TEXAS PRESS Association’s current program to have member newspapers exchange issues with their counterparts around the state has impressed me anew with the variety of news Texans make.

Last week a Page One story in the Baylor County Banner at Seymour,just south of Vernon in Northwest Texas, was headlined, “K9 Harley Passes.” A picture showed a handsome German Shepherd with the caption, Officer Harley 1996-2008.

The story related how Harley was responsible for numerous drug busts in Baylor and other counties. Retired in 2005 from the Seymour Police Department because of arthritis in his hips. Harley at one time won a competition that made him the No. 1 drug dog in Texas.

BUT IT WAS his most famous case that caught my attention.

As told by Police Chief Tommy Duncan:

In 2003 Shooter Jennings, the son of Jessi Colter and the late Waylon Jennings, was traveling with his band through Baylor County on their way to do a show in Wichita Falls. When they were stopped for speeding Harley alerted on the trailer filled with musical equipment. A small amount of marijuana was found.

This inspired Shooter Jennings to write a song called Busted in Baylor County, which soon climbed the music charts across America and was used as the opening song in the 2005 movie, The Dukes of Hazard.

THIS EXCHANGE matter works the other way, as well. When The Mirror’s Yamboree edition arrived at the office of the Clay County Leader in Henrietta, we got an e-mail saying that the staff wondered how much the queen’s royal gown cost.

I replied that I wasn’t privy to that information, but I assured them that our Yamboree is a high-class, high-dollar operation all around.

NEWSPAPERS and many other pieces of mail are welcomed, whether they come through the Postal Service or via the Internet. Junk mail can be another beast altogether, particularly when it arrives in the form of what has become known generically as the 419 scam.

This is a thriving industry involving e-mail scammers who extort money from thousands of victims by promising them compensation for help in moving funds from foreign countries to banks in the United States. Nigeria began as the most common point of origin, but now the scammers may claim residence in many other nations.

A sample of those I have received in the past week:

Mrs. Lucy Baines wrote that “Your e-mail have won the sum of £516,778.00 pounds, for more informations about your winnings and claim of prize, contact your claim agent . . . ”

Said agent is named Peter Taylor. Casual observer will note that Lucy Baines is the name of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s younger daughter and Taylor was the maiden name of Lady Bird Johnson. Perhaps a subliminal message to convey authenticity?

AN ERIC ALLEN wrote from the Ivory Coast that his parents were both killed in a civil war, his house was burned down but his father has left $5.5 million in a bank there. He confided that he needs my help to get the money transferred out of the country “because of the political situation here.”

Tony Clive, who said he is an Internal Auditor of one of the leading banks in the United Kingdom, discovered an abandoned $12.2 million deposit made by Andrea Schranner, who died along with his entire family in an automobile crash. None of his relations has come forward to lay claims for this deposit as the heir, so Mr. Clive wants me to apply for the money so that his London bank can release it.

THESE ARE such obvious frauds that it’s hard to believe anyone could be taken in, but it only takes a few per million to make the scammers’ efforts worthwhile, apparently.

I got one the other day that alarmed me, since it sounded almost realistic. It said:

“We are pleased to inform you that you have emerged a recipient of our Rotary International Cash Grant Programs. You were selected by our Electronic Random Selection System (ERSS) from an exclusive list of 800,000,000 individual and corporate bodies generated from our resource database. . .

“As members of the world’s first service club organization, Rotarians have much to be proud of as they put Service Above Self while advancing world understanding, goodwill, and peace through the improvement of health, the support of education and business and the alleviation of poverty.”

(The above paragraph is all true.)

“. . .You are therefore to receive a cash prize of 750.000 EURO .”

A list of 800 million is hardly exclusive, but otherwise the letter might pass muster, at least with non-Rotarians.

ROTARY spent many millions of dollars in a drive to wipe out polio worldwide without getting much public notice — not, that is, until the Bill Gates foundation got in on the act. It is offering a $100 million challenge grant to the Rotary Internaitonal Foundation to complete the polio project.

Any Rotarian would know that grants are given to clubs that apply for them, not to individuals who don’t apply. And certainly not to “randomly selected” ones.

Sadly, in a world where more than a billion people suffer deprivations that include going to bed hungry every night, and many people of good will are working every day to alleviate their suffering, so many other people devote their lives to the big rip-off.

sgreene@tatertv.com

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