I have never had anything like this happen to me in my close to 20 years of taking pictures for newspapers. All of my photos taken during the two-day event, except one, were HORRIBLE! Pardon the shouting, but it was simply that bad. Thank God, Corey was taking photos of the parade, and Mike Williams got photos of all the pageant winners except one.

Ah, but as always, it was hardly that simple.

For those of you in PC-land, we newspaper folk almost exclusively work on Macs. The operating systems are by in large uncompatible. When Mike burned a CD of the photos, I was ovejoyed. There are a couple of PCs at the Statesman office, so I was confident I could get them open and saved.

Wrong!

None of the PCs recognized the CD as having anything on it. Nothing. Nada. I took the CD to the school board meeting, hoping Dr. Perry might be able to get it opened. No luck.

What made it worse was the Mike and his wife Hazel were leaving for a Branson vacation the next morning. I managed to get ahold of Mike, and Hazel dropped by a second CD.

Still no dice.

Since I couldn't do anything about it, I decided to run parade pictures and hopefully, by the next issue, I could figure it out.

Finally, I did figure it out. Mike obviously had a newer version of Windows running on his PC than that on the Statesman PCs or Dr. Perry's PC. I trotted down to the Bloomfield Public Library with the CD, and presto! It opened! It took a while to sort through them and pick out the best shots. Then, I had to find a way to get them to the Statesman computer. Through my Yahoo e-mail account, I was able to attach the photos to e-mails sent to composition room supervisor Marilyn Tucker.

After church today, I went into the Dexter office and downloaded the photos, processed them and saved them to this week's folder. Cutlines will have to come tomorrow.

So, you may ask, how did this all happen in the first place?

I've been using a newer, smaller camera for the past few weeks. And, as fate would have it, my batteries played out just as the parade was starting on Friday. When the backups proved to be duds, I begged anyone I saw for batteries. One of the sheriff's deputies had some, so I quickly loaded them and began shooting. Sometime during this process, the little shutter adjustment gizmo got moved and the photos were thus ruined.

It was so hot, too; I really thought I was going pass out.

But, thanks to Corey, Mike and Lara Thorn, I have the photos I need for the paper. Thanks, guys! I appreciate your help more than you'll ever know.