The Rock Wall

Whadayathink? Is fall here or not? I know it’s time to hunt fall turkeys and fall mushrooms and bass bunch up on points. We found a mushroom we thought looked strange so I took it to Conservation.  It wasn’t Hen of the Woods which I’m accustomed to finding. It was Chicken of the Woods because it grew out of the ground instead of on a tree. They said it was good to eat, just soak it in salt water to remove the bugs.

• I received an obituary that really tickled my funny bone. Wesley A. Gilpin’s parents moved from Colorado to Pacetown where he started the first grade in a one room school. The teacher told him she had too many Wesleys in the class and asked him to go home and ask his mother to change his name.

Can you imagine the uproar if a teacher did that today?  Well, he did as instructed and his momma said to call him Jim.

You probably know Elayne Hillsman who worked here for several years and her son, Brent, who is the tech guy at the school. When her and Don’s daughter started school, she was one of three Kelly Dawns in the class. So the teacher called one Kelly, one Dawn and one Kelly Dawn.

When Jim Gilpin got out of the military, he has several jobs but his favorite may have been selling Chevrolets. For three years he was the top Chevrolet pickup salesman in the county.  Part of that was due to a pretty red headed lady coming into the dealership with a man she introduced as her ranch foreman.  She wanted to buy 13 Chevrolet pickups and said she would sell them back at the end of the year and buy 13 more, if Jim treated her fairly. He did. Some years she bought 15.  She just introduced herself as Reba.  Later Jim learned he was dealing with Reba McIntire.

Dad’s parents just named him Clifford. When he got drafted, the Army called him Clifford NMI Long (no middle initial) Long. He soon got tired of that and picked out a middle name he liked, Lyle. That worked out OK until Dad got injured and got an Army pension because of it. Wouldn’t you know there was another veteran named Clifford L Long. All too often, they’d send Dad’s check to him and he’d cash it. The FBI got very familiar with the other Clifford Long.

My Ag Law professor, Donnie Levi, Sharyl Henry’s brother, was from Stockton. He said that his dad was driving a tractor along a road one day and saw the other Clifford Long passed out in the ditch. It was a tricycle type tractor so Donnie and Sharyl’s dad put one of the tractor’s rear wheels in the ditch and drove up until it touched the passed out Clifford Long’s leg, then he backed way back down the road before getting out of the ditch. Then he drove way past the sleeping drunk, put the wheel of the tractor in the ditch and backed up until the rear wheel touched the man’s leg in the exact same spot on the other side. Then he drove forward a long way before getting the tractor out of the ditch.

When the other Clifford Long regained consciousness, he saw that he had been run over by a tractor. He favored his “hurt leg” for weeks.

Now you know one of the reasons Donnie Levi was my favorite college professor and Ag Law was my favorite class. And I actually did learn a lot about Ag Law in the class. I even got an A. It started at 7:40 a.m. and I never missed one.

Once a speaker at the El Dorado Springs City Council had been one of Donnie’s students.  I told her about an example Donnie gave us of an attractive nuisance – something that is dangerous the public, particularly kids, can see from where they legally have a right to be.  That’s why there are privacy fences around back yard swimming pools. Donne’s example he told us about was a steam shovel that was shut down for the weekend with the bail up on the big bucket. Some kids saw it and couldn’t resist playing in the bucket. The bail fell down decapitating one of them. Donnie’s student went back and told him what I remembered. He told her, “Yes, that’s a prime example I had forgotten.”

An attractive nuisance is still in the law. You might want to remember it.        KL