Tecumseh news: Feb. 21, 2018

This time of the year, there seems to be some kind of environmental condition that bothers my throat and makes my voice hoarse. I clear my throat frequently but also find that opening a jar of dill pickles and taking a sip of the pickle brine helps the situation. Or sometimes I take a bite of a pickle, and that helps too. Plus, I like eating pickles!

I had a nice phone visit with Jerry Miller this morning (Monday). I hope she feels better soon. I understand that she hates to miss church due to illness and ailments, as I feel that way too. 

Easter falls on April 1 this year, and that is a date that reminds me of another special occasion in our family. My sister Ruth Crawford and Dewey Moody were married by Brother Deatherage on April 1, 1934, over around the state line somewhere near Protem. Dewey was the Ozark County Clerk when they married, and while he and Ruth were dating, he boarded with people who lived across from where the old Senior Citizens Center now stands in Gainesville. Dewey played guitar, a talent his son Warren later inherited. 

I wasn’t at the wedding, but I rdo emember that the newlyweds were staying at our family’s home at Lilly Ridge when all the friends and neighbors came, ringing bells, to give them a chivaree. We had a houseful of people that night! 

While Ruth and Dewey were dating, my good friend (and future step-sister) Gertie Sowards and I got into a little mischief. One summer day we gathered all the June bugs we could find and tied their legs with a long string. We probably ripped the string from an old Dixie Lily or Kansas Star flour sack. Then we tied the strings to the steering wheel of Dewey’s Model A roadster. It took us a long time to catch those bugs and tie their legs to those strings! While I was a jokester and prankster, my sister Ruth was real serious-minded, and so was Dewey. The excitement came when they got into the car to go to some community affair – propably a pie supper or some such gathering – and Dewey started the motor with a roar, and the June bugs all flew up in their faces. Gertie and I were hiding, and they didn’t know (for a while) that we were the ones who had done it. 

I enjoyed the story by Janet Taber in last week’s Ozark County Times about the Marlyns named for Marlyn Herd. My son Marlyn, in Forsyth, said he would be sure to save that edition of the paper. He is retired now, but for a few years he was a deputy sheriff in Minneapolis, Kansas, 22 miles from Salina, when our family lived in Kansas.

There was a lot of excitement in our area Sunday night, but I don’t know what it was about. I talked to Paralee, and she said, “What on earth is happening? What are all the flashing lights about?” I was listening to the scanner off and on but wasn’t able to understand what the cause was. But police cars were thick out this way for a while.

My daughter Karen has been sick with the flu with a bad cold and headache. We’ve had flu all over the area, and I’m sure thankful I’ve missed it so far. Washing your hands often prevents many germs from being spread. 

My daughter Kris and granddaughter Alexus are shopping in Mountain Home today. I asked Kris to look for parsnip seeds for me. I love parsnips, and I’m looking forward to eating them. They have a unique flavor I love when they’re cut up and boiled like cooked carrots, maybe with some chopped-up bacon and margarine tossed in. I have some big tubs that we put some rich dirt and barnyard fertilizer in last year, and I plan to plant parsnip seeds in those tubs, and they will grow great. At least they have in the past. 

This week when Sue Ann Jones called me to have me share my items so she could type them up, I remembered that when my husband Glen and I were first married in 1971, Sue Ann’s mother, Stella Luna, called and said she wanted to talk to “Glennie.”

I had a woodworking shop that my son Lyndon helped me in. We built stock racks for pickups. But it was hard on Lyndon to keep up with that work while he was still going to school. So, when Glen and I married, Glen took over the shop. When Stella called, she told him she needed him to come and build a gate for the rock wall around her house in Gainesville. I had hinges in my woodworking shop that Glen used, and soon he had made the gate for her. Sue Ann said she remembered it well.

Ozark County Times

504 Third Steet
PO Box 188
Gainesville, MO 65655

Phone: (417) 679-4641
Fax: (417) 679-3423