So Long, Dale

Lots of people who live in Louisiana or Mississippi can remember where they were on the morning of August 29, 2005. Dale Irvin can, because that day was supposed the first of his new job as Country Roads’ managing editor. But since Dale lives in New Orleans and was thus subject to mandatory evacuation, instead of showing up for work he was actually taking an unscheduled hurrication and wondering whether, once Katrina had finished with his hometown, he’d actually have a home to return to. Not that it mattered much that Dale didn’t make it that day since, like everyplace else, our office was closed, our staff hunkered down in various locations to ride out the storm. For my part, I was trying to decide how to explain to our best friends that despite days of effort, I had failed to rescue their dogs from the kennel in Chalmette at which they were boarded. These friends, who lived in New Orleans but were on vacation in Canada, had seen the reports about Katrina and begged us to try and get their beloved dogs out of harm’s way. But with the city evacuating and contraflow enacted, there was no way for anyone to drive from St. Francisville to Chalmette to collect anything. On the Sunday morning, with all options exhausted I’d called our soon-to-be-editor to see if he had any ideas on getting to St. Bernard Parish. Without hesitation, though he and his partner were in the midst of preparations to flee the city in the face of a once-in-a-lifetime hurricane, Dale offered to drive to Chalmette and pick up two strangers’ dogs so they could be spirited out of the area. This, in the eight years since, is the kind of spontaneous generosity I have come to recognize as “typical Dale.” When he finally did make it to work a week later New Orleans was in tatters, and Dale’s introduction to magazine publishing involved throwing out all the editorial planned for our October issue and replacing it with content suitable for reflecting South Louisiana’s new reality. I relate this now because this May issue of Country Roads will be the last with Dale at the helm. After almost eight years he is ready to retire, trading his managing editor’s chair for the driver’s seat of an RV and a new career as a traveling blogger, roaming the lower forty-eight and writing about his experiences for an online audience. It is safe to say we’ll miss him. It is hard to overstate how much Dale has contributed to Country Roads. In the years he has spent with us he has raised the flag of regional discovery higher, and flapped it more vigorously, than anyone. In search of good stories he has become acquainted with every corner of these two states, not so much immersing himself in the regional culture as taking a runup and doing a cannonball into it. This magazine has always tried to find ways to share the stories no-one else is telling. With that mission in mind Dale has ferretted out the region’s treasures with indefatigable optimism. No destination was too far, no pitch too improbable, no foodstuff too weird, for him to appreciate its possibility. Never has he encountered the highwayside hamlet or suburban strip mall in which he could not identify something worth sharing. In search of stories he has driven the backroads, toured plantations, climbed into attics, gone places in trains and airboats and inner tubes, and eaten everything. Really; everything. And all of it Dale has shared with tremendous passion and at maximum volume, as if by force of enthusiasm alone it were possible to gain the attention of the largest number of readers. During long, noisy editorial planning sessions, Dale would pour fourth the ideas gathered during the latest of his improbable research junkets, articulately pitching each until one or another of the sales folks would stick a head around the corner and ask if we couldn’t just keep it down a little bit. He is eternally good humored, perpetually dishevelled, prone to long polemics on subjects near to his heart and always, always first to shed a tear at the hint of a sad story. Considering he’s a Midwestern transplant who arrived in Acadiana forty (?) years ago and never left, he probably knows Louisiana and Mississippi better than any Iowan ever born. But then, I’m Australian. So what do I know? So, while Dale will still be contributing occasional features and his weekly “Further Afield” travel blog to Country Roads, the time has come when his boundless appetite for new finds must go in search of a wider playing field. As he and his longtime partner, Dave, embark on this next phase of their adventure we wish them safe travel, abundant discovery, and the very real pleasure of developing a new audience that appreciates what he has to say. We’ll miss him. And if you’re reading this, chances are you will, too.