A dream for Christmas

A stand-in for the regular Saturday West Virginia Weakly Reader for December 28, 2024

I had a visit from one of the ghosts of Christmas this week.

Christmas Past, I think.

The legendary West Virginia newspaperman, the late Jim Comstock, appeared to me in a dream.

I walked into the old West Virginia Hillbilly’s office in Richwood as if I were Bob Crachit arriving late to work on Christmas Eve to find Comstock hard at it behind his desk. Guess I expected to be dressed down by a cranky Scrooge, but was pleased to find that Comstock wasn’t nearly as irascible as I’d been led to believe.

Like most dreams I have, it was fleeting. It came to me in that space between wakefulness and deep slumber and was likely influenced by the vague awareness that my wife and kids were watching The Muppet Christmas Carol in the other room.

I had gone to bed anxious about today’s post. Earlier in the day, I failed to find inspiration in the pages of my Comstock book, Best of Hillbilly, the collection of his writing that was published in 1968. Thought maybe I could find something Comstock wrote about the New Year, but … nothing.

Then I unconsciously put the two together in that dream.

I should have gotten up and written down as many details as I could remember, but I was exhausted after pulling an all-nighter at work on Christmas Eve and then staying up to at least pretend to be present with my wife and kids as they navigated the rhythms of the holiday — the opening of presents, a late morning bacon and egg breakfast that included cinnamon sweet rolls with cream cheese icing made from scratch by my daughter before turning later in the day to a Christmas dinner of ham and homemade scalloped potatoes.

We were going to have asparagus to add a healthy splash of green, but when I pulled the stalks out of the fridge, I discovered that time had ravaged them. They looked less than appealing. In fact, they made my stomach turn, so I threw them away. We ended up having a salad on the side. My daughter had to whip up a vinaigrette on the spot because we didn’t have any appropriate dressing on hand.

She’s resourceful.

I largely wrote this the day after Christmas, on the morning after my sleep-deprived brain mashed up the Muppets with Comstock and finally lit the lightbulb above my head for a holiday post that stands in for our regular Saturday Weakly Reader during what amounts to a week in which it would have been difficult to find enough actual news to make a Reader worthwhile — although Gov. Jim Justice did hold a media briefing on Thursday in which he put to rest uncertainty about the top job in state government as he prepares to take up his U.S. Senate seat.

Instead of resigning as governor to start his Senate term on January 3, Justice said he will stay on until Patrick Morrisey takes the oath of office on January 13.

“I don’t think West Virginia needs four governors in 10 days,” Justice said.

If Justice had resigned early, current state Senate President Craig Blair (R-Berkeley) would have taken over as acting governor, which would have been fine until you consider that Blair is leaving office on January 8. He would have had to turn over control to his successor, presumably incoming Senate President Randy Smith (R-Tucker), for several days before Morrisey’s inauguration.

Four governors in 10 days.

Personally, I think it would have been a fun situation to cover. No one asked me, but an old journo can dream, which brings me back to Jim Comstock.

I don’t remember much more about my encounter with him in the netherworld of sleep, but I like to think of it as a sign that The West Virginia Weakly is on the right track. After all, the name is taken from the tagline Comstock used for his old West Virginia Hillbilly newspaper.

Apologies if you’ve heard this before, but for new subscribers, the Hillbilly was “A Weakly Publication.”

Anyway, thanks for being here.

And here’s to good “weakly” things to come in the New Year.