Blooming Grove TX

A town of a hundred and seventy-five people put out three newspapers in three years. The Enterprise in 1888, the Sun in 1889, the Rustler in 1890. The Times followed and ran the better part of ninety years; its own folio called it the Oldest Business Institution in Blooming Grove. Then nothing, for a long time.

Of those four, one is gone completely. Not a single copy of the Enterprise is known to exist anywhere — it survives as a sentence in a reference book. The Sun is three issues from 1889 on a reel at Nacogdoches. The Rustler is about ten issues in Austin, on a reel it shares with the Times. And of the Times, ninety years of it, exactly one issue has ever been digitized.

Four papers, a dozen-odd issues, two reels of film two hundred miles apart.

The fifth came out of the library on Fordyce Street from March 2009 to May 2012. All twenty-five issues are here, seven hundred and thirty-four pages, as printed. Nobody knew the May issue was the last one, which is why it does not say goodbye.