latest
We dodged a big bullet last week. Our cold spell and near zero temperatures were mixed with days of high painful winds. But the real deep snow stayed away. Even as it was, we got several inches of the freezing mist, sleet and snow. But it was nothing like the series of ice storms and blizzards we suffered back in the 1970s. Made me remember one of the City of Allen’s faithful employees Les Rinehart. Or was it his twin brother Wes? But during one of these long-ago snowstorms, I remember him keeping the town grader in motion and going during our worse storm never letting our main streets get shut down by the drifts. I still appreciate this guy and all his hard work for the town of Allen.
Read moreSometimes you just can’t win. I remember long ago when I was in the Navy. We had just completed a port call in Yokosuka, Japan. Its duration was two weeks but the first day we pulled out I saw this real long line of sailors on the hanger deck. I learned that the USS Lexington crew (1,100 of them) was the worse infected crew in the 7 fleet. That long line of sailors were waiting for medical attention for their recently caught VD. I went up to my workstation and learned all about it. Not any of my guys were infected. In fact, it was all on the deck divisions and some of our so called “air dales” who had gone ashore and partaken of the shore delights they should have avoided.
Read moreFor the past two years this has been the question. Will this covid thing ever end? We can look back to the 1940s and 50s for guidance. Back then another viral infection was terrorizing the world. In a one-week period (1947) during the polio epidemic two children died in Stonewall. I knew them both and it certainly got my attention. One was a boy, my age who, healthy and riding his bike around Stonewall one day, died in his sleep that next night. Chocked to death by a paralyzing virus called polio. The next Sunday, a pretty teen girl went to Sunday School at the First Baptist Church with a sore throat.
Read moreYes, there are people who live on this earth who see to it. One such individual was a “faithful” customer of mine way back in the 1970s. He was a chronic complain-er who was forever being shorted on his medicine, by me. The city overcharged him on his water and the butcher over at Allen Food Center always weighed his meat orders heavy. He had a rough life. He had one prescription for 30 pills. Cheap. So cheap that I only charged him a buck a month for his 30 pills. But of course, he said I always cheated him anyway so I just made it a point to give him an extra pill or two. This gift was never acknowledged.
Read moreOur new year is finally here. So is winter. One thing I did first this year was call my sister Sue. She is now in an assisted living home up in Edmond and I was happy to find she received a new phone for Christmas.
Read moreLast December, the Virginia Military Institute removed a big statue of Stonewall Jackson. They are now hiding him in a museum. He was just one of many “celebrities” of the old south to vanish as American tries to change its history. I guess there really isn’t much wrong with the idea of change. The old South, as we knew it is gone. The idea of white people being able to enslave people of dark skin is long gone. And that’s a good thing in our land of freedom such as the USA basically is.
Read moreIt’s hard to reimagine just how important this date is to kids anymore. But it is. Back when I was a kid, our family we would have a “tree” up many days before Christmas Eve and gradually the pool of presents would grow under it.
Read moreIt was a nice day, that Sunday on December 7 , 80 years ago in Washington, D.C. The warmer than normal weather had caused New England’s famed pussy-willows to bud. The busy DC football stadium was hosting the Washington Redskins and Philadelphia’s Eagles. Strange times. Like this attack on Pearl Harbor, I knew little to nothing about Pearl Harbor. But I was six then at the time.
Read more