Champion News

The Millpond is a favorite haunt for Champions and their summer visitors.

“Summer time and the living is easy” in Champion.  Well, it may not be easy, but it is certainly pleasant.  Though these are being spectacular days, there is always plenty of work to do for people who live in the country.  Yard work and gardening keep old timers and retirees busy while they watch real farmers, young ones and old ones, doing all that their profession requires of them–milking, haying, planting, brush hogging, and myriad other things including keeping the equipment in order and the animals healthy.  Those fine gentlemen from the Drury Road Shed are out in the elements all day getting our roads and bridges back together after the flood.  That is certainly hard work.  Then, there are the other heroes, our teachers and school staff.  They get some well-deserved time off during the summer, though there is summer school and a great deal of preparation for starting the next term.  Certified Reading Specialist and Librarian, Terri Ryan, might be getting to do some fishing.  Lannie Hinote may well be vacationing in the area from her teaching job in Alaska.  Visitors from all parts of the country have been coming to Champion to visit family and to revel in, if for only a little while, the life we fortunates are privileged to enjoy year round.

Skyline second grade student, Jasmine Hutson will have her birthday on the July 2nd, as will bus driver, Paul Kennedy.  Patrick Vincent will be in the eighth grade had his birthday is on the 3rd.  We all celebrate the birthday of the Nation on July 4th.  The 5th is the birthday of the Dalai Lama and Virginia Canada.  Walter Darrell Haden’s birthday was July 6th, 1931.  He was a very interesting person and a great encourager of The Champion News.  He passed away in 2014, and what the author of “All the Late News from the Court House” might make of today’s scandals would surely be entertaining and informative.  Champion great grandson Kruz Kuzt has his birthday on the 7th.  Happy Birthday to all those we can celebrate today and all those who we remember for the way they have touched us.  Huzzah!  Meanwhile, Terri Ryan says, “Skyline Community, please mark your calendars and help spread the word!  We are having an electronics recycling pick up on August 1 (Tuesday) about 10 a.m.  Items can be brought on Monday, July 31st if necessary.  Anything that plugs in is free, except televisions and you have to pay $10 fee for those.  This is a great recycling opportunity.”

The 25th and 26th of June are days celebrated by the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho for their overwhelming victory in the battle of Greasy Grass which occurred along the Little Bighorn River in eastern Montana Territory in 1876.  By the time Yellow Hair was losing his campaign, many of the ancestors of current Champions were in the process of homesteading in these parts.  Families like the Stones, the Hensons, the Hicks, Upshaws, Hutchisons, Kriders, Sutherlands, and Kellers, Cooleys, Johnstons, Dooms and you know who all you are.  While your folks were claiming their land and developing it, The Great Sioux War was going on out west.  Just imagine if Yellow Hair had had a great para-military private security force like Tigerswan at his disposal!  All those pesky indigenous people would have been exterminated or dispersed and today’s aggravating protests about eminent domain for private gain would not be a problem in North Dakota, or in Pennsylvania, Iowa, New York, Nebraska, and any number of other places.  In Orwell’s Newspeak it would be ‘doubleplusgood’ for corporate interests.  Most Orwellian is the notion that many states are now considering bills to make protesting a felony, all of which smacks of irony on the eve of our celebration of The Declaration of Independence, which is a most profound protest document.  Happy Birthday, America!

Correspondence to champion@championnews.us:  “I heard from a friend a long time ago (she is gone now) that the Missouri Conservation Department would not allow for the killing of copperheads because they viewed them as beneficial.  Having said that, she then reported on the numerous suicides (presumably of snakes) at her home.”  The correspondent indicated that she watched a copperhead commit suicide via lawn mower just the other day.  Reports of that nature are not unusual any day of the week this time of the year at the Historic Emporium over on the North side of the Square in Downtown Champion.  Hovey e-mails that he is thinking about coming in October when the foliage changes.  “I would like to walk the Bryant Creek nature trail, if it has not been washed out.”  Regular summertime visitors from Texas like to go to the Millpond.  They have been doing it for many years and consider it one of the highlights of their holiday.  They arrived on Friday in the late morning in time for a wade in the wonderfully cold water and a pleasant picnic before the thundering and sprinkling started.  They said it was as beautiful as they remembered.  Locals who had not been out there since before the flood were pleased that the route they took was passable, if a rough one, and were impressed with the obvious work that the road crews had done to make it that way.  The creek is still flowing right along over the rock formations under the tall cliffs.  The ‘beach’ is wider now and it is not so far across to the other side.  The new configuration will likely be a surprise to the many who will attend The Old Tree Hugger’s Jamboree.  They will come from near and far to enjoy their annual visit with each other in the splendor of this setting.

“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow,” said Audrey Hepburn.  An Old Champion recently thought to augment her straw bale garden with a fish emulsion treatment.  She put half a cup of the stinky stuff in the bottom of her bucket and almost had the four gallons of water to dilute it added in when she saw that bucket was split along the side about two inches from the bottom and leaking fast.  It was a race to distribute the solution without wasting much of it.  She started over with another bucket only to find a hole in it near the bottom.  She had to scramble again but was able to complete her task, if not in the calm and orderly fashion she had planned.  All done, she sang Hank Williams version of, “My bucket’s got a hole in it!” on her way to the dump to get rid of the offending vessels.  It is exciting to see the first color starting out in the tomato patch.  Vanzant’s lovely chanteuse, Ruth Collins, has already had a couple of ripe ones on her table.  Perhaps she will learn that wonderful song that says, “There’s just two things that money can’t buy and that’s true love and home grown tomatoes.”  Sing whatever song you like out on the wide veranda overlooking Auld Fox Creek.  You can be melodious in one of the world’s truly beautiful places—Champion! Looking on the Bright Side!