Stories from Sunday, November 23, 2003

Hi neighbors. It may not feel like it today, but it is almost turkey day! Time to break over to eggnog for the first of three holidays when it's OK to save coffee for desert instead of with the meal. How many of you have turkey more than once a year? Not very many I'll bet. Except for those like me who have it for Christmas too...

On November 23, 1964, Lee Harvey Oswald murdered President John F. Kennedy in the streets of Dallas. I hear that most of today's Americans were not yet alive that day. That means I've survived in a Kennedy-less country for 40 years, and that's what surprises me. My God! Where did all the time go! It truly does seem like only yesterday...

100 Years Ago -- November 23, 1903 A pretty blue-eyed baby about four weeks old was left at Mr. and Mrs. J.C. Fletcher's residence on West Austin Street Sunday night. Some mother by an unnatural impulse left the baby there, probably knowing that Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher out of the goodness of their hearts would take into their comfortable home the little stranger...

More than 400,000 Missouri firearm deer hunters who ventured out on the opening weekend of the 2003 season failed to take as many deer as forecasted. Hunters did kill 110,995 which was 16,256 less than the opening weekend last fall. Before the opening, Missouri Conservation Department biologists said that the deer were out there, but weather would be a very big factor in hunters' success. ...

There are two things I find particularly vexing about professional sports, but for the life of me, I don't know if they bother others. The nagging twosome as I term them are: (l) franchise shifts, and (2) teams named for something other than where they play...

Another chapter of the John Weeter story was written Friday as Judge James Bickel awarded families of the five victims who died in the crash April 14, 2002, $2 million for each of the deaths in compensatory damages. On top of the compensatory damages, Bickel awarded $2 million in punitive damages for the families...

It's that time of year again, when many Americans gleefully take a day off work in the middle of the week and stuff themselves with food until they end up in front of a TV to watch college football games. For turkey producers, this feast of belt-loosening proportions represents almost two years of planning and preparation...

"Spray on some perfume, and put on your lipstick and a smile," because recovering wounded men needed a reassuring and pleasant person to care for them. That's what the head nurse in Helen White's unit in Vietnam often told White and the other nurses -- and that's what they did. ...