Champion News

Something pleasant can happen on any day in Champion. Wednesday the pleasantries included a visit from Kaitlyn McConnell and her traveling companion Mike O’Brien. She opened her basket to reveal an Impossible Pie. (Page 47 in her book The Ozark Pie Project Diary, available at the store.) She joined the acapella porch choir singing “Victory in Jesus” and bought some pie supplies before she and Mike headed off to Rockbridge for lunch. J.C. Owsley stopped by later for a brief visit while out on an adventure through Douglas and Ozark Counties. He was in a hurry, so he did not buy a cowbell this time.

Thursday had jammers appreciating the updated Vanzant Community Building. The music was good and the potluck was amazing as always. Doug and Margery Larrabee are regular attendees. Doug asked about the morrell mushrooms referenced in The Champion News. His had not reappeared to his satisfaction. He should take lessons from young Blaine Woods, who had her picture taken with about half a bushel of them on Easter Sunday.

Doug was also curious about our birthday celebrations. Perhaps his name will wind up in our birthday book eventually. That is what happened to Mena Dutton. Her birthday was Friday, April 10th, which happened to be the day our first hummingbird scout showed up at an Old Champion’s feeder. We are reminded that the recipe for hummingbird nectar is one part granulated sugar to four parts water. They say boil the water to help dissolve the sugar and then to let it cool completely. Experts say never to use red dye, honey or brown sugar, as these can harm the birds. We are grateful for the entertainment they provide and for all the natural beauty we are privileged to enjoy in this part of the world.

Saturday was the first Skyline Swap Meet of the year. It happens on the second Saturday of the month from now through the summer at the corner of Highway C and 76 Highway from 8:00 am to noon or there abouts. Find baked goods, eggs, small animals, crafts of various types, garden plants, and garage sale items. It looks like the next one will be on the 9th of May, just the day before Mother’s Day. We celebrate our Mothers every day here in Champion—Looking on the Bright Side!

Days slip by quickly in Champion.  Spring is all over us and we are dazzled by the red buds and dogwoods.  The little bit of rain has lifted our spirits and our hopes particularly as the morels are up in profusion. It is easy to lose track of things.

Pete Proctor reminded us of March 29th Honoring all who served in Viet Nam.  151,000 Missourians served. 1,141 of those soldiers are memorialized on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall.

We remember dear Beverly Coffman Emery on her birthday on April 7th.  Her spirit of fun was matched with her kindness, and her many friends miss her yet.  Margie Carr also has April 7th as her birthday, and she has undisclosed family connections to The General himself.  Lindsey Short celebrates on April 8th.  Felix the Farmer will probably sing to her and make her a special card.  He is good at that.  Champion grandson Dylon Watts has a birthday on April 12th, and it is rumored that he will soon be a father.  Studebaker Bob Berry will rev up his beautiful red 1946 Studebaker pickup truck on his birthday on April 14. Skyline prekindergarten student Wesley Wangsgard also celebrates that day.  April 15th has been income Tax Day for a long time.  Champion son-in-law Dustin Cline celebrates that day and remembers his wife’s aunt Vivian Floyd with whom he shared the day.  Many remember George Gary Jones that day, a Veteran and as good a friend as anyone could ever hope to have.  John Jolly’s birthday is also Tax Day.  We remember sweet Myrtle Harris on April 19th and her beautiful flowers.  One of our favorite Fox Creek Farmers will be old enough to get his driver’s license on April 20th.  So, happy birthday to all you who are still with us and to those who are not, we are grateful to have had you in our lives.

In our Easter bonnet with all the frills upon it we watched the Easter bunny hippity hop fun for our young ones.   The religious significance of the holiday gives us hope for a loving peaceful world in the future.  Champion—Looking on the Bright Side!

A Tuesday afternoon found an Old Champion sitting on the front porch listening to the birds and marveling at the approach of Spring even as the persistent drought has things thwarted so far. The promise of rain in the coming week will liven things up considerably. The big sound of the tiny Black Capped Chickadee filled the air though the little critters were nowhere to be seen. A pleasant warm afternoon became more pleasant with the arrival of a couple of big noisy road graders. Bobby Emery on one was showing a new hire to the road crew Cold Springs Road and giving him some good instruction. With several hundred miles of dirt/gravel roads to maintain it is a red-letter day when Bobby and the road guys can come our way.

It was smooth sailing down to Champion for the Wednesday Jam on the wide veranda. Thursday’s Vanzant Jam was on hold for the week as significant upgrades were in progress on the Community Building. Good things can happen at any time. Among those good things are birthdays like that of Skyline fourth grader Frederick Smith who celebrates on April 4th. The 5th is the big day for Fox Creek Cow Farmer Mandi Boehs. Carissa Rene of Hero’s Rest may tune up her mandolin and sing that song to herself on April 6th. We remember Bud Hutchison on his birthday on April 8th. He headed up a trail ride out of Champion in the spring and fall for years. These days it is called Bud Hutchison’s Memorial Trail ride and Andrew Harden has kept it going. Donnie Luna keeps our wonderful Skyline School going. He shares his birthday on April 9th with Candace Mayberry, Skyline’s SPED coordinator. Happy birthday to all of you. Enjoy your special days.

Saturday was a special day for seventy-seven stalwart citizens of Ava who were among the more than eight million people who took to the streets of the Nation to exercise their right to free speech. While opinions may vary widely on any given subject, the right to express them is one that was secured for us by the efforts of many generations of our brave forbearers—Champions—Looking on the Bright Side!

Champions determined to get the potatoes in the ground on St. Patrick’s Day determined that the next day would be close enough since it was forty degrees warmer the next day. One of the almanacs says the 18th will be poor for planting. Time will tell. Until time to get seeds in the ground there are plenty of springtime things to do. One old Campion is on a window washing campaign trying to get the special ones done before the hummingbirds arrive, which could be any day now. Wild peaches are blooming and mushroom hunters are surely out. Time flies.

From the March 18, 2007 issue of The Champion News at www.championnews.us we read, “The expected large turn-out for Champion’s First Annual Unorganized, Unauthorized and Unannounced St. Patrick’s Day Parade was a no show. Oh, there was the usual Saturday parade of regulars in and out of The Store throughout the course of the day and there was, no doubt, a mention of the Irish here and there, but the throngs of revelers were nowhere to be seen. Most of them were out in their potato patches doing what has to be done at this time of the year to make potatoes happen. It was the digging and seeding and the mulching that kept people off the street. There were frantic calls for newspapers from various farmers. Ed Henson was quoted by several regarding the use of newspapers to keep the dirt out of the eyes of the potatoes so they could see to come up. It has been suggested that a Champion Parade Committee should be organized so that a better showing can be made next year. The example set by the Spotted Hog community as reported in the Spotted Hog Yearly Gazette of a number of years ago is one to be emulated. It might be the good luck of Champion to secure Cletus Upshaw’s services as Grand Marshall. He was the official Director of Traffic at the now famous Spotted Hog Christmas Parade and clearly has more parade expertise than any who have so far stepped forward. It will be taken under advisement by the, as yet, unformed committee.”

Julie Heir lives up in a suburb of St. Louis or Kansas City and visits in Champion on her way to her family’s country place somewhere southwest of here. She shared an interesting book, “Mystery of the Irish Wilderness,” by Leland and Crystal Payton. It is a good read about the land and legend of Father John Joseph Hogan’s lost Irish colony in the Ozark wilderness. Julie called the other day asking about the ticks. She hopes to bring her four year old granddaughter down on her next visit, but would not like to return her to her mother with a tick bite. It was suggested that she speak with the Missouri Department of Conservation for whatever information they might have on the subject.

March 17th, St. Patrick’s Day, is also the birthday of Skyline School’s assistant cook Jenifer Trujillo. The talented young Scotsman, Charlie Macsween, has his birthday on the first day of Spring! On March 23rd Skyline kindergarten student Georgia Proctor will share her birthday with appliance doctor Donald Powell, with The General’s fair daughter Elva Upshaw, with true morel hunter Judie Pennington, and with Seahawks fan Susan Perry. On March 26th we remember Champion Troy Powell who loved gospel music. He was born in 1926 and passed away on his birthday in 2001. Skyline fourth grader Aliyiea Trujillo shares her birthday on March 27th with first grade teacher Joycelyn Downs. Tucker Johnson is in the seventh grade. He shares his birthday on March 30th with third grade teacher Melissa Wilhite. March ends on the 31st with a celebration of Morag Edward, artist, musician, scholar and intrepid sailor who not long ago crossed the wide Atlantic from Portugal to Argentina under sail. Happy birthday to all you exciting, interesting people.

With more good weather, the Sometimes Porch Band might convene on the wide veranda again and Ms. B. Denlow’s Saturday Coloring Club will likely produce some excellent renderings. Good things happen all the time in Champion—Looking on the Bright Side!

The wild vicissitudes of weather and of life in general keep Champions on their toes. They are not tiptoeing through the tulips, but are awash in daffodils, and big fields of grass seem to have turned green overnight. Spring is almost here even as we have sprung forward in time. Folks with jobs and students are having to adjust for the time change, while old, retired people are hardly bothered at all. Garden planning and preparation is well underway. In the absence of a good yard dog, constructing a fence tall enough to discourage deer takes some serious effort. Living in the country includes serious challenges and daily delights. Lucky us.

Kay Dennis may still be making brooms. Her birthday is March 9th. Skyline third grader, C.J. Castillo, celebrates on the 11th. The 12th is the day we remember Champion Geoff Metroplos and Cathie Odneal. Geoff was a master of many trades. One of his old friends said of his own carpentry that Geoff would be the only person who would see that it was out of plumb or not level. Cathie and her sister, Myrtle Harris, were regulars at the Vanzant Jam. That is where J.R. Johnston could be found with his banjo every Thursday. March 13th was his birthday. Skyline seventh grader, Trinity Castillo, will party on the 13th and fifth grader, Lillith Jeffery, will do that on March 16th, as will Elizabeth Mastrangelo Brown. Meanwhile, over in Scotland, Ursula Donnely and Sam Sonite will share the Ides of March for their big day. Sam is exactly 30 years older than his distant cousin Jacob Masters, who lives around Houston Texas and has a serious background in baseball. Skyline eighth grader, Grace Spence, will have her birthday on March 18th, and her Champion friends and neighbors wish her and all our celebrants happy days and good memories.

“Camp Learn A Lot” at Skyline on Thursday evening was full of adventure, literacy and math exploration with hands on learning. And Friday students and staff gave a big shout out to Mr. Bud. He is the maintenance engineer that keeps the place running smoothly, fixing problems and keeping the building safe and ready every day. He can be seen taking care of the grounds and taking care of the buses and doing all the everyday things that keep our great little rural school going. What a Champion! Looking on the Bright Side!

The prospect of a rainy week ahead is one that Champions embrace. Rain on a tin roof is a particular kind of sweet music after such a long dry spell. Gardens drink it up. The lunar eclipse due on Tuesday morning will be the first total lunar eclipse visible in North America in years, with the next one not expected until June 2029 for the U.S. We will be pleased to witness it if the rain clouds allow it, but we would just as soon have the rain. While many gardeners already have potatoes in the ground, others figure they have until St. Patrick’s Day and will be hustling to get the ground ready. Sue’s Greenhouse is ready already. She has had her grand opening featuring various types of seed potatoes and onion sets and starts. Her Champion friends will see her often as Spring approaches.

Wednesday’s Champion Jam featured the Whetstone Kid, 1976 Guiness Book of World Records holder as Pickathon Champion. He has come a long way from Scratch Ankle, Kentucky and has fallen in with a good crowd. Gina Hollingshad brought her bass guitar, her amazing repertory, and her beautiful voice. The fair Carissa joined The General harmonizing sweetly on a high-lonesome cowboy song. They reprised that haunting melody at the Vanzant Jam Thursday evening. Young Jeff Dutton, who may be around two years old, brought rounds of smiles and giggles from the crowd that night. He was in fine voice and having fun. He came in the company of his parents and his musical sisters, Margo and Mena. Hopes are this music loving family will be regulars at the local jams. They will get acquainted with the nicest people.

A glorious seventy-seven degree Saturday had townsfolk meandering out on country lanes visiting great grandmothers and old neighbors. Others were out on a nostalgic tour of ancestral birthplaces and stomping grounds. Whether our ties to this part of the world are deep and ancestral or just a few decades old or only a few years or less, we count ourselves truly blessed to live amid such natural beauty and among genuinely good neighbors—Champions—Looking on the Bright Side!

The wide veranda hardly proved wide enough for the Sometimes Sunshine Porch Band on a seventy-five degree February Wednesday. Often enough comprised of just a couple of enthusiastic amateurs, the band suddenly had two guitars, two mandolins, two fiddle/violins, and two harmonicas. Jeff Bartch brought his harmonicas and his friend Dick Nugent, himself a purveyor of fine harmonics and a talented player. A pair of back forty-fence neighbors picked the mandolins and the fiddles bowed by an opera singer and the bright light of Red’s Slice and Scoop. The General flailed one guitar while the Whetstone Kid played rhythm and lead and learned some music theory from a violinist. Old waltzes and gospel tunes, bluegrass and country songs filled the air. It was a red-letter day, also a red-flag day. We are cautioned to take extra care when it comes to burning. The woods are dry. The humidity is low. The danger is high.

Ruth Fish Collins has a lot of twos and fours in her birthday: 02-24-42. We hope it was a good one for her. Ruth has a beautiful voice and sings, “It was colder than a well-diggers ankle in Cut Bank, Montana” and “Buelah Land.” Skyline sixth grader, Ryanne Harvey shares her birthday on March 3rd with Dennis Schumate, who wears a t-shirt sometimes that says, “Mandolin players fret a lot.” Linda Heatherington may bid a grand slam in her birthday bridge game on the 5th. Sue Murphy’s birthday is March 8th. Hopes are that she is still strumming her mandolin, singing “In the Gravel Yard” and “Jesus is Coming Soon.” Every culture across the world seems to have music of some kind–good medicine.

J.c. Owsley cut a wide loop through Douglas County Wednesday. He lives up in Cross Timbers on a beautiful cow farm where he often photographs the stunning sunrises and sunsets. He always likes to chew the fat with his cousin, The General, when he is this neck of the woods. He enjoyed the music and made sure to secure his copy of Katilyn McConnell’s “Ozark Pie Project and Diary” and his cow bell. He says, “Where else can a person buy a cow bell these days?” His growing collection has mostly been sourced in Champion—Looking on the Bright Side!