Winter continues to fill the February days. Snow arrives every few days and the thermometer doesn’t yield too often to let the melting begin. The days, however, are quite noticeably longer as darkness is a few minutes later each day. I never bid winter a final goodbye until late March – remembering the great blizzard of 1888 and my grandfather’s stories about that very bad storm.

I have stood corrected several times since the last column was printed! I wrote about the sad farewells to Peanuts and neither I nor the proof reader knew there was no “t” in Charles Schulz’s name. Shame on me! I didn’t realize it until I saw the old strip reprinted in the Monday newspaper, and later, a couple of friends commented to me about the spelling.

This week when I read the very fine tribute to Paul S. Smith, editor for so long of The Bee, I found several memories that were hidden for a long time, clear in my mind. One in particular was first to surface. There, inside the doorway of the late editor’s office, stood another Smith. His father introduced him as “Scudder, an alumni of Amherst College, who has started today, to test his wings in the newspaper business.” We all know today that the young man met the test.

I probably knew Paul Smith a few years longer than most of today’s staff. He always had a smile for any visitor, reader, or family member who stopped by that small office. When I was late with a column, I took it in and sat for a bit of conversation. It inevitably turned to a discussion about Vermont. Mr Smith had spent some happy times at Lowell Lake near Londonderry, and at the big, rambling Chester Inn, named for the town it was in. I learned to bring back a couple of the small town newspapers of that area, to leave on the Bee editor’s desk next time I visited.

Way back when Paul Smith was collecting books by area authors, we swapped a couple, and when I moved a few years later, I left some at The Bee, for the collection. The tradition of collecting books has been handed down to Scudder Smith and he welcomes books for his collection of town histories and all kinds of antiques.

I wish someday that interest and ambition would motivate someone to put The Bee’s wonderful collection of – yes – bees in a fine exhibit at the newly expanded town library. It is a wonderful collection.

One of the last times I visited with editor Smith, I commented about the antiques around the office, which made it seem so uniquely New England and also interesting. He looked around and said, jokingly of course, “Yes, I’m thinking of turning this place into a museum and building myself a new office.”

The Newtown Bee is not only a great hometown publication, it is somehow a part of the lives of many subscribers – a connection between today and yesterday – an important ending to every week in the homes and offices and public buildings, where it arrives in time on Friday to be part of the weekend.

I’ve no idea how many places The Bee goes every week – I get occasional letters with comments, from people all over the country. A relative of mine in a town in New York State works for the postal system. He delights in quoting a headline from page one, whenever he happens to call to say hello. And one lady who sends “Back Fence” to a relative in Ohio was not at all hesitant to call and complain bitterly a year or so ago, when the computer ate up the column or some gremlin was to blame for the glitch. She said the Ohio lady sends The Bee to someone in another state.

When I stop to consider how the small four-page newspaper has grown so handsomely along with its namesake town, I can better understand the determination and the establishment of a Yankee way of life that has endured under the kind of leadership of a family named Smith!

The comment at the end of last week’s column was by Dr Benjamin Spock – whose books helped to raise several generations of children.

Who said, “Abraham Lincoln was as just and generous to the rich and well-born as to the poor and humble, a thing rare among politicians”?

In 1988, William Shaw caught a tiger trout from the Pootatuck River in Newtown that weighed 5 pounds 12 ounces.