Hello & Good Morning!

[Janet Harrington]

Let me tell you how to get pie.  You just have to keep nagging at Ms. T.  Shame her into it.  I'm tellling you, that girl can cook.  Your biggest problem you have is you live too far away.  Ms. T. lives one block away from me.  The life in a small town.  I love it and I don't want to leave.

Now, about work.  I have worked in law enforcement for 24 years, 17 years as sheriff in this county, (Elk).  I lost the election in Nov. 2004, and went to work Jan. 2005 in Wilson County, (Fredonia), as the jail director at an 80 bed jail.  I was doing pretty good there, (I thought).  I was looking for a job that paid better, but that would have been the only reason I would have left.  On March 6th, this year, that idiot sheriff fired me for "looking for a better paying job." 

I have been out of work for over three months.  I like to work.  I am good at what I do.  On Monday, the 18th, I start at the El Dorado Correctional Facility, the super maximum prison for the state of Kansas.  I will be a counselor there working in A cell house with the violent offenders which include BTK, the Carr brothers, and who ever else is stupid enough to kill, rape, maim, abuse and hurt little children.  I'm excited.  I have a degree in criminal justice and this is the first job, (since I got my degree), that I will use that degree.  I hope I can make a difference to the citizens of this state when it come to these offenders that should probably never see the light of day again.  However; that is not our decision.  That is the courts decision and we must abide by that.

Thanks for commenting on my day.  It was full.  I'm going off to bed now as I have another full day tomorrow.

[kdfrawg]

There was a wonderful German woman that lived just East of me when I lived in Moss Beach, CA. There were just a couple of hundred people in Moss beach, despite being just 20 miles from downtown San Francisco. Everybody knew everybody else, and on a good night you get get about 75% of the people in town into the street in front of my house for a laid-back party.

The German woman may have been old enough to be my grandmother. She was just the most pleasant person on the planet. She would bake pies for me on a regular basis and I kept her in high-quality Schnapps. I could see her house from my kitchen window across two vacant lots and when she had a pie for me, she would hang a green towel (I was already a frawg then) out her kitchen window. Then I would know to get a new pint of flavored Schnapps and take it over to her, ans incidentally take possession of my pie.

Small town life.  <nod, nod>  It can be just excellent.

[kdfrawg]

It is really nice to find a person who takes pride in her work and genuinely likes it. That is the reason I believe my daughter is going to make a fine music teacher.

I suppose it would be unprofessional to strangle the Sheriff that fired you, but I'm sure that the thought would have crossed my mind. I find it difficult to get unhappy with a person that is trying to better their situation in life. The good people that worked for me were always the ones I worked hardest to get better jobs for. If I didn't have one, I would try to find them one, or help them get one that they found. There's no sense in holding people back.

It sounds like your new job is going to be a challenge, but I will hazard a guess that you like challenges. It sounds like a good fit to me.

[Janet Harrington]

I believe this job will be a good fit, also.  Thank you so much for the compliment.

[Teresa]

What a tiny tiny little slip of a thing. Bless her little baby heart!~

May God and the angels watch over and protect her.

[Janet Harrington]

Oh, Charity is a little tiny thing.  I hope everyone will say prayers for her everyday as I believe that her momma won't be able to have anymore babies after this.

[Janet Harrington]

I want to regal you with my day on Saturday.  This was a day that my Mother's daughters had wanted to do for sometime.  (Well, maybe just me.)  Anyway, three of us, Jimmie Ann, Jean, and Janet, (that's me), took our Mother, Wilma, for a long day road trip.

We started out by traveling to Braman, Oklahoma.

The very first thing we did was corral a couple of horses north of Howard and got them back on the property they belonged.  We called the sheriff's office and told them who we believed they belonged to.  We did not leave until the owners got there, not trusting the horses to stay in the farm yard and all.  No sign of any law enforcement officers.

Now back on the road to Braman, OK.  Mother was born in Braman, Oklahoma, 77 years, 3 months, and 17 days ago.  Mother's family, (along with Mother), moved from Braman when she was a few months old and came back to God's Country, Kansas.  Mother had visited Braman with Daddy many years ago, so she was familiar with the area.

Braman is an extremely small town just 2 miles east of I-35 and you could almost call it a one horse town.  However; it did have a swimming pool, a school, water tower, post office, a few little business and a cafe.

The Broadway Cafe is something on the order of what S & J Cafe was when they were open here in Howard.  We had lunch there.  We had hamburgers, grilled cheese sandwich, and a chicken fried steak sandwich along with fries, of course.  Talk about a good meal.  This lady's hamburgers are so thick that I'm pretty sure she pressed them by hand.  The fries were good and plentiful.  Sister said the chicken fried steak sandwich was just exactly how a chicken fried steak sandwich should be cooked and the other sister said the grilled cheese was wonderful, made with texas toast.

We left Braman and headed back to Kansas going to Argonia.  We visited the cemetery there.  Almost forgot.  While travelilng towards Argonia, we kept seeing little bitty toads hopping across the highway.  I finally slowed down enough to see that they were indeed toads and not frogs.  I've seen toads on the highway, but not as many as we did Saturday.

We traveled north of Argonia to the farmstead of Mother's grandparents.  Her cousin, Max Lowrey, lives there now as his mother and dad had the farm after the grandparents.  We visited with Max for a short time and could tell that he was definitely our relative.  That's an honor for him, I guess.  ha ha

We went from that farm to the cemetery about 3 miles north of the farm, called Stitch Cemetery, where Mother's grandparents and her great-grandfather were buried.  There was also a young cousin of Mother's buried there.  (Mother, I hope I got that right).

We traveled from the Stitch Cemetery to Viola, Kansas, where we went about 4 miles northwest of Viola to the Peotone Cemetery where Mother's parents, Pinckney and Leota Hancock, and her Uncle Eddie Knowleton, are buried.  We picked up the Memorial Day flowers and then headed for Viola.

Mother spent a lot of her growing up years in Viola and her school years there.  She did graduate from Piedmont High School, but only went there part of her senior year.  We drove around Viola and Mother showed us where the house used to be that they lived in.  She remembered the names of the people of the houses that were still standing.  She showed us the houses where her brother, Dale, had friends.

Viola only has a Methodist Church, a Baptist Church, a Post Office, a building that the Sedgwick County Sheriff keeps a small office, the community center that used to be a school, so what I am saying is Viola doesn't have much.  Good memories for Mother, though.

After doing that, we headed for Wichita and finished up cleaning out the trailer that we just moved my oldest sister from.  She nows lives in Howard.  By this time, we were all tired of traveling and I think maybe a little tired of each other.  ha ha

We did stop at my niece's house here in Howard to see our little sister, Patti, who was not able to go.  She chose to stay in Howard and babysit her newest grandson, Garret, while his parents and his sister, Jordan, and his brother, Wyatt, went to the mud runs.  We don't really understand why she would pick that little bitty baby over us.  ha ha ha ha

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[Wilma]

Janet, you forgot the 2nd good deed you did yesterday.

[kdfrawg]

Janet, that sounds like an absolutely fine day. That is one very nice thing about staying in one area for generations; you have a lot to go back and look at. I can do the Michael W. Jones Memorial tour in Omaha and San Francisco in person, but to fit the whole story in takes quite a while on Google Earth. The way you did it sounds much homier, and much more fun, because you were looking at places that bind you all together. That's nice.

I have never been in Howard that I know of (anything is possible, as I have done some prolific motorized wandering) but I am starting to miss the S & J Café, too. There is nothing really like that in Lawrence any more. Even the place in downtown Baldwin City sold and is trying to head up-market. I have to drive 75 miles to get a decent hot roast beef sandwich and 45 to find a proper chicken fried steak.  < sigh >

[Janet Harrington]

As Mother reminded me, I did two good deeds on Saturday.  The first was corralling the horses and waiting for the owners to show up.

The second one happened at the truck stop just outside of Braman, OK.

In the handicapped women's bathroom, Mother said the toliet would not flush.  I told her to go ahead and use it and I would come in and see what I would do.

I went in, lifted the top of the lid on the tank, found that the plunger had been rigged with paperclips and these were not attached to the handle.  How funny.  I hooked the paperclips back on to the handle, flushed the toliet and then told the next in line that the toliet was fixed.  You know how ladies can't stand having a toliet that does not flush.

I was a good girl all day that day.  (If you believe that, then maybe you will believe the next windy tale that I will tell you.  However; I go to work tomorrow, so I will have new tales to tell.)