School started yesterday. Seems a ….
School started yesterday. Seems a bit early, but it is like a piece of string. Regardless of where you lay it down, that isn’t going to make it longer or shorter. Texas schools have been in session since last week. That’s according to the South Jetty newspaper from Port Aransas that I received yesterday.
One thing that sort of shocks me about school starting is the list of items each student is supposed to have. I don’t recall anything I needed to start first grade. When we got there we were given a pencil, a tablet and a box of eight crayons. Also free to us was the giant jar of paste we used for making things out of paper cut up. It really did taste good.
Cost passed on when I started high school. For the first couple of years we were required to pay a “bus fare”. A three dollar a month charge.
I was given five dollars at the start of each month. I paid my bus fare and forty cents a week for hot lunch. Any money left over I got to keep.
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Wednesday I had the oil changed at Domine’s. So I had a good chance to sit and look at the new colors on the water tower. I guess the school colors were a good choice. I can remember how exciting it was back in 1976, when the red, white and blue trim was perfect in the bi-centennial year.
On my ad route the week it was painted I just happened to mention it in UBC when I called there. Carl Worchel worked there and I believe he was also the Village President. When I brought up the water tower he said something about it will probably be different, knowing Loyal.
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Can you believe the Hunt for the Golden Ear of Corn was in its 49th year? I take the credit for starting it and maybe picked a few of the hiding places but that’s all. I left the clue-writing to Florence, and believe it or not, lots of times couldn’t figure the clues out when I knew where it was hidden.
We had some help some years and I think those who volunteered had just as much fun as well.
It wasn’t anything new. I borrowed it from Cumberland who this year is celebrating their 90th Rutabaga Festival. The hunt for the Golden Rutabaga isn’t that old and besides, no one in the Cumberland area grows them anymore. If you buy one there, which I did a few years ago, it probably has a sticker on it that says “Product of Canada”.
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I sure had a memorable time at The Highground last week. I’d met Sue there and we had just finished looking over the Korean War tribute. I was on the committee planning it and one of the ideas was to have each committee member write about the war. Well, I never got to Korea, but Florence helped me write something and the committee selected it to be placed on one of the plaques.
Like I said, we had just finished looking at the tribute when Sue got a call. It was from her son the Major/Doctor or the Doctor/Major Will who is stationed in Germany right now. He had been at the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C., and I thought he would be safe there, but the Army had other ideas. We are keeping our fingers crossed as I think his assignment is about over.
The Highground is such an interesting place to visit. I’ve met people from all over the United States and several foreign countries. Sunday we saw something else that really caught our eyes. The car pulled up with two elderly people in it. He got out and went to the trunk, getting out a double side by side walker. Then he walked back to the car and opened the back door. I was expecting to see one of his grandchildren, but instead brought out a little black dog. Which he placed in the walker and his wife carefully attached a strap to the dog’s collar and off they went looking the Highground over.
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I never get to The Highground that I don’t get a little extra feeling of satisfaction about it. It was a Tuesday evening back in the late 1980s, and Scott Schultz was our editor at the time. He came out of his office and said he had a problem. Seems a friend of his, who was a Vietnam veteran, wanted him to come up with a suitable location for a tribute. I think his friend was on a committee and he thought it would be better up near the center of the state instead of down in the Madison/Milwaukee area.
Without much thinking I said to Scott, “If you think it is important, get ‘er done.” It was as simple as that and thanks to Scott and Ron Tieman, Clark County really has something that has grown into a gem.
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It might have been old, but I think it is still pretty exciting. Whenever I go some place I come back, park and get my walker out of the trunk. Then I walk into the Rehab section and get the girl at the desk to let me in through the sliding door. Then a few steps up the hall is a couple of chairs and a table. I like to sit a minute or two and catch my breath before going the rest of the way down the hall.
There are generally a couple of magazines on the lower shelf. So one evening I reached down and pulled out a NewsWeek magazine. I flipped through a few pages and saw a heading “Best Nursing Homes”. The story was about a survey and this was about the top nursing homes in the top 25 states. Naturally I looked for Wisconsin and here was a list of 10 nursing homes, one of which just happened to be the Clark County Rehabilitation and Living Center–Owen.
Well, it wasn’t anything new, the magazine was October 2021.
Considering the survey was probably done several months before, that would have made it last summer. It’s like I tell everyone, I live there and I don’t have a care in the world.
