SpeakOut 8-28

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Keep on truckin'

To whom it may concern about the Fed Ex trucks being parked in my front yard, I spend 12-14 hours a day in those trucks. Not only did you try to call Fed Ex to complain about that, it was also childish and cowardly. If you have further complaints about my Fed Ex trucks parked in my front yard, feel free to contact me. You know what my address is. Obviously you haven't driven through our neighborhood or you would notice all the hideous decorations on houses and sheds that also don't belong out there. Before you start complaining about my trucks that I work out of, feel free to drive through the neighborhood and complain about somebody else.

Potholes and fire trucks

Look out, look out, look out. I have a complaint against the parking lot at the post office in Sikeston. There's potholes in that parking lot that I can't believe how big they are. They resurfaced that parking lot last year. I'm sure there are hundreds of people that go to the post office everyday. Beware of the potholes, they will do damage to your vehicle. I can't believe a government office would allow this. And another complaint, today at noon over here at Bo's Barbecue there was a fire truck there. The guys got out of that truck and were there for 50 minutes. While they were inside having their lunch, they left the fire engine running all that time. Look how much fuel that took for that fire truck to run for 50 minutes, and we the taxpayers are paying for that. This is crazy, there's no reason for this. They should have shut the truck off, went in and had their lunch and then started it again when it was time to leave.

Under normal circumstances, that is the case. But there are times when equipment needs to be charged from recent use. Whether that was the circumstance in this case will be checked into.

The way it was

I was reading in SpeakOut where the economy and changes were so bad for the schools. I'm 86 years old and I went to a one-room school house. It wasn't fancy, but I got a good education. I walked two miles to school and two miles home. I carried my lunch in a tin bucket, sometimes an apple in my bucket was a real treat. We had books to learn from. We had three books, a reader, arithmetic and a study book. We knew how to take care of them, too. We didn't have heating and air conditioning like they do today. We had a big coal stove sitting in the middle of the floor and for air, we had open windows. If there wasn't any air, we done the best that we knew how to do. With conveniences today, it's just too easy. And our clothes were homemade and most of the time we went barefooted to school. The main thing is, we did get a good education. Most of us lived on a farm and we worked after school. After we got home, we had farm chores to do and house chores and we did them. We didn't have something to go to every night like kids do today. You can do it, too. I have lived to be 86 years old and it won't kill you either, so you need to try it. Every night they have ball games and this and that to go to. That takes more money than some people have - everybody is not rich. Now they've got to have a school room for everything and every subject. Try to live like we used to. You can get a good education. It won't kill you.