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Tobacco officer helps clear the air in Gallatin County

A few months ago, while in the hospital recovering from a serious motorcycle accident, Rick Gale remembers his doctor asking him those standard medical questions:

Do you have any allergies? Are you taking any medications? Do you smoke?

It was that last question that almost cracked Gale up. He replied, “You don’t know what I do for a living, do you?”

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The incident on Story Street

In the Chronicle’s police reports on Sept. 9, the incident read like this:

“A 17-year-old boy needed medical help after someone caught him stealing from vehicles.”

That someone was Eddie Steinhauer, and the police report as printed doesn’t hold a candle to Steinhauer’s account of what happened on Story Street that night.

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Trio of veteran Belgrade teachers retiring

Long-time third-grade teachers Lynn Johnson, Jan Savko and Diane Thomas all retired at the end of the 2009-2010 school year, closing the textbook on 113 years of combined Belgrade teaching experience.

Earl Vining: Filling in holes

It was the winter of 1950. Earl Vining had only been in Korea for a few months, and already he’d been wounded twice.

“When they sent me back again, I knew I was going to get killed,” Vining, now 78, said.

Then, one day, a lieutenant popped his head into the hospital tent and asked the question that Vining credits with saving his life:

“Does anybody know how to run a bulldozer?”

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Behind the scenes on the Backroads beat: Learning Spanish

I just got back from an interview for my next Backroads story, due out Monday. This will be the third Backroads in a row to profile a local veteran — the series is a lead-in to Memorial Day at the end of the month.

Earl Vining in his military daysI interviewed Earl Vining, a 78-year-old veteran of both Korea and Vietnam. Earl is a talker, and reporters love talkers. The problem, though, is that you wind up with more material than you can possibly fit into the column inches allotted to your story.

I guess that’s why the journalism gods created blogs.

Anyway, here’s a story that Earl told me during our interview today.

Read More »Behind the scenes on the Backroads beat: Learning Spanish