Which Reminds me

While working as a newspaper reporter in Haines City, I was assigned to cover the luncheon sponsored by the local chamber of commerce to mark the retirement of City Manager Bill Drummond. He gave a lengthy speech that began with an allegorical tale. He described the running of the city as akin to the navigation of a ship, bestowing humorous commentaries upon various members of the city commission and staff. It was very cleverly done, quite humorous actually in a way. The only way to give that its due justice in the newspaper would have been to reprint it verbatim, a thing that was just not done in newspapers of the late 20th century. Speeches of city managers are generally not expected to have such literary merit anyway. It was a rare moment. It would be really hard to explain that in a flattened prosaic form so I did not even try. Yes, I suppose that I could have explained that more thoroughly but as it was I only alluded to that introductory thing in the article that I wrote summing up the facts of the event. Besides, not being that acquainted with those people, it seemed to me hard to wrap my head around what he was actually saying about the individuals involved. If you want to know more perhaps you could ask the Drummond family to turn over their patriarch's family papers. I really don't remember much. Or maybe someone else there was taking better notes than I because I don't think that I was. Of course, you could always ask the previous reporter, Brenda Wilks Hunt. Maybe she was already gone on maternity leave so maybe that's why she was not covering the event that day. Brenda was in thick with those people, having been there already quite a few years while myself maybe a year, so she might have gotten more out of that than I did. Brenda was married to Doug Hunt but I have no idea whether he would be connected to the Hunts that are related to us. Hunt is a very common name. I cannot imagine that there could be any family connection there. By the way, Brenda was originally from North Carolina, as was someone else she mentioned, not that I would know anything about North Carolina.