Here I sit, halfway through the thirty days of September at ten in the morning, ready with pencil in hand to ... Whoa! Let's get down to business. It's not with a pencil in hand; it's with a pen in hand, one of those inventions which always seem to run out of ink at an important moment, which showed up about eighty years ago ... those little fellers that have ruined more white shirts because a "cap" was missing from the pen in the pocket. ... Well, the cap always seemed to turn up later, but who knows where?
How's that for a starter? I'm really sitting here, with no pen or pencil, in front of that daggum Corona (the good name Smith doesn't deserve to be listed with a stubborn virus that has turned the world upside down the past couple of years) ... sitting here which makes the truth known that my pounding the keys is as unreadable as those pen or pencil scratches which look Chinese. Enough of that! We don't need any more China problems but would you believe it a voice came from the kitchen, "Lunch is ready."
Half an hour later: "Boy, that meatloaf sandwich sure was good."
So, finally, this is going to be one of those "C," not Chinese, but conglomeration cuffs.
Number one: Do you remember when you could send somebody a little message on a penny postcard? I forgot to mention, I rounded up about, let's say, fifty handwritten notes that could be used in a 'cuff and a penny postcard is it, number one. The penny postcard ended in 1951. Today a postcard costs 49 cents. But all postal costs have risen, which enables the service to be able to meet its expenses, which is true in all forms of our society. Isn't a sixty-cent stamp a small cost to send a birthday card to anywhere in the nation? Pretty cheap? Just think there are so many ways to contact family, friends and businesses. Telephones that now can picture who you are, talking to/watching (no more answering a voice that asks, "Number, please?") And that's just the beginning with all of the systems that have evolved from computers to ... on and on. I'd bet that quarter we haven't seen anything yet. But all cost more than fifty-five cents, don't they?
That takes care of number one. So how about looking at another scribble that mentioned the population center of the United States, according to the census of 2020, has moved 25 miles west from Plato, Mo., to another Missouri town, Hartville. It was slightly more south, which messes up a prediction made back in the 1980s that the middle of the population in the United States in 2050 would be in Benton County, just slightly southwest of Gravette. What will happen in the next 50 years? The way everyone seems to be leaving some places and heading to other locations makes you wonder,
what could happen in the next 30 years? Maybe someone will remember if that old geezer blew his top on this prediction. Ha!
So where do we go now? How about scribble three? It was a little scribble that mentioned a prediction for those in the 2022 January Eagle Observer. It takes a trance to develop those predictions (some say he's in a trance all the time) and they didn't materialize for this year. There was so much craziness going on last December in the U.S. and Europe and ... well, it seems to be that way today. But the proposed prediction was to be "There will be a huge number of grasshoppers in the middle of the country sometime in the summer." It'll have to happen before the twenty-second when summer hits the dirt and Mom Nature leans toward autumn. Hopefully, things will settle down. Speaking of insects, did you ever hear a cicada calling for a mate this summer? There have been a few sounds from summer bugs but ... I never heard a single cicada. Maybe the ground was too hard and dry; do you suppose?
Well, we've come to the end of the "C" 'cuff. Next time? The 'cuff about the area man who was one of the advisors to General MacArthur during and at the end of World War II is coming along ... maybe. But then there are always roads and highways, and it's been some time since we thought about that book titled "The Road to Serfdom," or maybe the weather and a frost on the last day of the month?
Dodie Evans is the former owner and editor of the Gravette News Herald. Opinions expressed are those of the author.