McAdoo sends messages with Saber nearly 18 years

When Joe McAdoo began writing his Rusty Saber column in January 1983, he never dreamed he'd still be writing it 18 years later.

"I had no idea. I thought, this will probably last a few months, and that'll be all,'" McAdoo said.

The column, which originally ran in SBJ every other week, is now a weekly feature. McAdoo said he gets ideas for column topics from reading newspapers and "looking for things that ought to have some comment." He also gets suggestions from his readers, but McAdoo, who turns his columns in on Thursdays, said if he doesn't know what he's going to write about in his next column by the time the weekend arrives, he gets concerned.

"There have been times when I've sat down to write and didn't know what I was going to write, you know, and just said, fingers, don't fail me now,'" he said.

McAdoo was chairman of the communications department at Drury University when he began writing the Rusty Saber, but he retired four and a half years ago. He said he gets a lot of feedback from Regular Rusty Readers (a term he began using for people who make comments to him about his column, or other things, but don't necessarily want their names to appear in the Rusty Saber), and he said the one column that has probably generated the most reader response is the one he wrote about the death of his dog.

"I was asked to come out and do a little talk at the federal prison...it was a club that met out there," he said. "I read the column about the death of my dog Sandy. A while later, I got a phone call from one of the inmates...he was president of this group, and he said, you've been voted the best speaker of the year, and we'd like for you to come back, but you have to promise you'll read the story about the dog.'"

McAdoo said another favorite memory about reader response happened when he was still teaching at Drury. McAdoo said he'd written a column about how, when he first began teaching, he was nervous, and before going into the classroom, whispered to himself, "It's show time!" and how that was a tradition he continued throughout his career in the classroom.

"That column ran, and about a week later, I stepped into the classroom, and the entire class, in unison, said, It's show time!' so I decided the students read it, and I better be careful what I wrote in the column...that's sort of been my favorite response to a column," he said.

McAdoo said he's written about 1,000 Rusty Saber columns through the years.