Speakout 10/24

A child at the age of four years has to be in a car seat or the driver will have to pay a fine. Why is it legal for a 4-year-old to ride on the bus to preschool with no seat belt?

We called the Sikeston Public Schools Transportation Department with your question. "School bus seats are compartmentalized to safely contain students in the event of an accident without the use of seat belts, as long as the students are seated properly. All buses are annually inspected by the Missouri State Highway Patrol. The last inspection for Sikeston Public Schools received the 100 percent compliance award."

I want to thank the angel at Fas Gas who helped me when I locked my keys in my car. This customer went out of their way to help me. God bless you.

To the kind and honest man who returned our son's stuff on Main Street in Heckemeyer Acres, you really brightened a boy's day. Thanks again.

I agree with the person about a foreigner being governor of California, but I do not agree that the farmer needs to be subsidized. Have you ever looked up on the Internet how much these farmers get around here for doing nothing? It is ridiculous and if they can't make it farming, they get paid for that too. I don't believe the government would step in and pay me if I opened a business and couldn't make a go of it. I think some of you would be shocked to find out the amount of checks that are mailed each year while the rest of us are trying to make ends meet. I'm sure some of you will write, crying how much you do. Save it. We can see for our own. It is kind of like "The Little Boy Who Cried 'Wolf.'"

I read an article that showed Kit Bond and some of the men who have been working on the St. John's Bayou for many years, JoAnn Emerson, and Furg Hunter who also played a very important part in that. I live in the Morehouse area and you know we have terrible drainage problems over here and in New Madrid County. I have lived here since 1956 and they have some pretty good drainage since they worked on the Little River Drainage District back then. But it just gets worse and worse. I thought we were paying some drainage ditch tax. Are we or is it enough? They need to get busy and clean some of these ditches out around here. The Little River hasn't been touched since Lord knows when. It's all grown up and looks like a jungle river; you don't know when you're going to hit bottom. It's terrible. Now that you have this St. John's Bayou project taken care of, and work is supposed to start on it in 2004, how about getting together with the drainage people and some of these farmers and start getting some of these ditches cleaned out in 2004 (at least no later than 2005). This is a very important part to the farmer and Morehouse sometimes gets flooded away. We need to get something done about this. This is very important.