Kimball and I chauffeured Miss Cedar County Lauren Alumbaugh to Mexico, MO, so she can compete in the Miss Missouri Pageant this week. It was a pleasant trip – great weather and Lauren and Kimball caught up on the sleep they had missed the night before. We didn’t have a lot of getting acquainted to do with Lauren since we have known her and her family for years and years. Kimball, who is co-director of the Cedar County pageant, only had one question for Lauren when she saw Lauren’s name written down – “What is the M for?” Her middle name is Madison.

One bit of history you might watch for: For three of the titles which Lauren has won in her career (and there have been more than three), the previous pageant winner crowned her – Sydney Friar. So with Sydney being the reigning Miss Missouri, keep a close eye Saturday night to see if history repeats itself.

-Kimball and I were at breakfast Wednesday morning and some people were talking about Kimball’s first ever Rock Wall last week. I said I liked it and that after writing for about 46 years, I didn’t feel threatened by her good writing. My cousin, Roy Lee Boultinghouse, looked up from his eggs and bacon and growled, “You should.”

-Over lunch Friday, I told Kimball that Tuesday afternoon, the St. Louis Zoo and the Missouri Department of Conservation would release something like 150 pairs of the special beetles on the Nature Conservancy prairie east of town. She replied, “That’s a lot of eagles.”

-Scott Berning has his own “story” about the Stockton dam releasing water early. He and his father, Chet, put in at Cowan Bridge with their flat bottom aluminum jon boat with a 6 hp motor and went down Sac River. Well, the early released water caught them and they started trying to get back to Cowan Bridge. Scott said the little six-horse motor was just barely gaining against the ripping current. He gave an example: Cows walking on the bank were running off and leaving them.

-Seen on a lighted sign outside a liquor store in Pittsburg about 3:30 a.m.: Remember Mom: You’re the reason she drinks.

- I have to stop saying, “How stupid can you be?” Some people are taking this as a challenge.

-“There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.” — G.K. Chesterton

-Reporter to 96-year-old man: “Have you lived here all your life?”

Response: “Not yet.”

-Thomas Jefferson said, “Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”

KL