The Contamiski Times

A non-historical note.

In 1947, Daniel Times of Abelton started a simple holiday newsletter mailed to family and friends. As time passed, however, Times found himself running short on family and friends to mail it to; with each passing year the number of copies returned marked MOVED-NO FORWARDING ADDRESS increased, and by 1956 he was reduced to sending it to total strangers and giving copies away in the street.

In the absence of family, of course, he had no family news to report, and was forced to write up the events of the day instead. To his amazement, people responded very positively to his newsletter; and when one day in January of 1958 no less than ten people actually offered to pay money for it Times decided that the time had come to "go professional". He sold a Sputnik that had fallen in his front yard for scrap metal and used the proceeds as the down payment on a printing press.

By 1959 the newsletter, now officially self-titled "Times", was the best-selling paper of its kind in Contamiski County; in fact it was so successful that it attracted attention from the legal departments of other "news-papers," as they are called, and was obliged to take on the more specific name "Contamiski Times".

From 1960 onward the Contamiski Times grew in size, stature and fame, absorbing, embracing and extending all competition that has risen in response to its success, to become the organ of the free press it is today.

Daniel Times retired from the newspaper at the age of 94 and is now owner of "Drastic Plastic", a used record store in Abelton Park that specializes in Peruvian jazz.