Champion News

CHAMPION—June 1, 2015

        Memorial Day gatherings and reunions of families and schools have brought many wandering Champions home to look around and remember.  A treat down at the old Champion Store is often a favorite memory that comes with an image of Ed Henson or Anna behind the counter in the dimly lit little building with cardboard on the walls and the floor boards worn thin and smooth.  Ed’s birthday was May 27, 1903.  He was born in Douglas County, the son of Fred and Rebeca James Henson.  He was a merchant in Champion for 58 years.  There are many stories connected with this gentleman who was curious about everything and judgmental about very little.  His legendary memory of faces and families and keen, mischievous sense of humor keep him in high regard among his Champion friends long after his passing in 1998.  How lovely it would be to be pranked by him again.

        Wayne and Joann Anderson celebrated their 59th wedding anniversary over at Denlow on the 26th.  They were just kids when they married.  She was seventeen and he was nineteen.  That must be why they still look so young.  It could also be that they are the great grandparents of triplet infants about four months old, which must be hilarious.  Barbara & Harley Krider, another youthful pair, have a big anniversary coming up, their 50th.  The party will be on July the 3rd.  Pete and Bonnie Mullins will have their 60th on October 7th.  That will be just after Pete turns 88 on the first of October.  Pete is in fine fettle yet but a good conversation with him included the information that when you are younger and are able to be of some real help to some old guy, it makes you feel good—very good.  When you become that old guy it is important to let the younger guy help.  It is a favor to him.  It makes him feel good.  The gist of it being:  recognize as soon as possible when you need help and give the gift of allowing your loved ones to help you.  It is a challenge that all will face sooner or later.  Watch how graceful people do it and try to remember it.  Meanwhile, The General sends out messages to the out of state holiday visitors, “There are rules and regulations about transporting livestock over state lines so if you have by accident or design unlawfully transported some of our ticks, well, come and get the rest of them!”

        Waist high grasses waving in the breeze and forecasts for several dry days in a row have haymakers poised for action.  The countryside will be humming with mowers, rakers, tedders and balers.  “It was the hardest work for the least pay in my life,” said one erstwhile Champion of his hay bucking experience toward the end of the last century.  Big round bales are more popular these days and are probably more energy efficient to produce, though one wonders, looking at a hayfield recently harvested, how many miles of driving it takes from the time the fertilizer is spread until the hay is in the barn.  Farmers will be taking a rest out on the wide veranda at the Historic Emporium discussing weather prognostications, machinery maintenance and repair, and yield.  They will likely harken back to earlier times with stories of adventures out in the field with snakes and armadillos and will express some gratitude that, while it is still hard work, it is much improved.  June is the month when all the feeding, weeding, hoeing, and controlling of insects pay off with a thriving, healthy and productive garden.  Look for Linda’s Almanac up in Norwood at The Plant Place, at Henson’s Downtown G&G and on-line at www.championnews.us.  Now is the time!  Rascal Flatts sings, “In a book in a box in the closet/ in a line in a song I once heard/ in a moment on a front porch late one June/ in a breath inside a whisper beneath the moon.”  The red rose is the flower for the month of June and the pearl is the birthstone.

        A pleasant woman in Minnesota who happens to own stock in the McDonald’s Corporation recently had a big agriculture company buy land in her neighborhood to grow potatoes for her company’s famous French fries.  The topsoil there is shallow and sandy and made suitably acid for the growing of potatoes by years of decaying pine needles.  The company cleared all the pines, poured on the fertilizer and crop dusts once a week to control pests.  The neighborhood, once adjacent to a lovely pine forest, is now enjoying blowing soil and chemicals from the fields as the aquifer is simultaneously being depleted and poisoned.  When she attended the stockholders meeting of the corporation to address these issues she was denied entry.  She is upset.  Her investment has proven as detrimental to herself as it has in years past to the indigenous Yanomamo people of South America who were relocated to concentration camp like ‘reserves’ or slaughtered outright so that the rainforest could be bulldozed to make room for corporate cattle production so there would be burgers to go with her fries.  While the corporation struggles with its public image across the world with its charitable activities, its minimal adjustments to the pay scale of its employees and cosmetic adjustments to the menu for the illusion of healthiness, Ms. Stockholder is becoming aware that the decisions she makes ranging from her investments all the way to what she has for lunch can have far reaching implications.  Ethics are tricky.

        On the subject of trickiness,  “At the very last minute, Arizona Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake just snuck a provision into a must-pass military funding bill that gave away holy Apache land to an Australian-British mining company that plans to turn it into 1,000-foot-deep crater.  It is the first time in American history that Congress has handed over a public, sacred Native American site to a foreign owned multinational corporation.”  According to Lydia Millet, author and contributing opinion writer, this deal is an impressive new low in congressional corruption and it is unworthy of our country’s ideals.  The rider should be repealed unless people figure that as long as it is not ‘our’ holy ground, it does not matter.  Then there are those that think retirement age should be raised to 68 or 70 so we can ‘lower the deficit.’  Social Security does not add a single dollar to the deficit.  If you do not like the government, change it with your vote.  Figure out who is really looking after your best interests.  Register and vote.

        On June the 12th the Skyline R2 School will have a community work day.  It will start at 8 in the morning and go on until ‘whenever.’  There is painting, landscaping and work on the nature trail to be done.  Feel free to bring whatever tools you might like to use.  This is the little rural school that is educating the children who will be running the world before long.  It is a good investment.  Look for an announcement on the bulletin board down at the Historic Emporium over on the North Side of the Square in thriving downtown Champion.  Share your June music and poetry at champion@championnews.us or at The Champion News, Rt. 72 Box 367, Norwood, MO 65717.  Tell your haymaking stories there or get political out on the spacious veranda overlooking the world’s most limbless bee tree.  Like golden arches, optimism is a brand in Champion—Looking on the Bright Side!