Columnist Chris Jones Gets Something Off His Chest

I had originally planned to take this day off, even after the conversation I’d had yesterday with Bluegrass Today’s editor-in-chief and headline-writer extraordinaire, John Lawless:

John: “You’ll want all day tomorrow, I suppose.”

Me: “If quite convenient, sir.”

John: “It’s not convenient, and it’s not fair. If I were to stop half a crown for it, you’d think yourself ill-used . . .”

And on it went from there. We’ll have a matinee showing at 3:00 p.m. today, with Jonny Mizzone cast in the role of Tiny Tim, and Alison Krauss appearing as the Ghost of Christmas past.
John is normally a very agreeable person, but I could see that holiday stress was getting to him. So, given what I detected as a frosty attitude about time off on Christmas Day, and the fact that I had taken last week off as it is (due to a “stomach virus”), I felt the only way to preserve my fifteen bob a week salary and maintain good relations with Roanoke would be to turn in a Christmas Day column.