Gone But Not Forgotten: The Vent

Editor’s note: Richard Halicks first joined the AJC as a summer intern in 1976. He left the paper (yeah — they used to call it “the paper”) for about five years in the 1980s, then came back. He retired in 2018, so all in all, his career at the paper spanned about 700 years.

I’d hoped to win a big important journalism prize one day.

Instead, I invented the Vent.

In the years after World War II — well, it was several years after, like 1994 — my boss showed me a rural newspaper whose readers left anonymous rants and musings on a recorded line. Then the paper printed them. Said boss, Hyde Post, actually won several big important journalism prizes. But, God love him, he also has a sense of humor.

Hyde wanted to try this call-in thing in the AJC. I came up with the name “The Vent” and was the voice on the recorded line: “Thank you for calling the Vent. Mind your manners.” We marketed the Vent as “talk radio, without the radio.” After a week or so, I handed it off to my friend Joey Ledford, who became known as the Vent Guy; Joey was also our traffic columnist, so he was the Vent Guy and the Dent Guy.

Beginning in January 1994, the Vent ran on Page 2 of the AJC’s daily Metro section. Many of our staff hated it (it wasn’t exactly journalism). Many of our readers loved it (it wasn’t exactly journalism). The Vents in this article are from the first of four Vent books we published.

If Noah had a brother, would his name be Yeah?

I wanted to double my recipe, but I couldn’t get the oven up to 750 degrees.

Have you ever wondered how many ants you’ve killed in your lifetime just walking?

Often the day’s Vent contained a response to something from the day before, although we didn’t have many dual entries like this one:

When I turn 40, I’m trading my wife in for two 20-year-olds.

I’m the wife of the man turning 40. Trust me, honey, you’re not wired for two 20s.

Vents on local topics tended to be my favorites. This was in part because we had no way of knowing for sure whether people were calling in with lines they’d just heard on late-night TV. Local Vents were more likely to be original.

Why do MARTA police ride around in cars? Shouldn’t they take the bus or the train?

If Waffle House is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, why do they have locks on the door?

For those of you who think the Big Chicken is watching cars: You’re right. He’s looking for a new coupe.

Relationships were also a favorite topic. Husbands, wives, angry girlfriends, jilted boyfriends (hard to say for sure, but these may have all been the same people).

You know your marriage is in trouble when you look at your husband through the tines of a fork and imagine he’s in prison.

I tricked my girlfriend into marrying me. I told her she was pregnant.

My wife thinks I’m too nosy. I know that because I read it in her diary.

My boyfriend of two months said he loved me. Should I have said something besides “really?”

Last night I dreamed I killed my husband by whacking him over the head with my cast-iron skillet. That won’t hurt the skillet, will it?

I loved the rhyming bit at the end of that one. Vents never arrived in iambic pentameter, but a lot of them rhymed.

And there were the weirdly hilarious Vents:

It’s not shorts in general that God doesn’t like. It’s those pleated khakis. He hates those.

The new gorilla at the zoo should be named Magilla. All gorillas should be named Magilla.

Traffic here wouldn’t be so backed up if people would get off at their exit ahead of time.