I don't spend much time thinking about Don Henley. I don't like him. I don't dislike him. I don't know him. How can you form a single personal opinion about someone with whom you've never spoken or even sat in the same room with?

It struck me the other day that almost everything I "know" about Henley is what someone else has told me they know for sure. This includes what someone reported to me a few years back that Henley had "a problem with the Marshall newspaper editor."

Huh? I guess that is why I am supposedly in his back pocket, as opposed to his front shirt pocket. But, of course, Henley most likely has no such opinion. It is just what someone wants to say.

Roughly 30 years in the newspaper business have taught me that people will say anything. Anything. It need not be close to the truth or even within light years of the truth. They aren't necessarily making it up, they're using what other people told them.

Which is every bit as bad.

Some people are willing to believe anything about Henley, bad that is. A few years ago there was the utterly goofy notion of the United Nations taking over Caddo Lake. Otherwise intelligent people were spreading this mess, though I was never completely sure that they really believed it themselves or if it was just politics.

I figure it was only politics.

But if I don't spend much time thinking about Don Henley, I surely do wonder what it was like in Harrison County about the time that he decided he would take on Caddo Lake as his personal project.

Specifically, was there a great huzzah from all quarters? Did the community think it was wonderful that a rich rock star would want to put his time, money and energy into protecting what everyone agrees is a unique place in the world?

Was a parade held in downtown Marshall to welcome him in and make him feel at home so that perhaps his largesse would extend in other directions?

Or was Henley greeted with distrust and defensiveness? Were the battle lines drawn from the very beginning before anyone really knew what was going to happen.