“The announcement yesterday forenoon that Charles Wickware was dead came like thunder from a clear sky and it might be truly said that the whole community was shocked when it was whispered from mouth to mouth.” — Webster City Tribune, May 5, 1893 Charles Wickware was born in 1840 in ...
We non-smokers are tickled that most restaurants are now smoke-free. No longer do restaurant hostesses ask, “Smoking or non-smoking?” At the risk creating work for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), I’d like to propose some other “zoning” in public eating places. How about a Cell Phone Zone in a restaurant where the folks who can’t speak quietly on their cell phones can be seated. Admittedly, I tend to speak loudly on the phone myself but I try hard to crank it down in a public place. In fact, I try to avoid making/taking calls in a restaurant altogether. Maybe ...
Tom Myers never really left the family farm northeast of Webster City. It was just up the Stonega blacktop from Old Highway 20, but before you reached Mulberry Center Church. In those days — I’m talking the late 1950s and early 1960s — Mulberry Center was more than a church; it was a neighborhood. Before the church was moved into Webster City and sited at Wilson Brewer Historic Park, it was the hub around which families that shared names and experiences gathered. Miller. Dinsdale. Curtis. Myers. It's a small world. It seems at one time or another, each lived on another’s ...
“The voices that speak the loudest are books.” — Edward Burgess Another week, warmer weather returns and fall seems to have been put aside for a few days at least. As one who reads, a lot, I’m almost anxious in my desire to see a bit more weather to “keep me in.” Reading, for ...
“Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.” — Abraham Lincoln When I was a postmaster, not too many years ago (just seems like a hundred), political ...
In recent weeks I have overheard folks discuss the Old Farmer’s Almanac and its weather predictions for this winter. To paraphrase Rhett Butler, “I don’t give a hoot!” I don’t place much stock in long-term weather forecasts. Meteorologists of my acquaintance tell me a three-day forecast is the most accurate forecast they can generate. Predictions beyond that are less accurate. Other than weather trends, El Niño and La Niña and wooly worms, those full season forecasts can as easily be right-on or right-off. That said, my long-term weather forecasts might be as accurate ...
