On November 2, 1979, when I opened my copy of the Harrisburg Patriot paper and turned to the Paul Beers column I was surprised to find not one, not two, but three names of guys that I knew.

Riffing off of Al Capp’s invention of Sadie Hawkins Day, the one day in a year where females in Dogpatch could chase after unattached males, Beers decided to make a list of who he considered to be the most “eligible bachelors” in Harrisburg.

I was delighted that my friend AJ Moulfair was so well known that he had made the cut and I called him to congratulate him.

Apparently his phone had been ringing off the hook. He was not amused.

He referred to the article as “scurrilous”, while I (I’m sorry to say) had a few laughs at his expense.

The other fellows that I knew who were mentioned in the article were Tom Hostetter and Bill Woodside.

Tom was the chap that the Lebanon Community Theatre had imported from Harrisburg to direct their production of Night Must Fall and who had thus not selected me when I auditioned for a part in that play. He was also quite active in the Harrisburg Community Theatre and I had attended some of their productions. I don’t recall seeing him after that column was published, however, so I don’t know what his reaction to it was.

Bill was a lawyer and had served in various capacities as counsel to the Republican majority in the state legislature.

Oh, did I ever mention that Harrisburg has one and only one industry—that being the state government?

Seemingly everyone in the city is involved in the work of the state. If they aren’t directly employed by the state in one capacity or another, then they are providing services to those who are. It really is a one trick pony town.

Anyway, Bill Woodside belonged to a family of lawyers. His father was a judge, and both of his siblings, a brother and a sister, entered the legal profession. Bill was at one time the special counsel to the Republican Senate majority leader and later provided legal services to the Republican caucus. This, of course, was at a time before the Republican Party had lost its collective mind. And its spine.

But I digress— 

Anyway, the next time I caught up with Bill, he didn’t seem to mind being mentioned in the column and he took it with good humor. I guess he felt that any publicity was good publicity.

There’s a John Troutman mentioned in the column; I have no idea who that is or if he was related to me (probably, as I believe all us Troutmans ultimately come from the same German immigrants).

By the way, Beers lists Mozart as a bachelor; Wolfgang’s widow Constanze would have been quite surprised to hear that.