Sometimes I sit back trying to figure out how to resolve problems that come up quickly inside our fledgling newspaper.

There are not many people around who have started a newspaper and know the answers.

Luckily, I have the advice of a man who did start a newspaper right here in Gering back in 1887.

Of course I’m talking about good old A.B. Wood.

Three years ago a good friend Bill game me a wonderful present for my birthday. It was the original clipping book that belonged to A.B. back in the 1890s.

I have no idea where he got it but it contains the early writings of the man I respect as this city’s original newspaper founder. These are A.B.’s writings before he was a seriously-polished writer and before he published a book about Gering’s early days.

In his writings A.B. wrote, “Speaking of the ‘oldest inhabitant,’ who is he? When we remember Jim Laugharn hauling our outfit, consisting of an Army press and six or eight cigar boxes of type over from Sidney in April, 1887, twelve years ago this spring, we feel entitled to be classed with the pioneers.”

Wood printed a newspaper just four days after he arrived in this fledging town. That feat would be nearly impossible considering the equipment he was using and his lack of familiarity with local citizens.

A.B. continued to write, “But there were lots of people already here. Our subscription books show the following, who are here now, to have been on the list for the very first issue of the Courier. O.W. Gardner, J.W. Morris, Phil Jurisch, A.d. Glenn, W.T. Graham, H.C. Brashear, W.E. Ingraham, R.C. Campbell, H.M. Thornton, J.S. Laugharan, Horatio Knapp, Ed Bosley, Robt. Ferguson, Albert Hubbard, Stephen Kingrey, Elmer Hathaway, Martin Bristol, J.R. Peck.”

Wood wrote that the above list was just a small portion of those that were here when he arrived and “only includes those who were actual subscribers at the time we ground out the first paper.”

He wrote that he had others who were subscribers for that first issue but he only listed the ones who were still in Gering 12 years later.

“Some have crossed the dark river and others have been lost to the whirligig of time,” he wrote.

The old boy had a serious sense of humor in his younger days writing, “Ed Bosley never could be persuaded to get married, so he doesn’t take the paper now, although he is one of our good friends just the same. The rest, with one ornery exception, have paid or will have paid $18 for twelve years intervening. The one exception would be there yet but it is our fault. We can’t run a paper on wind.”

I understand what A.B. is saying here.

Back in May when we put together the Gering Citizen, we had 103 paid subscribers for that first edition. Yes, we printed 6,000 copies and mailed them out to everyone in the community.

We had to as we don’t have a newspaper without readers.

“We can’t run a paper on wind” means we cannot print a newspaper if you don’t subscribe and support us. Without you, our readers, there is no need to have a newspaper and we cannot print the paper without your support. Thus together, we are the Gering Citizen.

After arriving in Gering, A.B. wrote that the Courier was housed in the only frame building in town – the one which recently had been used as the county judge’s office.

“Vendome was the name then, and would be yet, probably, but for the fact that some measly post office in the state was named Verdon, and the department in a spasm of punctiliousness decided that illiterate postmasters would be sure to mix up the mail. So the name had to be dropped and that of Gering was adopted, being of course in honor of Martin Gering, who was putting a lot of his money into the project, as well as his influence,” wrote A.B.