Memories of the blizzard of ’75

January 21, 2025

When I was a kid I observed that old men enjoyed telling stories of harrowing storms they had survived when they were younger. I didn’t understand it all back then, but I do now. So let me tell you about one of the nastiest blizzards in my memory. It happened 50 years ago this month. In January 1975 my wife, son and I had lived in the Sioux City community just one year and I was working for a radio station with offices at the north end of downtown. It seemed to be an average winter day when I went to work that Friday, but by mid-morning it was snowing heavily. After making sales ...

It was brave, courageous and bold

January 12, 2025

Many people today cannot remember (or imagine) a time when a television set was not a familiar item in most homes. I can. I was nearly 9 years old when our family acquired its first television receiver. My father made the purchase on New Year’s Day 1957. To put this in perspective, younger folks, this was even more exciting than the first time you surfed the internet. Until that memorable New Year’s Day, Dad seemed reluctant to have a television in our home. He feared, I suspect, that his sons would be exposed to inappropriate things on TV. He didn’t know I was already ...

All the world’s a stage

January 5, 2025

It’s a new year and a new season for high school showtime! It won’t be long before high schools will be announcing their spring musicals and plays. I enjoyed high school plays but during my abbreviated college experience I was working 30 to 40 hours a week and had no time for plays. Over the years that followed I often thought that someday I would get involved in community theater. Alas, my career took priority. Nowadays I’m not sure I’m up to the challenge. Of all my high school memories, drama experiences are among the most treasured. The closest I ever came to ...

Gratitude

January 2, 2025

It’s 2025. But before we forget there was a 2024, let’s give a shout out to some of the people who led this community forward so that we could get to this year in good shape. Sheriff Doug Timmons. Timmons retired at the end of 2024, handing the wheel over to his successor Alex Pruismann. Timmons, a local guy whose father was a Webster City police officer, never strayed from his home county in his heart. In fact, if you talked to him about the job, when he was still on the job, he was laser-focused on doing the best he could for the people of Hamilton County. I don’t know about ...

Jimmy Carter exemplified the role of president as diplomat

December 30, 2024

The news of Jimmy Carter’s passing takes me back to 1976, a year that marked my own passage to adulthood. As the bicentennial year dawned, I took first notice of Carter upon his victory in the Iowa Caucuses. I followed his campaign through my high school graduation and into the summer, when I shuttled in my first car between my summer job at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida and New Smyrna Beach. I studied Carter’s campaign in my first college course on American politics that fall and proudly cast my first vote for Carter in November. My enthusiasm for Carter was driven by ...

Simple school trips … but we sure had fun

December 26, 2024

School trips have changed since I was a kid. Over Thanksgiving our granddaughter flew with her high school band to California to march in parades at Disneyland and in Hollywood. A business acquaintance told me a few weeks ago his son and his high school band are scheduled to march in New Year’s parades in Florida. We were delighted, of course, for our granddaughter and her California trip but my, my, my how school trips have changed since I was a kid. Oh, we had school trips back in those days. (Yes, kids, we even had school buses back then.) None of our trips, however, took us ...