Champion News

EDINBURGH—October 15, 2012

               News has traveled all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to the effect that Saturday night brought another good inch of rain to Champion and that the weather is wonderful.   Sunday was the birthday of Peanut’s dad and his Tennessee sister and her tall sons were in for a week’s visit.  They joined together with Foster and Kalyssa and their folks and others to wish the Fox Creek Farmer a joyful birthday celebration.  Other birthdays had all the Old Tree-Huggers out at Woodpecker’s Paradise Hall for the benefit of Miller’s son, Davey.  Now that is a gathering one would rather not have missed!  Alas!

               Bud Hutchison’s Fall Trail Ride is an event of some significance to Champions.  It has been so for many years.   Riders rendezvous at Champion on Wednesday morning and form up in their ranks to explore the countryside.  Since most of these participants have been on this ride many times already, someone suggested that it is more like a patrol of the area rather than an exploration.  They take out of Champion at ten in the morning and cut a wide loop about the area.  To know just exactly where they go, one would have to go with them.  If you cannot go, just be hanging around the Emporium on the North side of the Square in Downtown Champion early in the afternoon when they come moseying back in and surely someone of them will tell you just where they went and who may have been thrown off in the water or bucked off into the brush.  The best hope is that it will have been exciting excursion but uneventful as far injury is concerned.  

“Rusticity’ Ungainly Form” is another of those interesting short works by Robert Burns.  In eight rimed lines he manages to say that it is easy even for an enlightened individual to misjudge a poor country person by his looks.  Now that his vision has improved so considerably, the venerated General might be more willing to spare poor Sensibility his “ungentle, harsh rebuke,” and may also be a little more grateful when he looks in the mirror.  Look back into the archives at www.championnews.us to find a picture of “Junior and The General” to illustrate the point.     

On a stroll about the city in the late evening an old Champion couple happened into a little restaurant called My Big Fat Greek Kitchen just for a small bite to eat.  The waitress was a Greek girl who had only arrived in the city three days earlier.  Her English was beautiful and she said that her friends note that her accent is very American.  She loves the United States and hope to go there one day.  Just now, however, she was already missing her home and her family.  She plans to stay in Edinburgh for only one year, but she says that people often come to the city and get caught.  She is looking for a second job so that she can earn more money and get home sooner.  She is young and attractive and away from her home for the first time.  She said that she just hopes that she does not fall in love because she might never get home.   Her new friends hope that when she does fall in love it will be with someone who will love her enough to take her home and perhaps to America and to Champion where she can see the Bright Side.

               Linda’s Almanac from over at The Plant Place in Norwood shows the 16^th & 17^th  to be good days for planting above-ground crops and leafy vegetables. The 18^th through the 20^th are considered to be barren days—good for clearing and plowing, but not planting.  The 21^st and 22^nd are good for above the ground crops again according to the conditions of weather and circumstances that may allow for protected fall planting.  The 18^th to the 20^th and the 23^rd to the 25^th will all be good days to prune to discourage growth.   Weather in Auld Reekie (Edinburgh) is currently much as it is in Champion with no hard frost in the city yet.  There are many roses, bleeding hearts, passion flowers, hydrangeas and many unfamiliar blooming things.   Travelers will take pictures of the flowers and get Linda to identify them when they get home.  There is being an unseasonable amount of sunshine, but the overall temperatures are a little chill.  The city is called Auld Reekie (reek) because it used to be a very smoky city due to the smoke from the chimneys as people heated with coal.  It might also be connected with the fact that in the old, old days people just emptied their chamber pots out the windows!  There is a song about that called “The Flowers of Edinburgh” and it is a marvelously beautiful fiddle tune.  The hardware stores are full of gardening tools and snow shovels.  They say that one can experience all four seasons in a day.  

A nice chat with Esther has her about the same, still making progress toward her recovery, but still experiencing some discomfort in her back.  She said that Leon and Peggy Harris had come over for supper on Friday night and they had had a good visit.  She was surprised to get a call from the other side of the big pond and says she will be interested in looking at the pictures.  Meanwhile, new friends are enjoying pictures of another wonderfully beautiful place in the world—Champion—Looking on the Bright Side!