Sheila's Potpourri
News from Huntington

Reba Clark visited with Frank and Elena Clark in Lufkin for several days. Ethel and Louis Pate of Atlanta were visiting Mildred Denman when they came to check on their lake property.

One evening when it was so warm this last time, I glanced at Robert Flurry's rose garden as I passed by and it looked as if there must have been a million blooms on all the bushes. They were truly a riot of colors. Gene Clark and I talk occasionally and we go back to as long as I can remember. But I might stop talking with him if he doesn't stop dragging up kinfolks for me. There are already enough folks who line up in our family trees. Notice that is tree in the plural because one certainly would not hold all the cousins, aunts, uncles and such. Some I've never even seen and don't particularly want to see some. Does any person really like every human perched in their family tree?

Santa Claus arrived at the Piney Woods Sanitation Christmas party in the form of brothers Paul and Alan Weber from Jefferson City, Missouri. Each year the guys plan the games to play and buy all the gifts and the employees and guests have a great time. This year it was held at Dean's Deli and it was a full house of folks from Huntington, Nacogdoches, Lufkin and Kirbyville.

Special guests were Barbara Weber and Jefferson City bookkeeper Fern Duncan and her husband Buddy. She is retiring this month and had heard lots about the party so decided to come down to see what all the noise was about. She was very surprised that it was so warm and humid here so late, in December.

Others enjoying the food and game playing were Curtis and Dana Bynog, Grady Whitworth II, Kenneth and Melissa Welch, Perry and Belinda Morales, John and Chelsey McCoy, Kenneth and Pat Anderson, Reuben and Connie Reeves, Jeremy and Nancy Fedregill, Jackie Thrasher, Jimmy Strawther, Aanson and Christina Williams, Charles and Shana Putnam, and Melvin Richardson.

Also Luke Hatch, Joey Broussard, Coryand Jennifer Aaron, Justin and Cynthia Foster, Gary Murray, Larry and Gladis Johnson, Perry Smith, Kenneth and Terry Haight, Jason and Rachael Jackson, Robert and Karen Hughes., Curtis Huckaby, Charles Lowery, Timothy and Robyn Reeves, Aaron Godfrey, Curtis Whitworth, Chris and Janice Basey, Travis and Dena. Miller, Daniel Arnet, Chris Miller, James and Amanda Tillery, James Spencer, Joyce and Bowden Simpson, Charlotte Iczkowski and Michelle, George and Jamie Preuser, Mike and Rachelle Ebarb, Sara and Elbert Platt and Beamon and Sheila Scogin.

Longtime friend Charles Hudnall and I met at the post office and commiserated about our aches and pains. Charles is several years younger than I but has been hit by the arthritis bug as most East Texans have, Having read about and heard older folks talk about their "rheumatiz" when we were kids, there was no way I could imagine how badly one could hurt with it.

Anyone with the aches and pains can certainly tell when the weather is changing. Now more than in earlier years there are medications that will relieve some of the pain. Anyone who doesn't have pains in the body should be very thankful!

Melba and Jack Duran and her brother James and Dorothy Morgan of Lufkin had a great time in Branson. They had lots of good things to say about the College of the Ozarks where each student learns practical things: living and surviving in the real world. Melba and I graduated from a college just like this when we got an education from mothers who taught us how to cook, clean house, wash clothes, work in a garden and tend to farm animals. I am surprised every day when I hear about what kids are not learning nowadays. I've said for years that public schools ought to teach working skills such as plumbing, electrical, and carpentry. It is not easy for all students to learn from a book but can work with their hands.

The travelers had a great time at the Bass Pro Shop in Springfield, at the dinner theater riding on the riverboat the Branson Belle. They also saw the Presleys' perform their music and funny routines and listened to Shoji Tobuchi entertain with his fiddle. Melba confirmed the many changes in Branson that we see and hear about on television.