You got any coupons in that newspaper of yours?

We were thrilled at the prospect of getting coupons in the Kuna Melba News. We promoted it heavily and announced when the coupons were in the paper.

Our police chief, who had allowed his subscription to lapse, had the audacity after a city council meeting one night to tell me that he didn’t subscribe to the paper because there weren’t any coupons in the paper and that his wife really just wanted to get a paper for the coupons.

Forget for the moment that this was a public official who regularly appeared in the pages of the newspaper. Forget for the moment that stories or letters to the editor regularly appeared in the paper about his police department. Forget for the moment that there were other stories that affected him and his family simply as residents of Kuna, such as school news, stories about taxes and property values, assessments, sports signups, etc. Forget for a moment that for some reason he felt it was perfectly all right to tell me to my face that he didn’t subscribe to the paper because there weren’t any coupons in it.

So it was with some sense of vindictive gratification when I told him that we do carry coupons, but it’s only for subscribers.

Unfortunately, even with coupons, our police chief never did return to the paper as a subscriber, another foreboding sign of what an uphill battle we were waging in this town.