Happy birthday to The Bulletin as it starts 31st year

By John Toth

The Bulletin

I had another column scheduled for this week, but then I realized that this issue marks the beginning of The Bulletin’s 31st year of publishing.

I couldn’t just run any column, although what I had planned will be interesting - next week. I had to sit back down at the Bulletin printing machine to commemorate this anniversary.

Last year was the big one, our 30th year of publishing. It deserved a page 1 graphic, because you only reach the 30th year of publishing once. This year, the Fourth of July took over page 1. The 35th anniversary will get the front cover again, but until then, the anniversaries will have to take a back seat to the Fourth of July.

To Sharon, the co-publisher, and I, every anniversary is very special. We are grateful for the opportunity to earn a living this way and contribute to the Brazoria County community.

We recently received a phone call from Kay Haddock, an avid Bulletin reader who lives in Pearland and drives to Alvin weekly to pick up a copy of the paper.

She wanted to know if she could subscribe to the paper. We don’t sell subscriptions anymore because of the high cost of mailing the paper, but we post the paper weekly online. We gave her numerous convenient places in Alvin where she would be guaranteed to find a copy.

“Tell John that for his next cruise I’m going to send him a package of socks,” she told Sharon, who answered the phone.

She referred to a recent column I wrote about how I forgot to pack socks on my last cruise, and I discovered that there is life without socks on a cruise ship.

We receive a lot of supportive and complimentary comments, but this was the first sock care- package offer. Thank you, Kay, but on the next cruise, which we have already booked, I’ll be taking two socks for each day and using a checkoff list when I pack so that I won’t forget them.

It’s encounters with readers like Kay that keep fueling us each week as we produce another issue.

Several years ago, a fast-food restaurant manager called us to ask if we had any more papers we could bring him. That was odd, since we had just dropped off a stack that morning.

As it turned out, his district manager came around after we delivered the paper and threw them  away. Then the regular coffee drinkers and other customers showed up, looking for The Bulletin.

“Please bring them soon. I have a revolt on my hands,” said the manager. They threatened to go to his competition across the street - where we also distributed. In a few minutes, we delivered a new batch of papers and squelched the revolt. This is one of my favorite anecdotes, but I have dozens more. It feels good to re-run them in my mind on a tough day.

Sharon and I started this paper by investing some of our savings 31 years ago to buy equipment and finding a DOS publisher program in a sales rack at Walmart for $10. The program was a steal, but the rest of the gear was pricey. (Now we use top-of-the-line equipment and programs.)

With three children and a mortgage, we embarked on this great adventure to publish a weekly paper.

We took a risk, figuring that if we offered free-of-charge  information, news and columns that county residents couldn’t get anywhere else, we’d make it. We’re still here after several recessions, the advent of the Internet and WiFi (which took down many papers), and we survived Covid.

We plan to continue to bring you the best paper each week that we can publish.

Thank you to all of our loyal readers and advertisers. We are extremely grateful for your support.