming up to touch me so I guess I haven’t lost it entirely. I was like an ancient Elvis.”

It was a departure from what has become his usual, low-key routine.

“I used to play every night. Now it’s a gig every other month or so, usually at a church. I played one not too long ago at the Prairie Store.”

No one is saying that this week’s Famous Motel Cowboys reunion could be one of his last public performances. But his health is a concern, and to borrow one of his favorite lines, “nobody has a guarantee in their hip pocket that they’ll be here tomorrow.”

“I worry about my time being short,” he said. “I worry about it every day. That’s why I keep looking up. I won’t say I have a feeling of impending doom. But I do have a feeling of impending glory.”

Tim Woodward’s column appears every other Sunday in the Idaho Statesman’s Life section and is posted the following Mondays on http://www.woodwardblog.com. Next: The Great Train Ride, Part I.

Dan Popkey did such a good job of reporting on the passing of former Boise Mayor Dick Eardley that I’d all but decided not to write anything. What could be added?

Still … it wouldn’t feel right to let Dick go without a word.

I was The Statesman’s local government reporter when he was a city councilman and later mayor. Dick was a force in city government at a critical time in Boise’s history, when the city was hoping to become an example for other cities of how to handle growth. A former newsman, he had no ties to the development lobby and was an early and strong advocate of a council of governments created to hire professional planners and implement their recommendations.

That didn’t happen. The vested interests were so powerful that they successfully ran their own slate of candidates, disbanded the council and sent the planners packing. No one was more dismayed than Mayor Eardley. He was disappointed and angry and said so. He consistently stood up to those who valued their bank accounts more than public interest. No one admired him more for that than I did.

We didn’t always hit it off. In fact, we repeatedly butted heads. One of my stories back then called a plan that would have limited development to specific boundaries “inherently controversial.” It was. In fact, it was the main reason the planners were driven out of town. Eardley blamed me for the controversy. Speaking to a service club while running for election, he held a rolled-up copy of the paper with my story in it, pointed it at me and identified me to the club’s members as public enemy number one. We didn’t speak for a while after that.

He was the leading proponent of the city’s long effort to build its biggest shopping mall downtown. When a department store chain the city had been courting announced that it wasn’t interested, I quoted the mayor’s remark that the company had “led us down the primrose lane.” It became a butt of cynical jokes, and once again we didn’t speak for a while.

History and Boise Towne Square proved Eardley and the rest of the city’s then leaders dead wrong about the downtown mall. It wasn’t meant to happen, didn’t happen, and Boise today would be a lesser place if it had happened. His successor got credit for what became the downtown success story and went on to become a U.S. senator and Cabinet member. Meanwhile, the mayor who had worked longer and harder for Boise was forced to settle for what had to have been a demeaning role for him, working a desk job for a state department until he could retire.

In his retirement years, we developed an uneasy friendship, or at least a truce. He was polite and helpful whenever I called to interview him about something that had happened in the old days. And he happily volunteered for a number of panel groups at the Statesman, where he impressed everyone with his knowledge, intelligence and humor.

He could be irascible and he could hold a grudge. But he had a good heart, no one ever worked harder for the city of Boise, and there was never a doubt that he had the its best interests at heart.

I’ll say this for Dick Eardley. Unlike many politicians, he didn’t change his tune or his vote based on polls or how the political winds were blowing. He was a straight shooter. For better or worse, you  knew exactly what he thought and where you stood with him. I’ll miss him.

Any American who has vacationed in Mexico has either verbally stiff-armed an army of pitchmen or succumbed to the horror of a timeshare presentation.

Tourists in Mexico are repeatedly badgered to attend timeshare presentations. As bait, the pitchmen offer jungle tours, booze cruises, even cash. And every tour, cruise and peso of it is earned the hard way — by surviving a hard sell from hell.

My wife and I survived one years ago and emerged looking as if we’d spent a day of torture in a Mexican prison, which in a sense we had. We vowed that never, under pain of death, would we be suckered into another one.

That, however, was before we met the irresistibly charming and cunningly sneaky Javier on a recent vacation. Javier wasn’t at the beach or other of the usual huckster hangouts so our guard was down. We met him in an American-style, big-box supermarket, a nice little man we initially thought was the store interpreter.

When we asked a clerk about a product that was advertised but not on the shelves, he produced a walkie-talkie and called Javier — who was wearing what we thought was a store uniform. He was friendly, helpful and spoke excellent English. If we couldn’t find a product or a label confused us, there was Javier. Need an ATM? Directions? Help in translating? Javier was delighted to oblige.

As we were leaving the store, my wife happened to spot some zipline brochures on a counter near the exit.

“Wouldn’t it be fun to go on one of these?” she innocently asked.

Lurking just within earshot, Javier was on her like a cockroach on an empenada.

“You want to go on a zipline tour? I can set one up for you. It goes 7,000 meters from one mountaintop to another. Beautiful! You will love it!”

“I don’t like heights, Javier. Do you have anything that stays closer to the ground?”

“Yes, a party cruise. You will love it!”

Javier was not the store translator. He worked for a posh resort, which had an arrangement with the store to let its hawkers work the crowd. This has become common in Mexico; it was just our first exposure to it. A bit sneaky, if you ask me, but apparently legal.

“I don’t know, Javier,” I said, feeling my stomach tighten. “How much does it cost?”

“Normally $225,” he replied, “but for you — today only — a special price of only $40. And I’ll throw in some beautiful T-shirts. What size do you wear?”

“What’s the catch, Javier?”

“No catch at all. All you have to do is attend a 90-minute presentation at a beautiful resort only five minutes from here. It’s not a timeshare — it’s a private residence resort. And the people are very nice. It’s not a hard sell; no pressure at all.”

The difference between a time share and a private-residence resort, of course, is the same as the difference between cow dung and horse poop. We should have seen it coming. I was starting to sweat and could feel my blood pressure rising dangerously. But just when I was about to sprint for the safety of the nearest cantina, my bride, ever the optimist, blurted the fatal words:

“Oh, come on. Let’s go. It’ll be fun.”

Going for the throat, Javier arranged to meet us the following morning in the village where we were staying and drive us to the Jaws of Hell Resort. That isn’t its real name; I made it up. But hell is what I was dreading, an expectation that did not go unfulfilled.

The next morning, Javier was waiting at the village square to take us for a ride, literally and figuratively. After winding over a jungle road, he delivered us to the palatial doors of a resort that appeared to have been designed for Mayan royalty. It was heart-stoppingly beautiful, sinfully opulent. You half expected to see Donald Trump and Kim Kardashian fox-trotting in the lobby.

Our “guides” were Pepe and Lupe. They began the inquisition pleasantly enough, treating us to a sumptuous breakfast of everything from made-to-order omelets to sushi. Then we were whisked away in golf carts to a Fantasy Island setting of palms and coconuts, lakes, tropical birds, crocodiles, interconnected swimming pools and a waterpark-style river bobbing with overstuffed Americans on floaties. It was groomed and manicured to the point of being almost too pretty, as if it wasn’t quite real. If you have a seven-figure bank account and “The Stepford Wives” is your favorite movie, you’d think you’d found paradise.

After dazzling us with Lincoln-Memorial sized Mayan statues and suites where everything but the toilet handles was made of marble, Pepe and Lupe escorted us to a conference room filled with other victims, sharpened their calculators and got down to business — meaning us. As resort members, they said, we could enjoy a two-bedroom unit with room for friends and family members for up to six weeks a year for a mere $800-a-week maintenance fee. A one-bedroom or a studio could be had for somewhat less. If we didn’t want to use our weeks, we could sell them and make money. And as anyone knows who owns a timeshare, that’s about as easy as selling used underwear.

It took a while for Lupe to get to the bottom line, a.k.a. the membership fee. Pepe for the most part remained silent. I think he was a trainee, or maybe he just didn’t have the stomach for what was coming. To fatten us up for the kill, Lupe produced a gleaming iPad and showed us pictures of other five-star resorts we could enjoy by doing a simple exchange with victims in, say, Italy, Fiji or Dogwater, N.D.

The membership fee, when she finally got around to it, was only $61,000. In the unlikely event that we didn’t have that much up front, we could pay in monthly installments of roughly a third more than our house payment. Putting it another way, we’d be paying $61,000 for the privilege of paying $800 a week to stay in a marble palace with a view of a golf course we would never use. Airfare, meals, taxes and gratuities not included. If that sounds reasonable to you, I have a great deal for you on foxtrot lessons with Donald Trump.

As politely as possible, we told Lupe and Pepe it wasn’t in our budget. Along with a new Ferrari, a Gulfstream G650 and spa dates with Paris Hilton.

No problem, she said. A more modest plan could be had for $40,000 and change. Still too much? Plans C, D and E were available for less money up front, offered a variety of accommodations and features and came with a barrage of financial options that would have confused an accountant. As the bombardment continued, I realized that what what happening was nothing other than the time-honored Mexican tradition of bartering. It was exactly what happens on the streets and beaches of Mexico, except that instead of necklaces and T-shirts the stakes are colossally higher. By the time we said no for the fifth or sixth time, I was sweating like a nun at Hooters on amateur night. I’d have paid a thousand bucks just to get the hell out of there.

At last, when we said no to even the cheapest plan, Lupe reluctantly introduced us to her manager — who trotted out still more plans. When even he gave up, she icily drove us to the resort’s “travel agency” to collect our free gifts and a cab ride home.

But we were far from home free. After stonewalling some of the best timeshare sales people in the business, we were now in the clutches of the travel agency people.

I won’t bore you with the details except to say that the final pitch — by then our “90-minute presentation” had taken the whole day — seemed almost reasonable.

“It actually sounds like a good deal,” said my wife, who is smarter than I am about such things. “I think we should do it.”

And so … we did. No timeshare or private-residence membership, no ownership of anything. Just a travel club that, if we live long enough and go to enough places, should be worth almost what it cost to join.

The important thing is that it got us out of there, clutching party-cruise tickets and the world’s most expensive cheap T-shirts. By then I was so battered from sales pitches that I felt like an iguana squashed on the highway.

We were glad we’d opted for the no-pressure presentation Javier had promised back at the supermarket. The hard sell would have killed us.

Tim Woodward’s column is posted here on alternating Mondays. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@hotmail.com.

Have you ever said something so preposterous you hoped nobody would notice?

Something like Alex LaBeau’s statement this week that Idaho could eliminate $129 million a year in tax revenue and no one would notice?

LaBeau is president of the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, which includes many of the state’s biggest businesses and wants to do away with Idaho’s  personal property tax on business.

“You could feather it (the $129 million) out over five years and nobody would notice,” he said.

No one will notice that $129 million is missing?

Right.

No one likes the personal property tax, which requires businesses to inventory and pay taxes annually on equipment and other non-real property. It’s an administrative nightmare. But to say that no one would miss the money it generates is like saying you wouldn’t notice a cut in your salary.

The local governments that count on the tax for up to a quarter of their budgets wouldn’t notice it had disappeared? The people who benefit from programs that could be cut wouldn’t notice? The homeowners whose taxes could increase to make up the difference  wouldn’t notice?

In economic boom times, growing tax revenues would lessen the impact. But as most of us have noticed, times have been a bit hard of late. The last thing homeowners struggling to hang on to their homes and livelihoods need is a tax shift that helps big business at the expense of the little guy.

You have to wonder how LaBeau thought he could get away with such an outlandish statement.

On the other hand, it’s summer. People are taking vacations, enjoying the outdoors. The Olympics are about to start; the presidential race is dominating the headlines. People aren’t paying as much attention to state-government news as they normally do.

Maybe he thought we wouldn’t notice.

Hi. Remember me?

I’m that guy who used to write columns for The Statesman. I wrote hundreds of them, on subjects from vacation and home-remodeling disasters to colorful Idaho characters to the fiascos of Idaho politicians.

It’s been a year since I retired and found that life without deadlines was sweet. Friends said I’d acquired the “post Statesman glow,” a term inspired by former co-workers who left the pressures of daily journalism and had years fall away as if by magic. My step had a new spring. People said I looked younger.

So why am I back? Good question. But first let me answer the question people have been asking  since I logged off for the last time, hung up my reporters’ notebooks and entered a brave new world without deadlines.

The question: “how’s retirement?” And its corollary, “What are you doing with yourself now that you’re a loafer?”

The answer to the first question is just fine, thanks. Retirement is the ultimate liberation. Every day is Saturday. In fact, you resent Saturdays because working people are crowding the places you’ve gotten used to having to yourself.

Sleeping in is nice. Dreaming about people working while you’re sleeping in is nice. Loafing is nice. I’m highly in favor of loafing — up to a point.

There are days that are just plain made for loafing, and we owe it to ourselves to enjoy every good-for-nothing second of them. The truth, however, is that there haven’t been many of those days. The calendar for my first month of “liberation” had precisely two days without commitments: retirement parties, anniversaries, speeches, appointments, meetings, visiting relatives … It was almost enough to make me long for the peace and quiet of work.

Work, for that matter, wasn’t entirely over. The Statesman was publishing “Destination Idaho,” the latest collection of my columns, and for a book of previously published material it required a surprising amount of work. Going through 40 years of material to find the best not used in previous books was the equivalent of mining “War and Peace” for titillating nuggets. That, along with headline writing, proofreading and other chores, consumed a big part of last summer and fall.

Two other projects are in the works. The USS Boise people have asked me to take a ride on their submarine and write the copy for a video about it. And I’m working with some friends, Tom Hadzor and Jennfer Isenhart,  on a video about this magical place we call Idaho. A labor of love. Tentatively titled “Idaho: the Movie,” it should be out by Christmas. (Thanks to Tom and Jennifer, incidentally, for the column photo used above.)

Two things you absolutely have to do when you retire. It’s standard procedure, it’s expected, practically mandatory. You have to volunteer, and you have to travel.

I volunteer a couple of times a month at a shelter. There’s nothing remotely glamorous about it. You sweep and mop. You make gallons of coffee and wash a staggering amount  of dishes. You hand out food, bandages, aspirin, cold medications, plastic bags, toiletries … It’s one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. Working there has put faces on the homeless, the majority of whom are courteous and grateful for even the smallest kindness. Some are hard working people victimized by the economy, as any of us could have been.

Readers of my early columns on travel disasters will be happy to know that my bride and I are doing our best to meet the travel obligations of retirement. We took an 1,800-mile drive through the Southwest, spent most of February in a village in Mexico and took a long-delayed train trip through America’s heartland. More on those adventures in future columns.

That brings us back to the first question: Why am I back?

The answer probably isn’t what you think. It wasn’t that I was desperate for the money or missed the actual writing process. After making my living as a writer for 40 years, it was good to give those mental muscles a rest. And not having deadlines or the endless need  for new subjects — feeding-the-beast in newsroom-speak — felt better than good.

Loafing, however, is best taken in moderation. Too much of it can be lethal. And somewhat to my surprise, I missed some things once taken for granted. One was having a voice – the ability to comment on events when they’re actually happening. The last Idaho legislative session, for example. A humor columnist’s dream.

I missed the feeling of accomplishment that comes from writing a good column. Not that all of mine were good; God knows I had my share of lemons. As the late, great San Francisco columnist Charles McCabe put it, writing a newspaper column is “like hitting for a baseball team. If you get the good wood on the ball one time in three, you’re doing well.” And when you do get the good wood on the ball, nothing feels as good in quite the same way.

Something I missed a lot was  the immediate connection with readers. Though many told me they enjoyed the Best of Tim re-reruns, they were quick to add that they missed getting new columns.

So, just when you thought you were rid of me, I’m partially back. Partially in that I’m still retired, not a Statesman employee and will write columns at a stately retirement pace of one every other week.

At that rate, I’m going be playing catch-up for a while. There are things I can’t not write about that have happened in the last year. People I loved have died, I had my first experience with surgery and you’ll be pleased to know that retirement has done nothing to lessen my propensity for travel mishaps.

So, starting today, I’m back in the Life section every other Sunday. If you miss a column there, you can find it on my blog, http://www.woodwardblog.com. Columns will be posted there every other Monday. Extra blog posts will be added when truly important or unexpected events warrant immediate attention. The Cubs going to the World Series, for example, or Chuck Winder joining Planned Parenthood.

Wherever you read me, thanks. It’s great to be back.

Next: Trapped in Timeshare Hell in Mexico. Appearing June 24 in The Statesman, posted here June 25.

Tim Woodward’s column appears in The Statesman’s Life section every other Sunday and on his blog, http://www.woodwardblog.com, the following Mondays. 

Idaho lost a brilliant mind and a colorful iconoclast with the passing Wednesday of Perry Swisher — journalist, public servant, firebrand.

The reports of Swisher’s passing covered the facts of his long and varied career as a state legislator, gubernatorial candidate, public utilities commissioner and journalist. But unless I missed, them they didn’t  include several of my favorite Swisher episodes, which say a a lot about him as man.

One was his appearance at a Little Feat concert at the Boise Hawks ballpark. The music was loud enough at Swisher’s home not far from there that it kept him awake. His “solution”: to show up at the concert in his pajamas and bathrobe, wielding an ax. It made news for weeks.

As  PUC commissioner, he almost singlehandedly increased the telephone company’s request to raise its pay-phone charge from a dime to, as I recall, 15 cents. Swisher said it would be inconvenient for customers to fish around for  dimes and nickels and suggested raising the charge to a quarter. The ensuing increase was wildly unpopular. The Statesman captured the prevailing mood by publishing a cartoon of Swisher in a phone booth with a caption reading, “Why not make it 50 cents and call all your friends?” He called the paper in high spirits, said he thought the cartoon was hilarous and asked for the original drawing. He wanted to frame it.

But my favorite Swisher anecdote was his reaction to a letter to the editor of  a very good weekly newspaper he published in Pocatello. He thought so little of the letter that he called its author.

“I just wanted to let you know that I’m canceling your subscription,” he said. “I don’t want anybody as stupid as you reading my newspaper.”

I can’t tell you how many journalists have wished they could do that.

They don’t make journalists — or characters — like Perry Swisher anymore.

WELCOME:  You’ve found the blog for Tim Woodward’s retirement-is-overrated  columns. They appear in The Idaho Statesman’s Life section every other Sunday and  are posted here the following Mondays.

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