My dad could chew the fat with the best of them.
No one was a stranger to him. He loved to talk and had the uncanny ability to find folks to visit with who grew up in his neck of the woods east of Tulsa. It was the sticks to me near the Verdigris River. I went with my dad several times to visit the good ole folks of his boyhood days. I always found a comfy chair and quickly fell asleep while my dad visited. He’d nudge me from my slumber and off we’d go to another neighbor’s place. It kind of bothered me some when I was younger that he’d talk to anyone. A lot has changed for me since those days. Time has a way of changing one’s perspective in life. Dad and I took some good trips together in the late 1980s and early 1990s to Northeastern Oklahoma, Western Kansas and the Grand Canyon. We also enjoyed going fishing. My dad loved to fish below the dam at Oologah Lake northeast of Tulsa. And once I moved to Iowa, my dad and mom enjoyed traveling here to visit me a couple times a year. In 2003, we took a trip to Rochester, Minn., with stops at the Little Brown Church, the World’s Smallest Church in Festina, the Bily Clock Museum in Spillville and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Park and Museum in Burr Oak. We also stopped at the Mayo Clinic where I took a photo of my mom in front of the hospital sign. In 1948, when my mom was age 12, she fell sick. My grandparents were poor and didn’t have a car. My grandpa made a bed on the plow and carried my mom to see the doctor using his tractor. The doctor told my grandparents that he wanted to try one medicine. If it didn’t cure my mom, he wanted to carry her to the Mayo Clinic. My grandparents said they couldn’t afford that. The doctor said he’d cover the bill. He gave my mom a shot of penicillin and it cured her and there was no need to make the trip to the Mayo. We also visited the Spam Museum in Austin, Minn., before heading south along Highway 169 to Ames and then across Highway 30 toward home. My dad always wore a ball camp, usually advertising Gaso Pump, except on Sunday mornings. He spent nearly 40-years of his life working at Gaso Pump Mfg., a company in west Tulsa that built large pumps used to move crude oil through pipelines after it was out of the well. When not wearing a hat, he’d spread some hair grease on his head and always had a comb nearby. When he wore his Sunday best, he’d wrap his billfold and comb in paper towels to keep the grease from work from getting on his clothes. Nowadays, like my dad, I’ll visit with most anyone. No one is a stranger to me. I’m a firm believer that strangers are only friends yet to be made. I love to visit and I appreciate my beautiful bride, Debbie, tolerating my need to talk to people. And that was the case this past weekend. Debbie and I traveled to the Ankeny Kirkendall Public Library on Saturday afternoon where we joined 60 some other authors at the Ankeny Author’s Fair. This is the first year the library had hosted the event since 2019. I spent a good part of the day going around meeting other authors, catching up with old friends and visiting with folks. People live some of the most interesting lives. I met fellow who had a fictional book based on 9-11. It was a story about the exchange of a large amount of bonds at a business in one of the twin towers. After the planes crashed into the buildings, the bonds and the person handling the transfer disappeared and all was consider lost in the tower’s rubble. That was until one of the bonds was cashed 10 years later in Switzerland. Another author wrote a novel about a person found murdered in the city park. The only identification on them was a bulletin from a local church. I also visited with a couple ladies from the Blue Ribbon Foundation who were there selling Iowa State Fair Cookbooks and another fellow who was a long-time postal employee turned bus driver and author. We enjoyed visiting for a few minutes to catch up. We were also able to book a second author to speak at our writers’ conference, which will be held on Sept. 21 in Montezuma, and were able to tell many others authors about our event. There were so many interesting people in attendance and I’m sure I could pull a few newspaper stories out of the event, if only they were local. I leave you with this. Enjoy life and never forget where you came from. Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day.
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Being a community journalist and having covered numerous youth activities, county fairs and school events, I’m often reminded about the importance of student and youth organizations such as 4-H and FFA.
I have witnessed first-hand and written many stories about young people in both organizations and how they have helped them become better students and find purpose in life. I have taken hundreds of photos of youngsters in both organizations and their winning pigs, cattle, sheep, goats, rabbits, horses, chickens and dogs. These kids work hard and put in a lot of hours to become the best. One year I did a story on 4-H’er who participated in a 4-H feeder calf project where, after the fair, she raised her calf to market size. And earlier this year, I attended a work-related training session led by this same young lady, who is now married and has three children. And in November 2002, I was able to attend the FFA National Convention in Louisville, Ky., where I covered Montezuma, who had four teams there that year. And through the years, I have had the wonderful opportunity to be a 4-H photography judge. I enjoy helping young people be better at what they enjoy. I was not in 4-H or FFA, but did participate in Cub Scouts, Webelos and Boy Scouts through my school days in my native state of Oklahoma. I attended Boy Scout summer camp during the second week of June from 1972 – 1976 (sixth grade – 10th grade) at Camp Garland near Locust Grove, Okla., a small community about 50 miles east of Tulsa. I only attained a second class rank in Boy Scouts, but did garner more than a dozen merit badges. I don’t remember the year, but do remember the experience. I was working on hiking merit badge and had to join other Boy Scouts on a five-mile hike and overnight campout. My hiking boots didn’t fit too well and by the end of the hike both of my feet were covered with blisters. And to top that, we had to build a makeshift camp. Several Boy Scouts in my group stretched and tied a piece of tent canvas between several trees. A thunderstorm with rain and high winds rolled through that evening and knocked down our tent and soaked all of our sleeping bags. It took a day to dry out my sleeping bag. Another time, a morning storm blew through camp knocking down trees and I slept right through it all. I always put large rocks under my trunk to keep everything dry. Another year, my campmate had a broken arm. He got his cast wet and it stunk up our tent. Camp was a great experience as I enjoyed shooting 22 rifles at the range, participating in archery, making new friends, swimming in the pool and participating in camp activities. My first year of camp my parents gave me $3 spending money. I only spent $2 and when I gave my parents back the $1, they were surprised and let me keep it. Three dollars in 1972 was a lot of money. You can’t even buy a daily newspaper today for $3. Another organization I took part in was Royal Ambassadors or RA as it was called. It was a Christian-based organization based on the Boy Scout model for young boys who attended Southern Baptist Churches. The girls had their own organization and it was called GAs. My mom was a GA leader for lower elementary age youngsters for 25 years. Mr. Bruce Irvin, a prominent Tulsa architect and long-time member of the First Baptist Church, where my family attended, was the leader of the RAs. Each fall, Mr. Irvin, and a host of volunteers and all the RAs took a bus to the John Zink Ranch northwest of Tulsa where we hiked the rugged terrain, held a Bible study and ate hobo-style dinners. The meal consisted of hamburger meat, potatoes, carrots and onions mixed together and cooked in foil paper over hot coals. We topped it off with an apple with the core cut out and filled with red hots, which was also heated over the hot coals. The Zink Ranch featured a western town with a store where we all got to purchase candy and treats. I also camped at the Zink Ranch with my Boy Scout troop. One year, some of the Scouts decided to go snipe hunting. They lured me and a friend from the camp and asked us to hold a paper sack open on the ground and use a flashlight to lure the critters our way. The onery rascals would walk down the road aways and yell and make all kinds of noise. “The snipe are heading your way,” one of them would say. After a bit, my friend and I figured out that there was no such thing as a snipe. So, we left and went back to camp and found solace in our tent. A bit later here came the rest of the Scouts wondering where we had gone. We were sound asleep. I’m thankful for the opportunities life has given me and the opportunity to tell stories and take photos of area youth and their many successes. Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day. As we wrapped up the first Montezuma Area Business Fair on Saturday, April 6 at the Montezuma Schools, a young boy and son of one of our vendors, handed me a jar of maple syrup and thanked us for letting his family sell their projects.
It was a kind gesture and much appreciated. Others also shared kind words and one gentleman stopped at our table and thanked us for keeping the business show going. Another one of our vendors, an Ames-based author, credited Debbie and me for publishing his first book. He now has six books. “The story in this book won first place in your writing contest and led to me publishing it,” he said while pointing to the book. He seemed so grateful to be there and was happy to reconnect with us after several years. It was a long and tiring week for Debbie and I and our oldest nephew, Gavin. Together, we hosted the show. We couldn’t have done the business fair without the help of our other two nephews, Peyton and Sawyer; family members, Carole and Jan and family friend, Abree. They helped carry in supplies, set up and take down tables and chairs, mark out the spots and put down painters tape, run the raffle table and many other things. I also want to thank the Montezuma Schools custodian staff for their assistance, activity director and school facilitator, Tim Burgess, and Paul Hawkins, transportation and maintenance supervisor, for allowing us to use the school and for their support. Also thanks to Doug and Stacy Helm and to Doug and Deb VerMeer for loaning us tables for the show. In February, we decided to put this show together after learning that the former Montezuma Business Boosters had joined forces with the Montezuma Community Development and that there would be no business show this year, which was typically held in late March. As Debbie and our nephew, Gavin, were talking about the business show, I said, “Why don’t we have our own show?” They agreed and it grew from there. The first order of business was securing the school for the show and getting the word out to vendors and the public. There were several hours spent creating and putting up flyers in businesses, libraries and stores in Montezuma, Brooklyn, Grinnell and other places. Time was also spent collecting raffle items for the show. There are so many generous people across Poweshiek County who made the raffle and the business show possible. Debbie kept vendors updated, gathered information on the businesses and posted vendor spotlights on our website and coordinated the show layout. We had a total of 43 vendors and area organizations who participated in the show. This show was a first for us and the first for our nephew, Gavin, who was marketing his goat meat business, Boer Certified, for the first time. He graduates from Iowa State in May and he has already hit the ground running. We are proud of him and all our nephews and family. We are talking about doing this show again next Spring. We love promoting the Montezuma community and all it has to offer. We have our writers’ conference in the fall, our montejournal.com website, our books and now the business fair. Things are looking great. In wrapping this up, there is one thing about life that I have learned. It’s easy to stand on the sidelines and find fault and complain about what could have or should have been done. So and so said this and you should have done this are common complaints. There are always things that can be done differently or better. The key is stepping out and doing something, even if it is new or out of your comfort zone. I would much rather look at the positives in life and learn and grow from there. That’s how you make a difference in this world and your community, all while building positive relationships along the way. And with that said, my hat goes off to the Iowa Lady Hawkeyes. What a fantastic season and one for the record books. What Caitlin Clark and the Hawkeye players have done to bring attention to our state and the game of basketball is a story that will be told for years. Thank you ladies! And thank you to Montezuma for supporting our business vendor show. Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day. Anytime we get a chance to see the OU Sooners softball team play is a good time.
And the Sooners didn’t disappoint on our recent trip to Lawrence, Kan. Thursday through Saturday, March 28-30, winning all three games in the series, 6-1, 17-0 and 7-3. We attended the first two of the three game series as we needed to head home for a Saturday evening family Easter meal with time to visit and catch up. We’d been planning this trip for sometime as Debbie had been checking since Christmas to see when single game tickets went on sale. They did on Feb. 20 and Debbie bought our tickets within the first hour. It didn’t take too long for all three games to be sold out. This was our fifth trip to see the Sooners play softball in recent years and our first time in Lawrence. The other four were at Iowa State University, a bit closer to home. We left Montezuma a bit later than planned and arrived at the ball diamond at the end of the third inning. It was OK as Debbie found the game on-line and we listened to OU announcer Chris Plank call the plays as we headed to the stadium. Chris does shoutouts of fans listening on air during the third inning of each game and Debbie sends our names in for most games via Twitter. So, we got to hear our names on the way to the game. Due to a toll road on I-70 just west of Kansas City to Topeka, we decided to take the backway from Kearney, Mo. across to Lawrence. It was a 60-mile stretch through winding two-lane roads, small towns, roundabouts and traffic lights. We did enjoy the scenery and saw some beautiful homes with big porches, fenced in pastures and scenic views. We hadn’t been at the game too long when a young lady offered us her seats. She directed us to the security person who guided us to a couple seats several rows from home plate. That was a nice gesture on her part. We had general admission tickets and could have found a seat, but decided to stand for a bit after arriving at the stadium late. The lady must have thought we had standing room only tickets and was being nice. There are some nice people in this world and we appreciated her kindness. At the Friday game, two older gentleman who were Kansas fans were seated behind us. They were not too happy with OU smoking Kansas, 17-0 in five innings. They were amazed at how many OU fans were at the game and they expressed displeasure with the Jayhawk pitching staff. The stadium was probably 2/3 OU fans to 1/3 KU fans. The two fellows made a number of other negative comments about the game before leaving in the fourth inning. It was fun listening to what they had to say. Later after the game, we saw the OU team signing autographs for young softball players and fans and meeting with family who were at the game. It was fun watching the young fans carefully carrying their newly signed softballs on the way to the parking lot while the team loaded the bus to head to the hotel. We enjoyed supper Friday night at Burgers by Biggs a few miles from our hotel. They had good food and good prices. If you find yourself in Lawrence, check the place out. And our hotel was a couple blocks from the stadium on Rock Chalk Drive. KU Soccer and tennis also has complexes in the area along with a recreation center. Lawrence, which is on the far western edge of Kansas City, is a lively college town with a vibrant and busy downtown. I found an antique mall I wanted to visit on Friday located in the heart of downtown, only to discover that parking was a nightmare. I drove three blocks and didn’t see any open spaces. And the parking spots all have meters. It reminds me of my growing up days in Tulsa and also in Columbia, Mo., while in college. Both towns have parking meters. We ended up skipping the antique mall. After lunch at Sonic, we drove through the KU campus and saw Allen Fieldhouse where the Jayhawks play basketball. It was a beautiful campus and town. Our trip included stops at antique stores in Platte City on I-29 and Lathrop, Mo. just off I-35 north of Kearney on the way home. I bought a few postcards and an old cigar box and Debbie found a few goodies from her growing up days. It’s nice to get away, even for a couple days, and time was well spent with each other. I hope you take time this spring, summer or fall to spend time with your family and enjoy the many blessings life has to offer. Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day. The Parker house has been filled with March Madness craziness of late.
Over the course of the last five days, Thursday to Monday, Debbie and I have watched all or part of at least a dozen or more basketball games. At times, we have had three or four games going at once while listening to another on the radio. There have been plenty of missed calls, nose punches, foul words, knock downs, great heart-stopping plays, last minute comebacks, flamboyant colorful coaches, know-it-all commentators and crazy fans who spent hundreds of dollars and traveled all over the country to watch college basketball. The craziness always starts with selection Sunday when the committee, whoever they are, sets up the games. We all complain about who is playing who and who got left out, but in the end, there are always some great games and upsets. This year’s tournament has been no exception! And every year we fill out on-line brackets, only to have them busted in the first round. As Debbie says, the experts don’t know what they are talking about. And for the Iowa teams, the Hawkeyes and Caitlin Clark pulled out a nailbiter against West Virginia, rallying late on Monday night in the 64-54 win to advance to the Sweet 16. We are all rooting for and love Clark and the Hawkeyes. I kind of think a lot of basketball fans across this nation are rooting for the Hawkeyes. And what a great Iowa State women’s team. What a performance that was by freshman Audi Crooks scoring 40 points against Maryland, who is coached by Brenda Frese, a former ISU player. The lady Cyclones season came to an end in a tough loss to number two Stanford, 87-81. What a great season for them. On the men’s side, the Iowa State Cyclones are like a runaway freight train, mowing down their opponents with Big 12 Tourney wins over Kansas State, Baylor and number one Houston. They opened tournament play with a 82-65 win over South Dakota State and a 67-56 win over Washington State to advance to the Sweet 16. On the other side of the state, Iowa is out of the NIT and ready to regroup for next year. And Oklahoma, my favorite team, declined an invitation to the NIT after being the first team out of the big dance. All I can say is that the Sooners should have accepted the invitation and moved forward in life. In my thoughts, it’s about the game, not being left out. Kansas is out after a tough season and Kentucky, Florida and so many other good teams have bit the dust this year. I love to watch the no names take a bite out of the big boys. And don’t forget to toss in Oklahoma softball, our favorite team, and their games against Baylor. It has been a weekend and more of sports craziness. This is the best time of the year for watching sports from NASCAR to golf and professional baseball, which gets underway soon. As for Debbie and I, we love to watch the Sooners play softball. They currently hold a 31-1 record this season and are three-time national champions. The Sooners fell in early March to a tough University of Louisiana at Lafayette Ragin’ Cajuns softball team in their new stadium, Love’s Field, to end the team’s 71-game winning streak. The Sooners didn’t let the loss bother them as they have bounced back and heading into the next round of games at Kansas, hold a 13-game win streak and are perfect in the Big 12 conference. Last year, Debbie and I got to see the Sooners in Ames play against the ISU Cyclones. The stadium was packed and broke attendance records for two straight days. That was the fourth time we’ve seen the Sooners in Ames. I even got coach Patty Gasso’s autograph one year. I have been a Sooner football fan since I was in high school in the late 70s and a basketball fan since the days of Billy Tubbs in the 80s. I will never forget the national championship basketball game in 1988 between the Sooners and Kansas. The Sooners had won against Kansas twice in the regular season, but in the championship game, it was all Kansas and Danny Manning. They took it to the Sooners. When watching a Sooner football game, I’ve been known to pace about, talk to myself and talk to the television. I’ve watched some great Texas vs OU games in the Red River Rivalry and back in the day, there was nothing much better than the Sooners and the Cornhuskers going head-to-head in Norman and Lincoln. I remember one game when OU traveled to Lincoln. All the Husker kicker had to do was kick a field goal and Nebraska would win. He kicked the ball and hit the goalpost and the Sooners won. Another time, the Sooners, down seven points, scored 10 unanswered points in the last two minutes of a game to win 20-17. Enjoy the games and take time to breath and on occasion say hello to your family. Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day. The hum of water spinning in the dishwasher was music to my ears.
It had been more than two years since we last used the dishwasher. An ongoing leak put a stop to washing dishes the modern way in the Parker house. Sometime back, I noticed water had run on the kitchen floor. It even soaked a small kitchen rug. On occasion it ran through a hole in the floor to the utility room in the basement. The last time it was as if someone had dumped a bucket of water into our basement. The subfloor under the dishwasher showed signs of a leak. We had an appliance fellow come look at the dishwasher sometime back. He pulled the bottom panel off the machine and watched it run for a while. “There’s nothing wrong with it,” he assured us. “It’s not leaking.” We gave him a check, thanked him and I filled the dishwasher with dishes, thinking that it was one of life’s mysteries. That’s when the big leak happened. It was enough water that we had to take a bath towel and wipe off the washer and dryer in the basement. Thankfully it didn’t short either machine out. Since then, we’ve been washing dishes the old fashioned way, by hand. Neither Debbie nor I enjoyed the task of washing dishes. We often would let them pile up and spill onto the kitchen counter. Sometimes, we ran out of forks and spoons and had to wash dishes to eat supper. It didn’t help that I had a bad habit with good intentions of washing the dishes. I would fill the sink with hot water and dishes. I’d wash a few dishes and then leave the rest for later. Sometimes it would be the next day. It drove Debbie nuts as she uses the sink to fill her old milk jugs with water for the animals. At first, we thought the problem with our dishwasher was a clogged drain. Another fellow I visited with said it was the door seal. He even went into detail, telling me about an experience with a new dishwasher that he had purchased at one of the big box stores that leaked. Finally, we decided to call a different repairman earlier this month. He and another fellow showed up at our door on Monday a week ago. They looked the dishwasher over, checked the drain and tested the door seal. They discovered that the dishwasher wasn’t level and that water was possibly pouring out of the bottom of the door. They asked me if I saw water on the kitchen floor and told them yes. The dishwasher has two small wheels on the back to make it easy to move. To hopefully remedy the problem, the repairman took the wheels off to lower the dishwasher in the back and then leveled it up in the front. It’s been working great since. No water running on the floor or pouring into the basement. It’s nice to have some of the luxuries of life. I don’t take them for granted. I grew up in the 1960s and 70s with a dishwasher. My mom wanted one and somehow on a limited budget, bought one for our Tulsa home. It was a basic dishwasher and did a great job. It malfunctioned one year when a switch broke and the heating element stayed on. It melted the silverware basket and my mom had to toss it in the trash, silverware and all. She bought another dishwasher to replace the damaged one and it worked great. We also enjoyed having a washer and dryer and window air conditioner for those hot Oklahoma summers. I missed having a dishwasher when I moved to Missouri to go back to school. My duplex didn’t have a dishwasher. When I moved to Iowa, there was no dishwasher in my first apartment in Millersburg nor in North English when I lived on Main Street in a converted apartment. My first apartment in Montezuma didn’t have a dishwasher. The counter in that apartment was lower than standard. Washing dishes by hand was a guaranteed backache from stooping over. It wasn’t until I got married and lived in a small house with Debbie on Jefferson Street in Montezuma that I had a one again when someone gave us a portable dishwasher. The landlord let us plumb it into the house as a permanent fixture. After moving to the country, our house had an old dishwasher. It was a clunker and at times, I wanted to toss it out the door for the birds to land on. We replaced it with a new Maytag dishwasher in February 2015. I’m happy to have the dishwasher working again. I’ve washed three loads so far and it’s working great. I thank God every day for the many blessings and luxuries in life that I have enjoyed and continue to enjoy to this day. Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day. I was at the BGM Kiddie Carnival earlier this month to take some photos. I was milling about the large gathering of area youngsters and their parents when I noticed a young boy with a green tractor on his shirt.
“Do you like John Deere tractors,” I asked. “No,” the young lad replied. “Red tractors,” I asked. “No,” he said again. “How about blue tractors,” I asked a third time. “No,” he said. Puzzled, I waited while his mom whispered something to him before I asked what his favorite tractor was for a fourth time. “Orange,” he replied. “Alias Chalmers,” I said. “Yes,” he said. “Do you have an Alias Chalmers tractor,” I asked. “No, but my dad does,” the little fellow said as I smiled. I didn’t have a tractor as a young fellow growing up in the big city, but in junior high, I wanted a motorcycle. Atlas Cycle in Tulsa was a few blocks from my school and home. My friends Brain C. and David B. had motorcycles and I wanted one, too. They had newspaper routes and delivered papers on their motorcycles. Atlas Cycle had a Bridgestone 60cc motorcycle and I loved that bike, especially the dirt bike model for $250. That’s not much money these days, but to an eighth grader making $100 a month on a paper route in 1974, it was a lot money. I stopped at Atlas after school on occasion and would sit on the motorcycle and pretend I was riding the trails. I tried to convince my folks to let me buy it, but it was a no go. I even promised to leave it at my grandparents and only ride it there. My folks knew how much I wanted it, but their concerns regarding me getting hurt outweighed the cost of having the motorcycle. Looking back, it was all good. I may not have had a motorcycle, but I did have a number of bicycles through the years. I took piano lessons starting in second grade and by the fifth grade, I was taking weekly lessons at Mrs. Murry’s Piano School in west Tulsa. There was a resale store on West Edison just outside of downtown Tulsa a few miles from where I took my piano lessons. My mom stopped one day while I was taking my piano lesson and bought me a bicycle. I don’t remember the brand, but it was an ugly bicycle. I added a banana seat and sissy handlebars and it was still ugly. I rode that bicycle for a couple years before trading it in for a refurbished Schwinn Stringray bicycle. Mr. James was a local bicycle repair man who worked out of his garage a few blocks from my boyhood home. Stepping into his garage was like visiting a bicycle museum with bicycle parts hanging from large nails on the garage rafters to a variety of bicycles for sale. Mr. James would scour junkyards looking for Schwinn bicycle parts and he’d build bicycles from the ground up. I traded in the bicycle my parents bought me and even Mr. James said he’d never seen a bicycle so ugly. My first Stingray, a gold color model, cost $35. I added a newspaper basket on front that my aunt Alice bought me. During the spring of my seventh grade year, I didn’t lock my bicycle at school and someone stole it. It was a big school and unlocked bicycles were easy prey for a thief. I bought a second bicycle from Mr. James, a green colored version, and after the frame broke, I got another one, a yellow version. My bicycle had no fenders or a chain guard and I rode it delivering newspapers, going to school and hanging out with my friends. I’m thankful for the all the memories and experiences as a youngster. I’m also thankful for the all the opportunities that life has afforded me. I love talking to kids and I have taken lots of photos of youngsters and their prize-winning animals at the county fair, in school productions and at community events enjoying life. And I’ve been around long enough that I’m now photographing kids of kids who I photographed years ago. What a blessing! Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day. I enjoyed being courtside at the Iowa Girls’ Basketball Tournament at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines on Wednesday, Feb. 28 to cover the number 8 Montezuma Bravettes game against the number 1 North Linn Lynx.
Even though the game didn’t turn out in Montezuma’s favor, the experience for those young ladies will last a lifetime and hopefully fuel them to get back to state next year. And for me, it’s a blessing from the Heavens to have the opportunity to be there and share my God given talents with my readers, friends and family. This was the fourth time I have covered the Bravettes at state and the fifth trip for the team in the last seven years. I was in attendance, but not on the sidelines, during the 2018 trip to Des Moines. I also covered the Montezuma Braves courtside in 2019, 2020 and 2021, when they won a Class 1A state championship. Being there capturing the raw emotion and excitement of the game, the fans and the players is something I will never forget. I’ve had the opportunity to cover the Grinnell Lady Tigers at state basketball in 2019 and the Grinnell Tiger boys at state basketball in 2012, 2013 and 2014. In addition, I’ve covered Montezuma, BGM and Grinnell at state football in the UNI-Dome a half dozen times over a period of years. And I’ve covered state track several years. And in 2014, during halftime of the Boys’ Class 1A final at Wells Fargo, I was honored with the Iowa High School Athletic Association’s (IHSAA) News Media Award. Debbie joined me as we walked to halfcourt where the announcer shared a short story about my career followed by the presentation of the award and photos. It’s a coveted and special honor to be named among some of the top news media and journalists in the State of Iowa. And just to think it all started with a camera I won in a weight loss bet in the winter of 1983. I was working as an assistant route manager for newspaper printing corporation in my hometown of Tulsa at the time. A good friend and co-worker of mine, John C., and I decided to go on a diet. We went to a local Mexican restaurant the evening before the diet started and stuffed ourselves with tacos, enchiladas, chips and tasty sopapillas, a fried treat that I poured honey on to eat. I ate so much, I thought staff might have to roll me to the car after the meal. When I got home, I took a short two-block walk through my neighborhood. We started the diet the next morning and two months later, we both stood on the scales. I lost 39 pounds to John’s 26. The secret to my success was exercise and cutting out Pepsi and sugary drinks. The bet was for $50, but instead, John had an older Konica brand 35mm camera that he gave me in lieu of the cash. It was one of the best gifts I could have received, as a few years later in 1987, I enrolled in a black and white photography class at Rogers State College (now University) in Claremore, Okla., the hometown of Will Rogers. It was there that the world of possibilities opened for me. I started believing in myself and thinking about my purpose in life. I attended RSC part-time for four years, two of which I studied photography and the last two years that I took humanities, speech, science, English, history and more. I earned my Associate of Applied Science (AAS) degree in Graphic Technology (photography) in May 1991. One of my favorite courses, outside of photography, was humanities. The professor was excellent and made the class interesting, educational and fun. The final was a 100 slide identification of the various time periods in the world of art. I received an A in Humanities I, missing three slides, and an A, by one point, missing seven slides, in Humanities II the following semester. I attended community college back in the day when film was king. I learned to develop both black and white and color films and make prints in a darkroom. I learned a lot about photography working in a darkroom. From there, I went on to the University of Missouri-Columbia where I worked my way through school, first with the US Postal Service as a part-time casual clerk and later as a custodian on the MU campus. MU is a great school that challenged me and gave me many open doors and opportunities. I believed my way into journalism school, failing the entrance grammar exam twice before passing it with an 82 on the third try, which happened to be my 36th birthday. I needed an 80 to move on. I spent hours in tutoring sessions in both grammar and math and went on to graduate in December 1997 at the age of 38. I then landed in Iowa and for the last 26 years, outside of three years when I took a brief retirement and did freelance work, I have been sharing news and features stories and covering community events, high school sports and county fairs with my readers. I met my wife in this fine state and have spent nearly half my life in Iowa. I wouldn’t trade the experiences for anything in the world. Thank you to the fine folks in the communities I have worked in who have opened their homes, shared their stories and fed me. Everyone has a story to tell and I’ve got time to share them with others. I’m always looking for unique stories to write and share and plan to continue in that role for many more years. Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day. I do a lot of the cooking in the Parker house.
As hard as I try, I have a limited menu of foods to offer on a daily bases. One of my favorites is anything with taco meat. I’ve been known to serve a taco-based meal several times in one week. If not meat and cheese in taco shells, I sometimes make a taco Frito pie. It’s taco flavored beef with Fritos and cheddar cheese mixed together. Another of my favorites is taco meat, cheddar cheese and sour cream wrapped in a soft wheat tortilla. I roll it over on the plate and eat it with a fork. And then there is our old standby, taco casserole. It consists of crushed nacho cheese or taco flavored chips layered across the bottom of a butter-coated Pyrex dish. I then pour a mixture of taco meat with cream of chicken soup and spread it in the pan. I top that off with a layer of cheddar cheese, more crushed nacho cheese chips and another layer of cheddar cheese. I cook it uncovered in the oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. A few weeks ago, I switched up the menu and made a meatloaf. It turned out much better than my first attempt at cooking a meatloaf when Debbie and I started dating. I invited her to my apartment for supper. I pulled the meatloaf out of the oven only to discover I had burnt the darn thing. We ate it anyway and all was good with the world. Other favorites include sausage casserole and beef goulash, booth cooked in the oven. Another meal I like to cook is placing hamburger patties in a Pyrex baking dish, adding salt and pepper to taste and pouring two cans of mushroom soup over the top. I cover it with tinfoil and cook it at 350 degrees for 45 minutes in the oven. To top it off, I add a vegetable or mashed potatoes. One of my favorite meals is pork chops. I love them grilled or fried. I coat them in milk and egg mixture and add flour. Back in the day I could eat a half dozen pork chops in one setting with mashed potatoes and black-eyed peas, a southern favorite. I enjoyed having friends over and cooking a meal of grilled pork chops, mashed potatoes and all the fixings. It was good food and good company. Tenderized pork loin chops cooked in mushroom sauce is another of my favorites. They also taste good coated in a crunchy coating. Toss in a heaping spoonful of mashed potatoes and it makes for a great meal. I always enjoy grilling out and have cooked on both a gas grill and charcoal grill. Last summer, I purchased a Blackstone Grill. Using the Blackstone has taken some getting used to. I saw a demonstration of someone cooking sausage gravy on a Blackstone. I might have to try that sometime. Hasty Bake charcoal grills are an Oklahoma-based grill company. They are as rugged as a semitruck. My dad had one that he bought in the late 1950s. It included a rotisserie for cooking a chicken. When I was a young lad, we used to enjoy big family cookouts at our Tulsa home. I have lots of good memories of those days. Anyway, I’ve never been a big fan of exotic foods outside of beef, chicken, pork and fish. I once tried goat meat chili and that was okay. Another time, my mom fried a rabbit. It was ok, but it didn’t make it into my weekly menu. And I’m not a big fan of deer meat. My good friend, Rob, in Tulsa and I went rabbit hunting in southeast Oklahoma one Thanksgiving weekend in the late 1980s. I had a single shot 410 shotgun and he had a 16 gauge. We shot a couple rabbits and Rob decided we should gut them. We didn’t have a knife, so I knocked on the fellow’s door that let us hunt in his timber. He gave us a knife and Rob proceeded to gut a rabbit while my stomach was turning from the smell. While all this was going on, I looked into the homeowners window and there he was enjoying a good Nebraska and OU football game. I said never again would I miss a Nebraska and OU football game so I could go rabbit hunting on a wet, dreary and cold day. It didn’t help that the rabbits we shot were filled with buckshot. I froze them and later had my mom boil them and gave them to the dog. I think a 22 rifle would have been a better gun to use. Another time, I was invited to join some newspaper folks and business leaders in the area to a turkey fry at Lake Ponderosa. Those old boys had an oil deep fryer and they were cooking turkey fries by the bucket loads. I bit into one and ended up spitting it out. Yuck! I asked the host if he had something different. He dug into the freezer and found me some brats and graciously fixed me a meal. One of favorite meals is beef chili cooked with no beans or tomatoes. To me, chili is a meat dish and not soup. A fellow once asked me what makes the juice. “Lard,” I told him. Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day. I have been so blessed in my life to make friends with some of the most amazing people and one of them is Ralph Campbell, a Tennessee born college administrator who I met as a student at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
I don’t remember how I met Ralph, or Mr. C, as he was known by, but he had quite an impact on my life. Mr. C was an assistant registrar at MU and I often stopped to visit with him during the school day in the register’s office located in Jesse Hall, the main administration building on campus. His desk was an extra-large table, similar to a library table. One day, I recall, stopping at his office to visit. “I seem to be scoring just below average on my algebra tests,” I told him. Mr. C jointed down the number 26 on a sticky note and showed it to me. “Do you know what this means,” he asked. “No,” I replied. “This is the average ACT score of students at the University of Missouri-Columbia,” he said. “If you are scoring below average, then you are still in some pretty tall cotton.” Algebra was a struggle for me in college. After dropping the course twice, once at MU and another time at Columbia College, where I took a summer class, I went on to take a non-credit entry level algebra course at MU. After failing the first test, I was talking with some other students when the head of the math department overheard me and suggested that I drop the course, saying that I would fail. I told her that I was going to keep going and if I failed, I would fail trying. I spent hours being tutored by a friend from church and also attending tutoring sessions twice a week offered by the math department. I earned an A on the next test. I went on to pass the non-credit course and then passed the regular algebra course with a C grade. I wouldn’t have accomplished it without the hand of God guiding me to the right people like Mr. C and a few miracles along the way. Another time, I remember needing a new pair of tennis shoes. When Mr. C learned about it, he told his church and they took up an offering and gave me $100 for a new pair of shoes. I remember he called me and woke me up one morning to tell me about the new shoes. I had been up half the night studying and was sleeping in a bit. I met him later that day on campus and he gave me the check. At the end of the 1995 school year, Mr. C took an administrative job with the University of Central Florida in St. Petersburg. That next spring, a friend of mine who I met while living in Ashland, Mo., a small town south of Columbia where I lived while in college, paid to fly us to Tampa to spend a few days with Mr. C in the Sunshine state. While there, we toured a pirate ship used in the “Mutiny on the Bounty” movie, attended a St. Louis Cardinals spring game, I believe with the KC Royals. We also visited an aquarium in Tampa and ate oysters on the half shell at a Florida restaurant named Shells. The place had peanut shells all over the floor. That was the last time I saw Mr. C. As the years passed, I lost touch. I had tried to find him a couple times, but with him not being on Facebook, I ran out of options. The house phone rang late last week and it was Mr. C looking for me. “It this the J.O. Parker who went to the University of Missouri?” he asked. “This is Ralph Campbell.” He rattled off his phone number and asked me to give him a call. Debbie texted me and asked if I knew a Campbell from the University of Missouri-Columbia. I wrote back to say that I knew a Ralph Campbell who worked in the registrar’s office when I was a student there. I was surprised to receive his call. When I got home, I sat down in the comfy chair and called him. I asked him how he found me and he said his son looked me up on the internet and he googled my telephone number. We spent about 30 minutes catching up. He asked about the camper on my old Chevrolet S-10 that I once owned. “I sold that truck in 2010,” I told him. He used to tease me about buying a camper for the truck when I was a student at Missouri. Actually, my mom bought it for me. It was a nice addition to my truck. Mr. C. spent a number of years in college administration at FCU and a Bible college before retiring a few years ago and moving to Lebanon, Tenn., just outside of Nashville. He said Lebanon is about 10 miles from where he was born and raised. And at age 81, he still works part-time at a local car auction where he drives cars during the auctions. “I drive cars all day,” he said. He said it was one of the top four auto auctions in the country. I told him about where life had taken me in the last 30 years in the newspaper business and about meeting my wife, Debbie, at the Iowa State Fair, our books and the work we do to this day. He wanted a copy of my newspaper and I told him I would send it soon. I think I will toss in our books on the Iowa State Fair and the Midwest Old Threshers Reunion. It was so good to reconnect and share our life’s journeys. I am so thankful for all the people in my life and the many blessings that have come my way. Thanks Mr. C for being a part of all of that. Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day. |
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