Each early winter, as we look back to see what our biggest stories of the year were, one chorus resounds: "Ooh. I forgot I wrote that."

This is testament either to encroaching senility, or perhaps the need to upgrade our brains' storage capacities, or simply the nature of the business. We write every day. Typically, when done, as if from an old movie, we rip that story off and hand it to a copy boy pelting down the aisle toward the editor's cage. Out of hand, out of sight, out of memory.

Nah. In reality, we hit "send," look up and say "Hey. That story's done." Or send an email. Not so dramatic.

But what is impressive is how much a single year can encompass, even those we look back on and go, "Boy, that flew."

One of the year's earliest, most charming tales was one that echoed throughout the year: Young chef Fuller Goldsmith. His 2017 run began by sitting in for Urban Cookhouse's opening celebration, and rolled on to cook up prizes and win hearts through national TV appearances on "Chopped Jr.," which he won, and "Top Chef Jr." As the year began, Fuller was 12, a Tuscaloosa Academy seventh-grader, who started his chef-quest tuning in shows such as “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives," while undergoing treatment at Children’s of Alabama hospital,  having been diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in 2007, at the age of 3. He's worked through three years of chemotherapy, a remission, then three more years of chemo, spinal surgery to correct problems from medication, and a bone-marrow transplant in 2014. Through it all, Fuller had begun developing his recipes, cooking first for family and friends, then moving out into the wider world to share his culinary art. He had to drop out of "Top Chef Jr." in the sixth episode, due to health concerns, but the exposure has won him even more fans.

In an October story, his parents told me about his rising fame. “When we go to the grocery store, he’s recognized and stopped by everyone,” Melissa Goldsmith said. “They ask ‘What are you working on?’ ” When Scott Goldsmith went for a doctor’s visit a few months back, a woman at the office asked “Are you that chef’s father?”

Fuller takes it in stride, hanging out with his TA friends same as before.

“I knew I wanted to cook for the rest of my life before I went (to TV),” he said. “I just like to cook. Simple as that.”

Speaking of classic diners, Rama Jama's freaked people out when owner/founder Gary Lewis, the guy cooking from pre-dawn to closing, six days a week, announced he was looking to sell. But selling the business as is, memorabilia, menu and all: He wasn't looking to simply cash in on the prime location just off the southwest corner of Bryant-Denny Stadium, but just to get a break, and fair return for his decades of long hours over a smokin' stove.

I interviewed Gary back in 2016 when made the announcement, and again this year when he finally found new owner Michael Hebron, who moved here from New York City to pick up the spatula.

“What I’m buying is a breakfast-luncheonette kind of place, with a lot of really cool memorabilia,” Hebron said. “And it’s across the street from my happy place.” He began visiting the temple to Crimson Tide football four years ago, when his daughter Lisa began studies at the University of Alabama; Hebron hasn't missed a home game since.

Many folks have trouble seeing Rama Jama's without Gary's smiling face; for at least a while longer, as Hebron transitions, they won't have to do without.

“After 21 years, I said, ‘Here’s the keys. Don’t screw it up,’ ” Lewis joked. But this season at least, he's stayed on, prepping the handover. 

“I’m not ready to retire. Long as I can go, I want to go,” said Lewis, boundlessly energetic at 66 as when playing basketball for Alabama Christian College more than four decades ago. “This is not the end for me. This is the beginning of the next chapter of my life."

A couple other long-timers decided to ease back on the throttle in 2017. Paul K. Looney directed his final show for Theatre Tuscaloosa -- appropriately, "Company," a musical by his beloved Stephen Sondheim -- the group he created decades back. After "Company" closed, friends, fans and performers gathered to salute Paul and Susan, his wife and frequent collaborator as choreographer, in a black-tie gala at the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center. With that party, Theatre Tuscaloosa also announced the Paul and Susan Looney Legacy Endowment, intended to help ensure the company's long-term stability and growth.

In my column for that first week in April, I wrote about my old friend: "What’s that physics deal about rushing to fill a void? When I began covering the fine arts -- having been hired as a rock ‘n’ roll, movies, rough arts kid -- back in the way back, I knew nothing. Thanks to Paul’s tutelage, I can now loudly and proudly claim to know next to nothing."

In my review of this year's "Company" -- his 1994 "Company" was one of the first I ever reviewed -- I wrote: "It’s an earned and beautiful last work by Looney, touching, penetrating, loving, poignant and hard. And despite the vivacity of the performances, the sleek attraction of shining metropolitan facades, and laughs, laughs, laughs, this is not escapist theater.

"There is no escape. Just lights out."

The lights won't be flickering out at the venerable Bama Theatre any more than they will at Theatre Tuscaloosa's Bean-Brown, though the Bama did lose one of its prime shakers and instigators in 15-year manager David C. Allgood, who retired this summer.

In July, I wrote about some of the things David created or muscled along at the 1938 movie palace -- converted to performance as multiplexes arose -- including hosting touring acts such as Ryan Adams, Aimee Mann, Richard Thompson, Alabama Shakes, the Dexateens, Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires, Todd Snider, Will Kimbrough, Bryan Adams, Travis Tritt, Chuck Leavell, Warren Haynes, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Richie Havens, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Needtobreathe, The Deadstring Brothers, The Avett Brothers and more. He coaxed to life and booked Acoustic Night at the Bama, which has spotlighted touring acts including swamp-funk guitarist Walter Parks, instrumental legend David Lindley, John Paul White, and Hurray for the Riff-Raff, along with local yokels such as yours truly.

David helped make the changeover from oldies in the Silver Screen movie series, into indie, foreign and documentary films for first Cinema Nouveau, and then the Bama Art House. He taught himself the ins-and-outs of dealing with distributors and booking agents, and maintained and updated -- from 35mm film to digital -- the Bama's projection and sound equipment. Among the greats that probably would never have played Tuscaloosa otherwise -- not at the mainstream Hollywood 16 -- were “Room,” “Life is Beautiful” “Snowpiercer,” “Boyhood,” “Moonrise Kingdom,” “The Babadook,” “Amy,” “Muscle Shoals,” “Blue Jasmine,” “Love and Mercy,” “Take This Waltz,” “Black Dynamite,” “Under the Skin,” “Neil Young: Journeys,” Joss Whedon’s “Much Ado About Nothing,” and five years ago, “Fa meg pa, for faen,” or “Turn Me On, Dammit!,” a Norwegian comedy that ignited a temporary furor.

And he opened and closed, rain concessions and trouble-shot days and nights for various rentals at the Bama, booked 300 days a year, seating just over 1,000 for theater, dance, film, music, variety shows and more. He's sought to expand the Bama's diversity of offerings, from one-night only events such as the performance-broadcast of NPR’s “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me” and the world premiere of John Sayles’ “Honeydrippers,” shot in Alabama, to annuals such as the Mystic Krewe of the Druids’ Bal Masque, the Pink Box Burlesque’s Halloween “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” and a “Big Lebowski” festival.

“Mostly what I did, was I just happened to be around when people came up with ideas, and I did my best to implement them....” David joked. He's still helping book the BAH series, because as with Paul, artists around here never truly retire.

To say John Westervelt "Jack" Warner was a patron of the arts is to understate wildly. The collection of American paintings, antiques and furnishings he amassed over decades as CEO and chairman of Gulf States Paper reached world renown. Masterworks rested inside various Tuscaloosa residences, and the Gulf States headquarters for years, before Jack brought it all together under one roof in a building at his NorthRiver Yacht Club as the Westervelt Warner Museum of American Art: Works by Albert Bierstadt, Rembrandt Peale, Edward Hicks, Thomas Moran, Edward Hopper, Robert Henri, Edward Potthast, Charles Bird King, James McNeill Whistler, Andrew Wyeth, Mary Cassatt, James Peale, Paul Revere, Winslow Homer, Duncan Phyffe, Thomas Cole, Sanford Gifford, Frederic E. Church and more.

Tuscaloosa was, for a decade, home to a museum known as one the finest gatherings of American art in the world, and probably the largest collected largely by one man.

There's so much more to his saga, a literal reshaping of Tuscaloosa through the power and wealth of his family, of Gulf States, now known as the Westervelt Co., of Jack's love for history, his empowerment of contemporary artists, of the 2010 breakup of some of the greater works due to a corporate tax loophole, that this is a case where I'll simply suggest you check our archives for the story I worked numerous hours on, when Jack died in February, at 99. Here's a couple of paragraphs to whet your appetite:

"Known as Jack the storyteller, Jack the art lover, Jack the philanthropist, and Jack the savvy businessman, Warner’s outsized personality, rugged physical stature and love of center stage brought many to echo the phrase 'larger than life.'

"He’d stride the halls of Gulf States Paper headquarters like a colossus, said Mike Case, who began working in that building in 1988. Case is now president and CEO the Westervelt Co., the new name for a revamped Gulf States Paper, founded by Warner’s family. Case described his former boss as a great storyteller, historian, patriot, industrialist and philanthropist, who held court at work, at social gatherings, at openings; just about anywhere an audience formed.

“ 'He loved the spotlight. He always picked out the biggest guy in the crowd: "You’re not so tough." Then he’d challenge him to Indian wrestle. Of course you knew you’d better not win,' Case said, laughing."

Other Tuscaloosans brought us renown through various avenues. Jessica Procter proved once again that beauty, brains, wit, talent and heart can healthily co-exist, winning Miss Alabama not just through looks and singing ability, but on the strength of the campaign she created, Step Up To The Plate, partnering with the West Alabama Food Bank to fight hunger and food insecurity. In our June interview after her victory, she talked about the literal feel of the crown: “You can almost forget it’s there,” she said, though the 21-year-old University of Alabama student had bonked it on things a few times, which didn’t feel great. “But you’ve got so much hairspray on, it doesn’t move.”

Gov. Kay Ivey commissioned Tuscaloosa writer Jennifer Horne as the state's poet laureate, a four-year post, in a November ceremony at the state Capitol. In our interview, Horne said "Some people see (poetry) as a kind of ivory-tower thing, something they can’t understand. But everybody has the appreciation for beauty, otherwise we’d just wear gray sweatsuits all the time. We choose style; we choose color.

“All of us who use words to communicate, express, create, we’re building bridges from person to person. It’s going to be an exciting four years."

Tuscaloosa native and UA horn MFA student Joshua Williams, with one year left on his doctoral work, blew away all competition to win the International Horn Competition of America, winning out over numerous acclaimed professionals. Charles "Skip" Snead, director of UA’s School of Music, said it was "as if a student won the U.S. Open." Williams started in seventh grade, because his family had moved mid-year, and due to eligibility requirements, he couldn't play football. His band director replaced Williams' original "really crappy single-F horn," and word began to spread of this kid with all the right tools, reaching Skip's wife Angie, also a music teacher. He began formal lessons in ninth grade, and started at UA in fall 2010.

Along with his physical qualities, dedication and hard work, Williams brings healthy confidence to his instrument. In a September interview, he told me: “My goal has always been to become one of the most influential horn-players of my generation. ... I’m definitely, probably my favorite horn player,” he said, laughing, “but I would never tell anyone that.”

In August, I wrote a feature on the expanding Kudzu Coalition of West Alabama, a locally-based group of progressive activists who had swung into action beginning the previous fall, in particular after a debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in which the Republican candidate called her "a nasty woman." An online group popped up as Nasty Women and Allies, but as more formal action groups began to coalesce, the largely women-driven organization changed its name to reflect a more positive, inclusive outlook, and to help explain that it was not simply about that one election.

Some of the reasons for Kudzu included: "We spread quickly, we’re everywhere,” said chair Mandy Fowler. Kathryn Drago, co-liaison of Kudzu’s public education group, added "We thrive where it’s hot, in places other people find inhospitable." Fowler closed with "We cover the South, and we're not going anywhere."

Kudzu groups push awareness and education, sponsor marches and rallies, contact representatives on various issues, run postcard drives, phone banks, town hall meetings and more. Kudzu's influence was felt with voter education campaigns for newly elected U.S. Sen. Doug Jones, the Democrat who staged a surprise come-from-far-behind victory over GOP hopeful Roy Moore.

But while they worked hard on behalf of Jones, Kudzu won't give Democrats a pass. They'll be holding all public servants accountable, Fowler said.

“Kudzu is going to be in the audience. ... Expect us."