Who Says You Can’t Go Home?

Jones Joins The Messenger

By Will Johnson

Messenger Reporter

GRAPELAND – In 1940, a novel by Thomas Wolfe was published posthumously entitled, “You Can’t Go Home Again.” Years later, 2005 to be exact, Jon Bon Jovi and Jennifer Nettles took Wolfe’s advice and threw it out the window with their smash hit, “Who Says You Can’t Go Home?”

Apparently, JBJ and Ms. Nettles aren’t the only ones who feel this way as Jason Jones returned to the Queen City of the Sand Flats earlier this week to join the staff at The Messenger Newspaper.

“It’s home,” Jones said. “I spent the bulk of my life here. I’ve worked in this area doing all manners of stuff. I owned two screen printing shops for seven or eight years, I worked at Cutshaw Chevrolet and did various other fun things. We’ve (he and wis wife Angie) been gone for the last 10 years. I was a utilities locator out in the Hill Country and instead of seeing my mom and dad four or five times a week, there I would only see them once or twice a year. It started getting to the point where I felt I just couldn’t get that back. We were ready to come back home.”

Readers may remember Jones from when he wrote a column for The Messenger several years ago. He smiled as he recalled when he was asked to write a column by then Managing Editor Kay Boothe.

“We were in Fredericksburg at the time and I would come in once a week. She would usually call me and remind me I had a deadline, so I would eek out a few words lines here and there. It was called “The Snake Farm” because that was the name of my morning radio show and Ray Wylie Hubbard is cool,” he chuckled.

Jones also worked at 93.5 KBHT – when it was based in Grapeland – for several years as a nighttime and morning DJ.

“Writing is something I’ve spent a lot of years doing. People have told me that I write well and should do it professionally. I guess this is my way of telling them OK, I’m doing it. I enjoy it and I’m really looking forward to doing this.”

Jones is a graduate of the Art Institute of Dallas. He and his wife have been married for 33 years and have two children, Lauren and Dorian. Lauren is a veterans’ benefits coordinator, a 2011 graduate of Grapeland High School and was the Runner-Up in the 2010 Peanut Queen Pageant. 

Dorian is a 2016 graduate from Fredericksburg High School, a college baseball pitcher and is currently serving in the United States Air Force.

Please join us in welcoming Jason Jones to the team at The Messenger Newspaper.   

Will Johnson may be contacted via e-mail at [email protected].           

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