I wasn’t much good at anything it seemed.

 I was just a shade over mediocrity in pretty much all that I did in my early years in high school.  My grades were good, but not tops in my class.  Participation in activities had to revolve around the chores at home – so there was little athletics, except track, where our coach trusted me to get my work outs in when and where I could.

I wasn’t much of a world traveler either.

Our big trip of the year was usually the yearly trek to Fargo when my brother had his doctor’s appointment.  If we were really lucky, we might get to take a weekend trip down to St. Paul to visit my mother’s side of the family.

My freshman year in high school, I followed in my brother’s footsteps and joined our local FFA Chapter.  FFA, then known as the Future Farmers of America, was just up my alley.  For the most part, it conformed to our communities, and my families, standards and schedule.

As our FFA advisor stated, you could do as much or as little as you wanted – that choice was up to you.  And the schedule always seemed to fit around chores.

The highlight of the year, for those of us willing to work to get there, was a trip to the Minnesota State FFA Convention in St. Paul and Minneapolis as long as we earned our way there by placing in a contest.

That first year, I participated and won our regional extemporaneous speaking contest.  I was shocked.  My advisor was thrilled.  Not only because I had won, but because I had knocked off the two time defending champion from our biggest rival…and his nemesis, the advisor from the other chapter…wasn’t happy.  He walked up to my advisor, Mr. Erickson and said with vengeance in his voice: “Your kid got lucky, Erickson!”  Those words became an often repeated phrase in our ag class – with my advisor smiley broadly anytime someone would repeat it.

For me, most importantly, it won me a spot at the state convention.

That trip to St. Paul was filled with firsts.  The first time at the mighty U of M campus, the first time staying in a hotel, the first time seeing and experiencing the thrill of the sea of blue corduroy that swarmed the campus.  I heard people talking about believing and achieving.  I heard the call to think big thoughts, to dream big dreams.  This is not what I thought farming and agriculture were all about.

I saw young men and women my own age, on stage, being rewarded for their efforts.  I saw the state officers, young people only a few years older then me, running this organization of over 8000 young men and women.

The Tuesday morning of state convention, I participated in the Minnesota FFA Extemporaneous speaking contest.  I was terrified.  A freshmen in what seemed like a room of seniors.  People with much more experience then I did, walking in to speak to judges that knew much more about agriculture then I did.

Out of eight other students, I placed second.

“My kid got lucky!”  Mr. Erickson said when he found out the results.  And in truth, I did.  I went on to do, and to earn, many honors and awards in my career in the FFA…but in was that first convention that taught me that I was more then mediocre, and there is nothing ordinary about anyone that wears that blue corduroy jacket.

My brother and I, reviewing our haul from our local FFA Banquet

 Mom was nervous.  And that usually took a lot.

As she used to tell the story, it had started as a normal day getting settled into her new home on the prairie.  She and Dad had only been married for several weeks and they had been getting settled into their new life together.

They had moved back to the farm that they were taking over from my father’s bachelor uncle.  Into the same little house that he and my great grandfather had built years ago in the near wilderness.  My father had helped to clear the land as a boy.  This was home.

For my mother, it was a grand adventure.  Born and raised in the city, she still felt a connection to the land.  Born and raised in South St. Paul, Minnesota, she new the smell of livestock.  Her uncles lived on the old family homestead along the banks of the Mississippi.  Yet she was a product of the city too.

Her other sisters, already married, had warned her about the “talk” she could expect from her mother-in-law.  The one where she laid down the rules of the family, where she explained how things were going to work, and, they warned, it would be even more difficult for my mother.  Their own mother-in-laws were hundreds of miles away….my mother was moving right down the road from hers, on the family farm and into the community that were not her own.

Mom didn’t want to believe them.  She said that my father’s mother was much too nice for that.

Every day for a week when they were trying to get settled into their home, grandma would be over, helping her air out the house, clean cupboards, and back stuff away.

Then one morning, it happened.  Grandma poured two cups of coffee, sat down at the table, and said, “We need to have a little chat.”

That is when Mom got extremely nervous.

“There are a few things you need to know moving from the city out onto a farm.”  Grandma started.  My Mom thinking she knew what was coming next – and long list of social do’s and don’ts, a list of how not to cross the family.  How to be seen and not heard.

“First,” grandma started, “Don’t drive a tractor.  If he gets you out their once, he will always expect you out there.  You have enough work to do without driving tractor.”

This was not what Mom had expected.

“Second,” grandma continued, “Don’t milk the cows.  If he wants those smelly things around here, let him milk them himself.”

Mom was a bit flabbergasted.

“Finally,” grandma concluded, “Don’t mow the grass.  He can take an hour or two each week and cut his own darn grass.”

Mom sat with her mouth open.  This was not what she expected.  But she took the advice to heart, much to the chagrin of my father.  Mom lived the rest of her life on that same farm, turning that little house into a home for husband and five rambunctious children.  She never drove a tractor.  She never milked a cow.  She never cut the grass.

And what about Mom and Grandma?  They were friends until the very end.  My grandmother calling my mother the daughter she never had and my mother wearing that title like a badge of honor. 

I’m a simple, naïve country boy.  More at home in an open field or on a tractor seat then co-hosting a party for over a hundred people…which is probably one of the core reasons I got into the trouble that I did.The first year I got involved in the mistermaxwell.com Crawfish Boil was the first annual event, seven years ago.  My good friend Pat and several of his friends, with Mr. Maxwell himself leading the charge, decided that a crawfish boil, Louisiana style, was just what their friends and family in Minnesota needed after a long painful winter.

Somehow, I got myself involved as one of the co-hosts, which in its first year, meant simply mixing the Hurricanes.  I must digress a bit about myself and the Hurricanes.  In college as an undergrad, I rarely drank – as a matter of fact, my first alcohol consumption didn’t start until after my 22^nd birthday.  Since then, I’ve only been a social drinker, and primarily a beer drinker at that.

The Hurricanes are something completely different.  A punch with rum and fruit, it has a rich aroma and a great sweet taste.  Made famous by Pat O’Brien’s Pub, a New Orleans institution, we were told it was THE drink of crawfish boils.

I’m not sure how me, someone with more experience milking cows then mixing drinks got the job of mixing them, but much to my, and perhaps everyone’s surprise, I was good at it.  Very good.

“These are better then any I’ve ever had in New Orleans!”  A frequent visitor to New Orleans said.

“I normally hate this fruity crap, but I like yours.” Someone else volunteered.

One of the traditions of the crawfish boil was born.  The first year was a small crowd, forty or fifty people.  They liked the food, they liked the Hurricanes, they liked the free natured-come as you are – enjoy life attitude of the crawfish boil.

The second year, the weather didn’t cooperate.  It was cool and a bit rainy and it impacted both attendance and Hurricane consumption, it didn’t dampen spirit of the crowd.

The 3^rd Annual Crawfish Boil is where things got a little interesting.  The five of us hosting, Mike, Pat, Scott, Sean, and myself, were inviting a few more people every year – and this year, the weather was darn near perfect.  Early April, sunshine, and near eighty degrees, it was the first nice weather of spring.  Someone made the crack that there really should be a hurricane warning flag out…little did we sense foreshadowing…

The crowd started small, but in good spirits.  Katie, Pat’s girlfriend, that had grown up in a small prairie town only forty miles from my own, was watching me make the hurricanes with interest.  This is where I really got into trouble….

“You can be the taste tester!” I advised.

“OK, that sounds like fun.” She said.

Within two hours, the crowd grew from a handful to well over a hundred people.  The nice weather had people in a festive mood…and in the mood for a festive drink…and the Hurricane fit the bill.

Soon, I couldn’t get the punch bowl out to the garage without people dosing it out in generous measures and toasting me and my magical punch.  Back into the house to mix another batch I would rush, with Katie dutiful testing every batch.

Suddenly, I noticed that Katie had disappeared….

“Where is Katie?” I asked.

“She had to go and lie down.” Someone volunteered.

Things for me were a little blurring at that point, but I remember thinking, “What was I to do without the official taste tester?”  But the hurricanes must go on…little did I realize the storm that was brewing. 

Like a real hurricane in the process, the damage would only be realized after the storm had passed.

By the end of the night, eighteen jugs of rum would be gone.  At least ten people would be passed out on Pat’s front lawn or in the living room the next day.  I would compete in a near fatal habenaro pepper eating contest.  And my faithful taste tester?  She had disappeared upstairs…asleep, seeking refuge from the storm below.

The post mortem of the event would lead to the answers to our ills.  It was me.  My wonderful tasting hurricanes were a toxic brew.  If you read the directions, they state, “Fill a glass with ice and mix 50% hurricane mix and 50% rum…which I was doing…filling the punch bowl with 50% hurricane mix and 50% run…sans the ice…which meant that the hurricanes were twice as powerful then they should have been.

The hurricanes, rightly so, have been banished from the Crawfish Boil.  The boil itself has moved on to a bar.  Pat and Katie (now husband and wife), while still pointing the blame for the treacherous storm directly at me, seemed to have generally forgiven (though not forgotten) my part in the event and I count them both as some of my closest friends.

Which just goes to show…as destructive as a hurricane is, it has creative power and can give rise to closer ties, closer communities, and closer friends…

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today) 

My name is decidedly Czech.  So is my love of kolaches.  But beyond that, I don’t have many physical ties to the land of my ancestors.

My grandmother was born in Czechoslovakia.  She was less than a year old when her family, the Stolkas, pulled up stakes and come to America.  They settled first in Iowa and then moved on to northern Minnesota.

Her stories remind me that those were hard times.  Iowa and Minnesota were pioneer states in 1910.  Forests and prairies rolled on seemingly forever.  What few roads there were crude mud tracks.  Those Jiriks and Stolkas relied on horse power and hard manual labor to build their future.  There were deaths, illnesses and financial disasters in the family.

Why did they come here?  Why did they stay?

From what I can piece together of family lore, crop failures and economic misfortune prompted the family to move to America.  They saw opportunity here.  In some cases, financial necessity made staying here the only choice they had.  I suppose it is a familiar story among thousands of families who are descended from immigrants.

Things must have been grim for the families to abandon their ancestral homes to come here to such crude conditions and hardship.

Jan Kucharik is an immigrant too.  But it was political concerns, not economic necessity that drove Kucharik and his family from Czechoslovakia with his wife a decade ago.  They worried about education and other opportunities for their children.

Like immigrants 100 years ago, the Kuchariks built a new life for themselves here.  “I was feeling at home here,” Jan said.  But any similarity with immigrants of 80 or 100 years ago ends there.

Things have changed very quickly in Czechoslovakia.  For the first time in decades, the county is no longer under communist rule.  The economy is expanding and there are again opportunities for entrepreneurs and farmers like the Kuchariks.

Jan and his wife and their two children returned to their family home in Czechoslovakia this week.

Somehow, this news makes me happy.

I do not know the Kuchariks.  And I have never met any Jiriks and Stolkas from Czechoslovakia.  Yet, I want life to be good for them.  I want them to have a great future.

Why?

I don’t really know.  Perhaps the Czech blood in my veins is thicker than I thought.

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today) 

Maybe you didn’t notice, but Monday, April 22, was Earth Day.

It came and went with much less pageantry and excitement than accompanied the 20^th anniversary observance in 1990.  There were fewer celebrities marching, fewer cover stories on news magazines and fewer television news crews covering the events that did take place.

It was a calmer, quieter Earth Day.

Somehow, it was fitting.  Protecting the environment becomes more a part of our lives everyday.  We buy groceries with “environmentally friendly” packaging.  We throw our cans, bottles and milk jugs into recycling bins.  Many of you bundle up your old Boone TODAY’S for the recycling bins, too.   Many Boone residents will try their hands at composting yard waste this year for the first time, thanks to new Iowa regulations.  Planting trees is a spring tradition here. 

We still have problems with hazardous wastes, overflowing landfills and air pollution.  Nitrates and atrazine still contaminate many Iowa streams and wells.   Leaky under-ground fuel storage tanks continue to be an expensive headache.  We’re still far too dependent on fossil fuels.  And wind and water erosion are still destroying Iowa’s precious farmland at an alarming rate.

But there’s been a subtle change in attitudes that makes the environmental future brighter and causes that we’ve endorsed over the years, our concern for the environment seems to be more enduring than usual.

Millions of dollars are being funneled toward research designed to learn how to farm without causing environmental chaos.  Farmers are becoming better stewards of their land.  More businesses are environmentally aware and changing their practices and products accordingly.

Many of those businesses are finding that being friendly to the environment can help profits too.  Consumers respond with their dollars to companies that display an environmental conscience.  And becoming more efficient with packaging material, energy and other resources, means companies can cut costs.

At home, children are urging their parents to turn off lights and recycle.  Parents are responding and environmental concern has become a family activity in many households.

We have a long way to go before we stop abusing the environmental and heal the wounds we’ve already inflicted, but it’s nice to know that we’re making progress.  It was a nice way to celebrate Earth Day.

In other business, in this space last week, I wrote about the Boone County Humane Society’s annual rummage/bake/auction sale.  I’m happy to report that the sale was wildly successful, netting more than $6,000 for the society.  Thanks to everyone who shopped, donated or helped out in any way.  Your support continues to amaze me.

I grew up on the northern end of the Mississippi River.  The part of the river that you can walk across without getting your feet wet.  The area of the river inhabited by people who’s excitement consists of shoveling snow and swatting mosquitoes.  The area of the river where a night on the town includes either: a) Legion/VFW Hall b) church social c) fishing d) a little lunch.Or more often then not, all of the above.

Our little farmstead lay about forty miles as the crow flies from the very headwaters of the “Father of all Waters.”  Yet their was little connection to those that lived downriver.  There was no blues, no jazz, no longing for Beal Street, no desire to walk Bourbon Street, no desire to live the life of the seemingly carefree people on the other end of the river.

Stoic and stubborn to the bitter end, we were good, hardworking Czechs, Germans, Norwegians, Swedes, and Fins…and the Fins were a little too rambunctious for the rest of us….

But somewhere along the line, I get mixed up with a bad crowd.

For the seventh year in a row, I’ve been involved with an event much more in-line with the far end of the river, those Cajuns and Creoles way down south where the Mighty Mississippi meets the clear waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

I’ll admit it.  I’m involved with a crawfish boil.

The event has grown and evolved from a simple celebration of spring with some crawfish, potatoes, corn, and beer and a handful of friends in a garage into a bonafied event with ninety pounds of crawfish, forty pounds of sausage, forty pounds of potatoes, corn, spices, kegs of beer, and well over a hundred friends served up on the back patio of a very small town type bar in the middle of the largest city in Minnesota.

And last year even a Cajun band to boot!

I’ll admit, for a man with such strong northern roots, it is hard to believe that for at least one day a year I’ve become so gulfified (Cajuafied?  Creolinated?  Mississipianianified?), but it’s true.

While the celebration may be more New Orleans then Bemidji, the spirit is universal.  It is about good friends, good food, and enjoying good company.  It is less about the crawfish (aka “mudbugs”) and more about friendship.  It has less to do with cooking and more about getting people from diverse backgrounds, faiths, and creeds together to celebrate and break bread…er…crawfish together.

Regardless where you are, what your background, what your financial situation, or how stoic your raising, we all need a little more goodwill, a little more celebration, a little more gratitude for what we have, even if all we have are friends, for often in this world, that is enough.

This year, with its financial melt down, with its global unrest, with its rancor and ill will towards our fellow men – this year, more then ever – we need a crawfish boil, or lefse feed, or clam bake, or back yard garden party.  This year, more then ever, we need to realize that our riches lie in not what we have, but in who we help and serve.  Our riches lie not in our bank accounts, but in those that help and support us.

So get the pot a boiling and the Zydeco music playing and enjoy the riches that surround you in your friends and family.

It was a prairie pothole in the truest sense of the word.  To the west was the hill that our farmstead sat on.  To the east, a hill where once sat the very first homestead that my grandmother had moved to as a little girl with her family, now an open field.  To the north is a small ridge that connects to the two hills.  The water to the north flows to the south west.  To the south is a smaller ridge – and the area of release for the slough if it grows too big for its hole, that water flows south and east of the farm.A field road circled the slough and the building site followed the high ground on the south, ending shortly before the natural drain crossed the crest.  To the east and north is where we would park machinery during the winter, still in the safety of the grove of trees, and where often machinery went to retire and hence the term that we used for the rises as we collectively called them, “machinery hill.”

The slough added a bit of wilderness to our farm and a bit of mystery.

Grandma used to tell us that when they moved to the area – now miles and miles of open farm field, the entire area was think groves of oak and elm.  The area of the slough which, in my lifetime, was covered with water 80% of the time was a clearing among the trees where they planted their first garden.

During my earliest years, I remember the slough being a source of good grass during the driest of summers, where we would herd the cattle.

But it was also scary place for a little kid.  Tall grass, wet sopping ground, birds, snakes, frogs, mice, bugs, ruts, holes, mounds of dead grass – it all combined to form this foreboding place, our slough, right down the hill that our house sat on.  It was the source of millions, and millions of mosquitoes.  I am still haunted by a story that I heard as a small child of “my brother’s horse being out there…”  I think they buried it when it died along the hillside of the slough, but to my young mind…the horse just disappeared out there…never to be seen again.

As I got older, the slough became a little more inviting.  It was less scary, and more magical.  You could walk up on the soggy shore and set sail cucumber boats.  You could sit on one of the big mounds formed by a long ago deteriorated stump.  You could, with a good dose of bug spray, disappear for an hour or two, walking along Machinery Hill and enjoy the coolness of the thick grass.

For the last thirty plus years, I’ve watched the seasons out of the kitchen window across the slough.  The ice in the winter, the melt and the influx of water in the spring, the lushness of late spring and early summer, the dryness of late summer and early fall, combined with the music of the ducks, geese, and the melodies of the frogs for spring, summer and fall.

Like a timid friend, the slough remains mysterious, but respected.  And she can sometimes still though surprises our way.

After watching the slough change, and develop over my thirty years (and my father’s eighty), each year is different, but the changes, like with people, are generally gradual.  This year, she threw us a bit of a bolt from the blue.  Going home for the weekend, I gazed out the kitchen window to catch up with the old friend – had the geese come back?  How many ducks this year?  How much water was backed up out of the tall grass and into the yard?

When I was startled by the sight of a hill, almost perfectly round in the middle of the slough.  What was going on?  I walked into the living room, my eyes as big as sauces, my dad said – did you see the slough?

“Yeah, how could I miss it?” I said.

“I think it’s oil.” Dad said in mock seriousness.

“There is no oil in this part of the country.” I said.  “Maybe a bog that floated to the top?”

“Oil sounds better then a bog.”  Dad replied, “Plus, a bog wouldn’t be so perfectly rounded and so mounded in the middle.  I’m hoping it’s oil.”

So our old friend, my grandmother’s garden, the place that swallowed my brother’s horse, the place where I could wile away a beautiful summer afternoon, had changed on us again.  In the process adding more mystery and allure to her.

And I too hope it’s oil…but will like her all the same if its not!

The Slough In Winter, View from the South

Winter View From the House

Full Slough in the Spring

View across the Slough the Machinery Hill

View of the Slough from the far end of the porch

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today) 

All that Earth Day stuff was a little depressing.

 I picked up a newspaper only to find out that we are poisoning our groundwater.  A magazine filled me in on how our rivers were serving as sewers and toxic waste dumps.  A television special told me how fast our landfills are filling up.  The radio was telling me about all the awful stuff floating around out in the oceans.  Yuk.

So I went outside to get away from it all.  I thought maybe a walk would turn my thoughts to something a little lighter.  I’m taking care of a lawn for a neighbor down the street, so I decided to go get the mowing done.

I hadn’t mowed a lawn in two years or so.  It felt good to stretch some muscles that I don’t normally use.  It was a warm evening and I was sweating more that a little.  It became painfully obvious that the Earth isn’t the only thing out or shape.

I sat down at the edge of the garden to take a little rest and to catch my breath.

An evening breeze carried the warm scent of budding trees and freshly cut grass.  The birds were shattering up in the trees, scolding me for making so much noise with the mower.

With my fingers, I dug a little hole there in the garden.  The sun had warmed the top of the soil, but underneath the top gray layer, there was dark, cool moisture.

A few tiny plants were poking through the soil, as if searching for the spring sun.  I hadn’t planted anything there yet.  I’m looking forward to planting a garden and watching it grow.  I’m also anticipating a fruitful and delicious harvest.

I realized then that the budding trees and the sprouting weeds and that fast-growing grass out there doing their thing, despite those dour predictions being bandied about on Earth Day.  Despite the dumping and polluting that’s going on, we don’t give a second thought to our expectations of a fruitful harvest.

We’ve done some pretty awful things to the Earth, but the trees and the weeds and the corn still grow.  The soil still smells good when you turn it over in the spring and the rains still come if you wash your car often enough.

I was out there all alone in the garden, but it was the best news I heard all week.

 The news on the radio wasn’t reassuring.  Evacuations, mandatory and voluntary were still in effect.  The interstate from Fargo west was shut down all the way to Jamestown, ND for a “training exercise.”  The National Weather Service was predicting the crest to still take place up to 43 feet sometime late Saturday.

We stopped for a cone and bite to eat at the Dairy Queen, our muscles now aching from the pounding of the day.  My brother, who had been sandbagging on and off all week shared some advice that he had gotten from some college students who worked tirelessly all week trying to save Fargo-Moorhead.

“Two ibuprofen and a whiskey chaser,” stated Tom, “That is what they told me.”

After the shower, I hunkered down in my brother’s house to watch the evening news.  There was little new information.  Only the same mixture of hope and concern.  A few ibuprofen (sans the whiskey shooter), and off to bed I went.

Waking early the next morning, I turned on the radio in the room in my nieces room – she volunteered to take the floor in her folks room so that I could have a bed – and listened to the reports.

It was good.

The river’s rise had almost stopped.  Stopped they thought by a combination of the cold temperatures and a little less water south of town.  The town might be saved.

With the good news came an interview with a national reporter for one of the major networks, a reporter who had years of service covering natural disasters throughout the United States.  Never had he seen such an outpouring of support and aid from a community.  He said that the only thing that would come close is the Red River Valley Flood of 1997.  As I drifted between sleep and alertness, I remember one number catching my attention…they had said that the day before, they estimated that they needed at least 40,000 volunteers to save the two cities – in a town that had a combined population (and immediate surrounding towns) of about 150,000….they didn’t get 40,000.

Nope, they estimated 90,000.

Climbing out of bed, I went out to great my brother and sister-in-law who were up, also listening to the radio in the kitchen and reading the headlines off of the news sights.

We listened most of the morning.  Tired, sore, but glad that we had been there to fight the mighty Red River the day before.

With a hug to my nieces and a note of gratitude to my brother and sister-in-law, I left for home.

As I drove back southeast on Interstate 94 towards Minneapolis, the debated raged – had the river crested?

It was determined about noon that Saturday that yes it had.  As long as the dikes held, the town would be safe.

It wasn’t to be the last of the controversies.  The mayor was mad at the National Weather Service for changing the crest predictions.  There was talk that on the Friday the day before, the area governments had a standoff with FEMA – FEMA insisting that they evacuate the cities (and closing west bound I-94 in the process) and the cities saying they weren’t going to let their towns go under.

But that night, as I went to bed after the drive home and banquet that evening, I knew I was going to sleep soundly.  The cities 250 miles to the Northwest were safe, the dikes were holding, I had done what little I could to keep them safe and secure…

Plus I had my two ibuprofen and a whiskey chaser….

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today) 

The mountain of clothes is as big as a motor home.  No kidding.  There are tuxedos, suits, skirts, pants, shoes, coats and caps.  The clothes come in baby sizes and extra, extra large sizes and most sizes in between.

It’s simply amazing.

I’ve spent the last three weekends helping the Boone County Humane Society prepare for its annual rummage/auction/bake sale and i’ve never seen anything like this before.  People from around the area have been saving this stuff for the humane society for years.

Each year we speculate that donations will begin to taper off.  “There can’t be any more rummage around than we collected last year,” those of us on the board of directors agree.  But as the big day draws near, we are astounded at the amount and variety of items we receive.  If every town in every county in every state has this much rummage, the shortage of closet and attic space must nearly be a national crisis.

In an effort to alleviate this crisis, the Humane Society will commence selling on Friday at 7 a.m. Early birds who pay the $2 fee can shop until 9.  After that, free-admission shopping continues until noon on Saturday.  At 1 p.m. We’ll auction off some of the more collectible items and new items and service certificates donated by local merchants.

So far, we collected a half-dozen hair dryers including a metal one on a stand.  It even has a reading light.  There are numerous vacuum cleaners.  I saw at least three television sets.  I lost count of radios, tape players and phonographs.  And when’s the last time you had a chance to thumb through a box of old 78 rpm records?

Last weekend we received a huge old wooden wagon wheel.  It goes nicely with the cowboy hats and boots we’ve collected.

There are children’s toys.  There are books and magazines.  There are typewriters.  There are a few things that we can’t identify.  I’ll be surprised if they don’t sell.

Some people just donate cash.  Others donate time.  Boone area merchants have been very generous with their donations.

I’m continually amazed by the people of Boone.  “Ask and ye shall receive,” seems to be their motto.  Think of all the churches, civic organizations, community groups and human service organizations that exist in this town and you begin to understand the amount of giving that is required to support them all.

The spirit of giving says a lot about the quality of life here. People donate because they care about what happens to their community and their neighbors.

If the level of support we’re seeing for the Humane Society Rummage Sale is any indication, the citizens of Boone care a great deal for one another and their community.