Dale Hoffman now works for KALB ,the CBS affiliate in Alexandria, LA.  We saw him over the air while camped near Ville Platte.  Dale looks way too old compared to the way we remember him, and it just doesn’t seem right.  He was on somebody’s news team in Shreveport when we lived there.  That hasn’t been so long ago – what’s 18 years?  But even with makeup, Dale has aged.  We all have.  Checking the mirror every day just means don’t notice.

Google says Dale left Shreveport in 2001.  We left the Big ‘Port (my home town, Mooringsport, is the Little ‘Port) way back in 1995, when my hard-earned employment history told me we had a choice: move or starve.  Dale was one of the local TV anchors then.  And while he wasn’t Walter Cronkite, he was believable. Dale passed for honest news in Shreveport.

There’s something to be said for honest local news, even though you don’t know whether it’s honest until the Federal statute of limitations has passed.  Nonetheless, it was good to see old Dale again, and it gladdens my heart to realize that he has been closer to those fine south Louisiana restaurants and survived The Great Recession, job intact.

Work took Dale from north Louisiana to the middle of the state.  Work took Jackson and the Kat from New Orleans, to Shreveport, to Dallas, to Raleigh, and back to NOLA.

Holy Moly, we’ve seen some places, and as old Neil Young put it, “We’ve been through some things together, with trunks of memories still to come.  We found things to do in stormy weather, long may you run.”

You, and Dale, found things to do too.  Long may we run.