Commentary

        In 1974, the penultimate year of Madison Yellow Cab and Transfer Co., I was hired by the Sauk-Prairie Star in Sauk City as a stringer, covering Prairie du Sac village board meetings for $15 each. That job later expanded to include being the paper’s sports reporter, which also involved writing an opinion column. For most of the ensuing 40 years, I wrote commentary for the weekly newspapers that employed me — as many as four columns a week at one point. Most of that opining was done under the headings Between the Buttons (for the Arcadia News-Leader) and Struggling Weekly (for the Whitehall Times and Trempealeau County Times), and included several pieces about my time driving and dispatching cab in Madison. A selection of those columns is offered here and, with many of the other BtBs and SWs I wrote, will be included in the forthcoming “Struggling Weekly: The Book.” (Alas, the book “The April Fools” referenced in some of these columns probably isn’t going to happen.)