Champion News

CHAMPION—March 24, 2008

        Champion is delighted with the report of the birthday festivities held for Mrs. Minnie Snoddy at the Ava Place on Saturday.  It was her 99^th birthday and there were easily a hundred people there!  Shane and Bonnie Hutchison were there from Davenport with their three children,  Amanda, Nicole and Michael.  Rich and Joyce Turner were there also from Iowa and Louise and Wilburn Hutchison attended from Champion.  It was a beautiful party.  The tasty and gorgeous cake with pink roses was made by a dear friend from Seymour.  There was much singing and laughter.  Celebrating loved ones is a favorite pastime in Champion.

        Long time Champion, Mrs. Esther Wrinkles, says that Monday morning’s freezing temperatures constituted the ‘Easter Squall,” and that most generally there is a real cold snap around Easter.  She also remarked about the thunder in February and the resultant probability of frost in May.  She has been a little under the weather herself for the past couple of weeks and all of Champion hopes she gets to feeling much better soon.  Last year the first humming birds of the season were seen on Easter.  The earliness of the holiday this year may make the little birds seem behind schedule.  Martins are already populating some houses in the neighborhood and the jonquils and forsythia would make a foreign visitor think that Champion’s favorite color is yellow!  The favorite color here is green accented with the flower of the hour!

        Such a spectacle was the Easter Parade of Champions!  Barbara Krider with her enthusiasm and joie de vivre led off the longest and most well attended Easter Parade held in Champion in many years.  Her beautiful granddaughters, Elizabeth and Alexandria Slater, followed along in the processional with their great Aunt Rita Krider and (quite a number of ) others.  Elizabeth’s dress had a black bodice and a bright geometrical print skirt in primary colors.  She wore a beautiful butterfly pen on her left shoulder.  Alexandria chose a spring floral print dress with a turquoise bolero.  Large purple polka dots were the eye catching accent on Chante’s white sleeveless dress.  Alyssa’s frock was beige with a floral trim down the front and around the skirt.  Vivian Floyd said that she has taken many a turn around the Square in Champion over the years.  As she waved and smiled, her great affection for her girlhood home was obvious.  There were no motorized vehicles to distract from the pomp and gracious splendor of the occasion, though the parade route itself was lined with cars from both sides of Clever Creek as well as a number of distant states.  The enchanted onlookers, applauded wildly and called out words of encouragement and support to the gallant marchers.  (“Hey, Lady!  Where’d you get that hat?”)  Barbara threw candy to the crowd, being sure that Harley caught a piece in the scramble.  Rita’s sister, Ruthie, was in the press of observers, but it was not determined if she had caught any candy.  They had traveled down from Illinois together for the occasion and will have much to talk about on their return trip.  General Upshaw was conspicuously absent and the speculation is that he has as yet to recover entirely from the protracted St. Patrick’s Day revelment.  His public persona will probably not surface again until the Civil War Memorial Dedication on Memorial Day week end.  The community should be about ready by then.

        Champion is part of the top 28% of the United States of America in awareness.  It was an interesting bit of information to learn that the majority of the Nation (72%!) is unaware of the fact that over four thousand US. Service Members have died in Iraq in the past five years.  Almost thirty thousand Americans are reported to have been wounded there.  Of course, the true number of wounded will probably never be known.  The number of Iraqi people estimated to have died in the past five years is in the hundreds of thousands…in the neighborhood of six hundred thousand people.  The number of wounded in that land is inestimable.  Love and Gratitude are the two words.

        Champions most often apply to the U.S. Service people who do what is asked of them by their Nation.  The great majority of the casualties come from small towns and rural areas in America, according to national news sources.  They are Champions.

        People with dirty hands are growing food already.  Little spinach and lettuce plants and radishes are popping up all over the place.  Peas will be out of the ground soon and certain persons are busy hunting mushrooms….and Finding them!  Linda’s almanac from over at the Plant Place in Norwood says that the 28^th and 29^th would be good days to harvest crops, but not good days to plant them.  The 30^th and the 31^st will be very good days to plant any root crops that can be planted this time of the year.  It’s nice to have Champion friends who know what they are talking about.

        Dakota and Dillon Watts from Tennessee are over helping their grandparents on the dairy farm for a few more days.  Their little cousins, Foster and Alyssa, are just wild about them.  Everybody has a good time when they are around.

        No one has written or e-mailed with an alternative to the proposed community mass dog killing, but no such event has been scheduled for the foreseeable future.

        The lilac bushes are budding out.  Uncle Al, the Lonesome Plowboy, would have thought to sing, “Where the mockingbird is singing in the lilac bush.”  It was a source of some embarrassment to his now senior-citizen daughter that everything reminded him of a song which he would sing with the slightest provocation.  Now she finds herself in the habit of annoying people in that same way.  Things change and sometimes they change in sweet and sentimental ways.  Some others are harder to take and it is suggested that anyone who has not been by the old Ruth and Orville Hicks place for a while should be prepared for a rude and disheartening shock.  Against the advice of wiser Champions, some are despondent over the ruin.  With no recourse, Champions are urged to let go of those hopeless feelings, of anger and despair and to focus on the persistent beauty that exists all around.  Bluebirds are home again.

        Favorite pastimes, fashion commentary, spectacles of all kinds are welcome at Champion Items, Rt. 2, Box 367, Norwood, MO 65717.  E-mail those things and any pictures of the Easter Parade or examples of persistent beauty to Champion News.  “There went Peter Cotton Tale, a hoppin’ down an Ozark trail…hippity hoppity Easter’s gone again….”  It may be that Old Pete paused on the porch at Henson’s Store on the north side of the Square to enjoy the Parade.  It’s a fine place to enjoy whatever comes into view.  Champions are always looking on the bright side!