Whew, two down and one to go. Travel days this week, that is.

My Wednesday had run late from the git go. Once Krl and I arrived to do our sworn statements and sign them it turned out that we had to wait for the person we needed to see. They had stepped out of the office. After that I decided to stop in and get a little warranty work from my barber A.C.. He had one in the chair and one waiting ahead of me and a lady was waiting back in the beauty shop chairs in the back. A.C. and his mother share a building. Barber shop up front and beauty shop in the back. Turns out the one waiting was one of the old school shave and a haircut kind of a guy. Then it turned out the woman was not getting her hair done in the beauty shop, she was getting a hair cut in the barber chair. Finally the chair was mine and A.C. began to remake me. As he progressed, a steady stream of customers filled the waiting area. When he finally removed the barber apron from me I offered him my best consolation line I could muster. "If I wasn't previously obligated I would grab a comb and pair of scissors at the other chair and help catch up!" Everyone laughed, either they were thankful that I was previously committed or thankful that I would be so thoughtful.

Finally I got on the road at eleven o'clock. My first meeting was set up for two o'clock, but I had three hours of drive time to get there. I broke my own rules as I had a late Tuesday and had not really prepared. I kept a legal pad and a pencil on the dash or on the console as I traveled and jotted notes. I never have liked to do that. I would hate to have an accident and have to tell the patrolman "I was just crossing a "t" and it got away from me!"

The first meeting went really well. No haggling, just pretty much general agreement on everything. Of course the major concern is fuel price. About the most fair answer appears to be a sliding fuel surcharge that will protect the contractors if fuel price goes up and yet protect the processing facility if fuel price goes down. We have had such a scale in place in recent years but now it is going to have to be extended upward to include current fuel prices. Who would have ever thunk!

The second meeting went good. This is one of the vendors I have used in recent years. We kind of did a fifty-two card pickup. I threw all the cards on the table and then we began to bounce possibilities off each other. I am somewhat optimistic. I was really pleased with a piece of leased equipment I had left for repairs before returning it. This is one of those situations where you can see that this man and his people take a great deal of pride in a job well done. They do your work like they were working on their own equipment.

Crops are a mixed bag. There is some cotton that was replanted. The drip irrigated cotton is lush and gorgeous, growing. The dryland crop is beginning to stress. They are going to need some rain or some moderate temperatures in the next week or two. The scenarios B.J. gave me was that if they receive no rain from here to harvest we will gin fifty-five to sixty thousand bales. If they get one rain between now and mid August we will gin ninety-five thousand, if they get a rain in the next ten days and another rain near the tenth of August they could ring the bell. While last years record harvest was tremendous, they didn't enjoy some of the across the board yields that the plains area did. "Git 'er done!"

It was a good day. I missed my hopeful return time by an hour but Krl and I did a double team and cranked supper out! Do you ever eat breakfast for dinner? All in, all said, all done, by the time I got home it was after eight and I had done three-hundred fifty-five miles and two meetings since eleven. It was a good day!

Krl spent part of her day with a friend. They did lunch and then rambled around looking at some sale stuff. When I walked in the house last evening, Krl was duded out in a new outfit and looked gorgeous! I got tickled because it sounded like they had gone to the nine dollar store (instead of the Dollar Store). She had had a good day, and her spirits were as high as they have been since early in the year. For this I am thankful! One good day plus another, plus another, plus ................. . Yes!

For some strange reason yesterday my brain kept on reflecting on my hometown newspaper when I was growing up. The Roscoe Times. It was owned and operated by George Parks. George was the son of a Baptist preacher, could have been a professional baseball player but his Dad thought it was sinful to get paid to play a game, he was jilted at the marriage alter and never forgave the feminine gender for that offense, and he directed his energies to the newspaper and to his true purpose, the Roscoe Boys Club. The Roscoe Times featured an editorial column named "Pickin's" which was over laid on top of a cotton boll. George covered it all, from local politics to national, and no subject was "too sensitive" if George was passionate about it. George was the only full time employee of the Times. You could take your news items by and he would be sitting in a modified cane bottom chair (the legs had been shortened to get the right height) at the key board of an old Linotype machine, making type. Then he would take the lead type and set it, do a quick proof read and move on to the next news worthy item. It used to facinate me to watch his old press work on Thursdays.

George had quite a baseball program for the Boys Club. It began with the youngest teams, they were the "Ginners" and the "Bankers" (reflections of their sponsoring entities). Then there was the "Midgets", The Little League, the Pony League and then the Teenage League. While the Ginners and Bankers only played each other repeatedly, George had put together a small town bush league that participated in all the other age groups. Loraine, Ira, Hermleigh, and at one time the community of Silver fielded teams in addition to Roscoe. The remarkable thing was that all the teams had full fledged uniforms, it wasn't just a cap and a T-shirt. Some of the players really excelled and one I know played college ball on the national level. George would not be happy but the "ball field" in Roscoe now bears his name.

George constantly made the trek from Roscoe to Abilene. You could take in a movie nearly any day of the week. Often times he would drop the guys off at one theater and he would go to another to preview a movie to see it it was "up to standards". I can't remember but I want to say he saw The Sound of Music over two hundred times at the old Majestic Theater in Abilene. You could bet the trek home would be spent listening to baseball on the radio from somewhere across this land.

George devised a plan. The Boys Club collected the green bolls from the five cotton gins in the area. These bolls were not open and were once sent to the burrs or trash for disposal. The Boys club would take them and spread them on a deserted piece of highway and they would be stirred and turned until they opened and then they were returned to the gin and processed. The funds generated were distributed between the youth programs of the community and everyone and everything flourished. Of course there was summer camp but the big Boys Club activity was a summer trip. The Boys Club would charter a Greyhound Bus and George would take off (as the only adult) with fifty plus boys ranging in age from six to eighteen for a two week trek across the country. Disneyland, Grand Canyon, Canada, Florida, New York and Niagara Falls, and repeated trips to Washington DC were just some of the destinations. A boy could take fifty or sixty dollars, a bed roll, and one suitcase and "see the world". Everyone checked their money in with George and anytime the bus stopped he stood at the door with a handfull of "ones" for anyone who needed to "draw" on their funds. Every night the group settled up and the ledger adjusted. I don't know how George remembered it all. George would make arrangements and we would sleep on the floor in gymnasiums of high schools, other Boys Clubs and even colleges and Universities. We sat in on sessions of Congress, we were guests in the Congressional cafeteria, and we were once guests of Lady Bird Johnson at the White House. There are a lot of us boys who saw a lot of things we otherwise wouldn't have because of George and his dedication to the youth of Roscoe. He brought the world to the youth of Roscoe.

Life was good in the small West Texas town of Roscoe. Thanks Moose! (on one trip we met a moose named George and the nickname stuck).

FATHER, thank YOU for the good week, the tremendous days. Thank YOU for the productive meetings. FATHER thank YOU for my past, for the opportunities and for the experiences. I am confident YOU have much in store for the future. YOU are good. FATHER I continue to ask that YOU bless the efforts of my farming family and friends in Roscoe, St. Lawrence, Coyonosa, and the Gulf Coastal Plains. FATHER I ask that YOU meet their needs with warm sunshine and timely and gentle rains. I pray that YOU will bless them with bountiful harvests. Help them to be good stewards of YOUR earth. FATHER I continue to thank YOU for Krl. Thank YOU for the good day yesterday, I pray that YOU will continue to bless her with more of them and that YOU will continue to heal and renew her. I lift up Addison, Memama, Pepa, B., Aimee, Jennifer, Ashlyn Kate, Jess, Dr. Mackie, Jeanine, Verlin and especially Lillie, FATHER they are all in need of YOUR miracle of healing and renewal. I ask special blessings on Lillie as she seems to face obstacle after obstacle. I pray for those sad with loss. Lift them and care and comfort them. I pray for those of us who struggle as we try to follow YOU. I pray for our spiritual family and for our leaders. I ask YOUR blessings on the efforts being made to expand YOUR kingdom. Worthy is the lamb.