A week of newspaper humorists -- today Sam Venable

[Jerry Peterson]

Sam Venable, a funny guy and as nice as they come, was the Knoxville (Tennessee) News Sentinel’s outdoors editor for 15 years before the front office bumped him over to humor columnist in 1985. That’s two years after the Miami Herald hired Dave Barry as its humor columnist.

Twenty-four years later, Sam is still at it. Not Barry. He shuttered his humor column six years ago.

As you may recall from yesterday’s post, Barry has a second career – kinda – as a rock musician. Sam, too, has a second career . . . as a stand-up comedian.

Venable had been entertaining East Tennesseans for five years when I first became acquainted with him, when I moved to Knoxville to be a graduate student in journalism and mass communications at the University of Tennessee – Sam’s alma mater. We would occasionally bump elbows in the Knoxville Writers Guild, a splendid collection of writers who gathered once a month to drink wine or Co-cola – that’s the way East Tennesseans pronounce Coca Cola – eat cookies, and hear from other writers about their experience in the business.

Sam has 10 books out now. Most are collections either of his outdoor stories or his humor columns. Somewhere I have a copy of “Two or Three Degrees Off Plumb: Sam Venable’s Unique Look at Life” (1988). And I need to buy his “Someday I May Find Honest Work: A Newspaper Humorist’s Life” (2007).

Gee, that one’s been out for three years.

I wonder if Sam has a copy of my novel, “Early’s Fall”?

Maybe we can trade.

Tomorrow: A week of newspaper humorists – Milwaukee Journal writer Bill Stokes