Thanks to my readers

I was surprised and humbled by the outpouring of e-mails elicited by last week’s column about my crazy trip home from the Alabama-Arkansas game.
For those of you who missed it, my vehicle (a rental) was hit by a drunk driver who somehow wound up on the wrong side of a divided highway. Thankfully, the Alabama State Troopers caught him and nobody was seriously injured (although the Chevy I was driving may be on the disabled list for quite some time).
I'm happy to report that my trip home from the Alabama-Georgia game was uneventful. No rental cars were injured in the process.
My purpose in writing about the accident was to modify the game day behavior of at least one person since football and alcohol have always gone together in this part of the country.
I was surprised to hear from a number of folks who seemed genuinely relieved that my ugly mugshot will continue to grace the Ledger-Enquirer sports page.
‘‘I don’t know what I would do not being able to read your column,’’ one reader wrote me. ‘‘... I laugh sometimes til I cry.’’
Thanks to everyone who checked up on me. The greatest joy I experience in this business comes from informing and entertaining the folks who buy our newspaper. E-mails like the one above were enough to make me cry.