TOUGH LOVE. At Mineral Springs, Mayor Bobby Tullis removed a city park basketball goal after carefully explaining to kids that one of the park’s two goals would be removed if they kept leaving trash on the grounds. They didn’t believe him. One goal is now gone. He says that if the park is kept clean for two weeks he’ll have the goal put back up. Lessons for life.
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OUR HIGH IQ legislators. Really, guns everywhere? How does that make anything safer? How many John Wayne Wannabees are there under the capitol dome?
For the record, I am too lazy to hunt but I am a gun owner.
The guns on college campuses thing is especially vexing. College administrators, campus police and moms and dads of students all expressed opposition. “It don’t matter, we know what’s best for you,” the solons seemed to say.
We didn’t necessarily get level-headed replacements when the Democrats got swept out. Remember that.
This edition of the Legislature has also tried to pull down the window shades on some events which were previously open to public scrutiny. Secret government isn’t necessarily good government, just easier. It’s also easier to do something naughty in the dark.
Police video records of arrests and incidents, for example, should be open to the examination of the public in order to maintain the public’s trust in the police. The Arkansas Freedom of Information Act isn’t for the media, it’s for the people.
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HEARD FROM. Had a nice visit with Mr. Richard Musgrave who brought a bunch of ‘Nashville News’ clippings he found while cleaning out an old trunk. Richard told me that 65 years ago this week he and a group of local gents went to Chicago to meet with officials of the Swift Meat Packing empire. The object was to get those folks to put in a poultry processing plant in Nashville.
The meeting was in the Blackstone Hotel, he recalls (it was probably a splendid palace, but I’m a peasant and never heard of it).
The upshot was that Swift located a small plant at Murfreesboro and one at El Dorado. Nothing for Nashville. We hit a home run later.
The group included: Mr. Musgrave, James Sullivan, Jack Rorex, Jett Sain, Alvin Gibson and my father, Louis ‘Swampy’ Graves. Maybe some others, Richard says.
All except Richard are gone, now. But I thank heaven for their legacy. They helped form our community in many ways. Richard, himself, was a vital cog in bringing Case Knife and Case Shear to our town, and those small industries provided jobs for many many years.
A few of you may remember a scale model working steam engine that the talented Musgrave machinists built at his father’s fantastic machine shop at the corner of Henderson and Second St.
The Musgrave family machinists installed scalesized railroad tracks at his father’s place out on the Hope highway and frequently invited schoolkids out for choo-choo rides.
That engine and its coal car are now in a museum in Atlanta, Ga., Richard says. Wish we had it here.
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THE GOOD EARTH. Perhaps a record depth of yellow pollen on car hoods before the big rain washed it away.
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ANIMAL CRACKERS. Fed up with reading my articles about bluebirds, loyal reader Max Tackett ‘two-upped’ me with a pair of his own bird stories which he promises are true.
1. There is a hummingbird which stayed at his and Deb’s place west of Nashville all winter. Even when the temp got down to single digits, the bird was a frequent visitor to the hummingbird feeder right outside the window. One morning Max noticed that the hummingbird nectar was frozen solid, so he put out a fresh feeder loaded with room temperature nectar. This bird likes to perch on the feeder.
Max declined to answer me when I asked if the bird wore cute woolen mittens over its little wings.
2. The Upper Southwest Arkansas Regional Landfill has its own mascot roadrunner. Max says the bird sometimes stands around in the parking lot as if it is directing traffic. Other times, it goes from car to car trying to look at its own reflection.
Max declined to answer me when I asked if the bird said “Meep Meep.”
MORE ANIMAL CRACKERS. It looks as if that brilliantly colored bluebird and its mate are building a nest in the bluebird box on my patio where two batches of (regular color) little bluebirds were raised last year.
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THE TWINS. Born moments apart and separated only by a conjunction, but still …. Young and Old.
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THINGS I LEARNED from opening email: When everything is coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.
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HE SAID: “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” Henry David Thoreau, essayist
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SHE SAID: “Children in a family are like flowers in a bouquet: there’s always one determined to face in an opposite direction from the way the arranger desires.” Marcelene Cox, writer
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SWEET DREAMS, Baby
