IT EVEN HAS A COURTYARD

       On our way back from St. George Catholic Church in Republic MO, coming off Holder Road, Micki and I decided not to turn left on Highway 14 and go through Nixa as usual, but to cross 14 and head toward Boaz, because we wanted to see what a town named Boaz looks like.  It turns out to be a tiny place, so we continued on, and got lost, and by chance came upon the neatest house I've ever seen, right in the middle of nowhere.

 

DYING

 My wife and I are old now.

 

"I feel like I'm going to die soon," I said to Micki.

"You are," she said, matter-of-factly.

I laughed, and said, "I won't have time to kick the bucket."

 

 

 

  

INSECTS BY ALICE GRAY

       This is the best book on Insects that I've ever read.  It was written in 1956 by Alice Gray of the American Museum of Natural History, who was my pen-pal for fifteen years.

 

 

  

 

This book is very hard to find.  Mine is the tenth printing.  But the eighth printed edition is found online in Archive.org, so you can read it HERE.

 

 

       Alice Gray is such a good writer!  About insects in general, she says:  

       "Insects are alive.  They aren't viruses, and they aren't plants, so they have to be animals.  They hatch from eggs.  They move about.  They breathe, eat, sleep and grow.  They see, hear, taste, smell and feel the world around them - or act as though they do.  They find mates, lay their own eggs, and die.  They do all the things other animals do, but they do them in ways which are all their own.

       "Think of moving, for example.  We do it by means of muscles attached to a framework of stiff bones with joints between them.  All our organs are suspended from this framework, and the whole is covered with a soft elastic skin.

       "If this is how bodies ought to be built, then insects are inside out!"

 

     And the wonderful thing about Alice Gray, as shown by our being pen-pals for fifteen years, is that she was willing to do all this work for just one person!

 

 

 

 

BUTTERBALL YELLVILLE FEED MILL

       A couple years ago Micki & I were driving from our home in Branson to our four acres at Highland, Arkansas, and as we were near Yellville on Highway 62, we were surprised to see the huge and impressive Butterball Yellville Feed Mill.  The nearly $50 million mill produces up to 12,000 tons per week of turkey feeds.  We had to stop to take a couple pictures.

 

A DREAM COME TRUE

       War was raging and the battlefield near Salerno, Italy, was bloody when they met in 1944.  An American soldier, George Fortin, then 26, of New Bedford, Massachusetts, found the 10 year old Italian girl wandering alone and frightened amid the carnage.

       Touched by her plight, Fortin brought her to her home in Passiano, 8 miles from Salerno, and learned her name was Anna Farano.

       Later he returned to Passiano to visit her and brought presents for her poverty-stricken family.  Not knowing each other's language, he and Anna could talk only with signs at first.  But a neighbor of Anna who could speak English sometimes interpreted for them.

       Finally, Fortin had to leave the area when his outfit was assigned to duty elsewhere.  As he left, Fortin told the girl, half jokingly: "Some day I'll come back and marry you."

       The years slipped by and Fortin returned to America.  He and Anna wrote to each other but, as she grew up, the Italian girl wondered: "Will he really come back to me?"  Many allied soldiers had gaily promised to return and marry the Italian girls they had left behind and few remembered their promises.

       But Fortin remembered and came back in April of 1951, bringing with him from the United States a wedding dress for Anna, then 17.

       On March 29, 1951 they were married - the real life Prince Charming and the Cinderella he had rescued on a battlefield.

       It was like a fairy tale come true, not only for the long separated sweethearts but for the 4,000 residents of Passiano, all of whom turned out for the wedding.

       Flowers rained on the tall, lean American, then 33, and his smiling wife as they left the church through lines of cheering well wishers.  The romance that had captured the imagination of every Italian had reached a happy ending.

                                                                      ~ from Reuters, with updated numbers

 

Watch the video.