My Father and The Houston Chronicle

My father, Nicolas Casares, in his living room, under his favorite reading lamp, reading his Houston Chronicle.

We recently celebrated an anniversary at The Houston Chronicle. We celebrated three years since we bought La Voz de Houston, our Spanish weekly newspaper. I never talk about my work on here, but that's what I do. I've worked for the Chronicle for 11 years and for five of those years I have been privileged to be a part of the development of our Spanish publications. Our two Spanish newspapers, La Voz and La Vibra, reach a very different demographic than my father. Both are in Spanish, so they are reaching the first and second generation Hispanic, who still feels comfortable reading Spanish.

My father LOVES The Houston Chronicle. He was so disappointed when I quit thirteen years ago. (I went back a few years later.) And he is so proud to tell people that I work there now.

My father has been reading The Houston Chronicle my entire life. I can not remember a time that my father did not read the newspaper. Even as a little girl I have some hazy memories of him having the newspaper in his barbershop.

At our anniversary party I told the story about how my father went to visit our office one day and he had to wait for me while I came out of a meeting. When I showed him that we had the newspaper there he got all excited. Then I mentioned, "We also have La Voz."

"Ah, yo no leo Español," was his answer.

I cracked up! That is where the irony comes in. My father reads everything in Spanish, and I mean everything, except for his Houston Chronicle.

The people at our party wanted to know how my dad gets the paper. That was the even funnier part. My dad doesn't subscribe. He's older and a little, how should I say this, cheap. He doesn't want to subscribe, so he always goes by my cousin's house to get a paper. Even now that he's not driving, he will get off the bus to walk to their house for a paper. It's pretty crazy I know, but I guess he feels like he has something to do. He's 83 for goodness sake.

But it got me to thinking that I think I should change my subscription over to his house. Just another thing that I have to think about to take care of my Daddy as he gets older.