CONWAY, AR (05/17/2022)-- Local students were nominated to represent their community and school at Arkansas Boys State 2022, an immersive leadership and civic engagement experience sponsored by the American Legion.
On Friday, May 13, 2022, M.D. Williams fifth grade students graduated from the D.A.R.E. program. This program teaches students to resist drugs and violence. These students were instructed in a tenweek program by Officer Catherine Young, Officer Terry Tribble, and Detective Trason Johnson. Special guests at the graduation included Mayor Keith Sutton, Police Chief David Edington, and D.A.R.E board officer Isabella Jansen.
Spring has sprung and that means there is a lot of activity around the ball fields in east Pocahontas. Two of my children are playing baseball and T-ball this season, which provides me many opportunities to keep up with all the onlooking parents and kids on the field. My oldest is 10 years old, so this is his first year of kid-pitch. He really enjoys playing real baseball and has a heart for competition. It is a delight to watch him get butterflies before a game and focus his concentration on the sport, all while experiencing the thrill of victory or the dreaded agony of defeat. I do not really follow sports, so I leave coaching and critique of their gamesmanship to those better suited for the task. It is no small feat to mentor a child in sports and we certainly appreciate all the parents and little league coaches that sacrifice their time to teach our kids how to play these sports with integrity and effort.
So, on the last trip to Indiana, I visited a nursery our family has visited for long years. Walnut Ridge Nursery and Garden Center, in Jeffersonville, Indiana. Finding some of the seeds I had looked for a few years now. Hyacinth Bean, they once grew out on the back porch at the farm. My mama had them all over the lattice covering her patio on Tenth Street in Oklahoma City, so many years ago now. They were planted about a week ago and oh joy, they are up and growing like weeds! Yesterday I shared some of the seeds with a gentleman (Bobby) from our church, he seems to have a green thumb, in hopes of having lots of seeds from them, come the fall. In turn to share with others.
I grew up farming. And every once in awhile I yearn to have a little farm of my own. Of course, I would have to have cattle because that’s what I know best. Then I would have chickens because there is nothing better than really fresh eggs. But what I am most excited about is, goats. I know absolutely nothing about goats. But they have cute babies. And, I already have names picked out for my goat parents, Dolly Parton, and Porter Waggoner. I will also have a great big garden. Where I will not grow onions or peas because I don’t like them and it’s my garden. There will be no shrubs on my place just lots and lots of flowers. I might also have a couple of llamas.
I got to thinking how I can just lay out an outfit for Mike and he will wear it. No questions, maybe a little growling at times, but usually he will just put them on and be done with it. It’s like playing dress up Barbie when I was a kid, except with GI Joe. And then Joe goes home with me afterwards...
Things You May Not Have Known About Randolph County Randolph County is chock full of interesting facts, places, and people. These random tidbits tell of a few of them.
Meeting my cousin Ed Long of Rockford, Illinois for breakfast at the Maynard Cafe gave me inspiration for a column. Ed left Randolph County in 1954 at age eighteen after marrying Wanda Milam, daughter of Grover and Pauline McIlroy Milam of Stokes. At age eighty-six the Palestine native loves to reminisce about kindred and old family stories.
Have you ever had ideas, dreams of what downtown Pocahontas might look like? I think it looks wonderful now. Others do as well.
Tuesday night, on my sweet Presley’s 14th birthday, we attended her little brother’s kindergarten graduation at Paragould High School. Watching little Rockwell, who was the smallest kid up there, walk across the stage to get his diploma took me back to 1989 to when I was a kindergarten graduate at Delaplaine Elementary School.