November 2022

This group of local junior hostesses added interest to an evening’s entertainment at Pocahontas United Service Organization (USO) headquarters in Pocahontas some 80 years ago. As soldiers from Walnut Ridge Air Base visited here, local young women would make the servicemen’s visits here enjoyable. The airmen shown above are no longer remembered here, but at least four of the young ladies are identified as, from left, Hilda Shivley, Martha Blankenship, Helen Dixon and Marcella Baltz.

This year right before Memorial Day, a long search ended! Just now getting around to sharing this story with you. When we lived in Lawton, Oklahoma this sweet young couple were our next-door neighbors for a season in time. Life in a military town is a bit different, people are being shipped out or they are discharged, the time came for Dennis to be discharged. We were sad to see them leave, while they were happy and so excited to be going back home to Maine. Especially now for Marie was expecting their first child. Very soon afterwards I received a letter from them with a photo of a smiling Marie and a pretty baby girl. Somehow, I had lost their address, this has all been over fifty years ago now, though it seems like only yesterday. I can see Marie and Dennis at the fence talking to us she was wearing a long white dress printed over with big multicolored flowers. Late night sleep would not come, and I was thinking back to Lawton and Dennis and Marie. So thought I would try one more time to find them, Bingo! Must have been luck or I had typed just the right thing in. It all opened like a book, there they were in full living color, pictures, address, and even their phone number! I could hardly contain myself filled with the excitement of finding them after so long. Even knowing there was a time difference, and it was very late here. I quickly dialed their number, of course, there was no answer! But that didn’t keep me from talking very fast and as long as it would hear me, to the machine. Do you remember the corner of 13th and H Avenue in Lawton, Oklahoma? Just as though there had been an answer on the other end of the line, then I quickly babbled some more.

With the midterms occurring this week, elections and politics are dominant conversational topics. They will be the subject matter of this literary offering.

Walmart is full of men buying deer hunting supplies and women buying junk food for while they are gone... ****** Demon Cat’s day consists of a treat at 6am, 26 hours of sleeping, slapping his roommate whenever she walks by-just because he can and a quick run to watch the toilet paper go down when flushed.

In honor of the midterm elections, I thought I’d share a nice little story with you about Randolph County’s first State Representative. “Knife fight on floor of Legislature leaves Representative Anthony dead” was the 1837 headline in the Arkansas Gazette.