Columns

Allen History Marches On Allen has had several tornadoes over its life but the most recent one had its own unique qualities. Only twister I know of that placed a heavy rider mower on its owner’s roof. Or leave “Skeeter” Hogue scratching his head over whose roof was laying on his own roof.

Be careful how you vote My late father had pretty traditional views when it came to politics. As one who survived the Great Depression, he thought Franklin D. Roosevelt was sent by a Protestant (probably Baptist) God to help poor, of whom we were among the poorest, people survive.

An elderly gentleman had been having serious hearing problems for a number of years. Finally, he went to an audiologist to see what could be done to help. Once he was fitted with a set of hearing aids, the man’s hearing improved 100%.A month later, the gentleman returned for his checkup.

Jim Priest is CEO of Goodwill Industries of Central Oklahoma and can be reached at jpriest@okgoodwill.org.Imagine this: You’re a single mom, with two young children and no family in town and no real friends to lean on. You make it day by day, as long as nothing goes wrong.

Little Things MatterI’ve been thinking a lot lately. Really cold weather does that. For instance, who did I root for at the Superbowl? Simple, a lifetime ago my wife and I saw my Uncle JC wearing a uniform, doing sideline security in Kansas City for the Chiefs. So we became instant Chief fans.

Sharp minds for little children A first grade school teacher had 25 students in her class. She presented each child in her classroom the first half of a wellknown proverb and asked them to come up with the remainder of the proverb. It’s hard to believe these were actually done by first graders.

First of all, my favorite story of the week . . . A man was sitting at a table in a bar and was about as drunk as it’s possible to get.A group of men noticed his condition and decided to be good Samaritans and take him home.

Valentine’s day is almost here and how many valentines will you have? In elementary school we traded Valentine cards. We actually had a big box and we stuffed it full of valentine cards to our classmates. If we received 20 or 30 valentine cards then we felt good because we had a lot of valentines.

Do You Know Your Horse Heroes?When I was yet a schoolboy over at Stonewall, my night job was running the projectors at the local movie house. The Main. People sometimes would stop me and ask me about their favorite movie star. It was usually a horse.

It wasn’t until the middle of 1942 that we Centrahoma folk realized we faced yet another wartime hardship. The great coffee shortage. Seemed like it affected our fellow Americans too. We were each buying and consuming 20 pounds of coffee per year in 1942. But no worry.