The Rock Wall

I was all ears at the school board meeting Thursday night. I told Superintendent Mark Koca and Board President Darrell Eason ahead of time I would use the board’s discussion of school security to wrap up my series of interviews on guns in schools.

I think the board and superintendent investigated all the proper options available. They have settled on a course of action that makes sense to me. Before I did my series of interviews, I thought that arming school staff was the way to go. After hearing from the several law enforcement experts, it changed my opinion. A school resource officer (or three in the case of the El Dorado Springs School) seems like a more reasonable approach. An armed, trained officer before and during a school crisis sure outweighs somebody with a gun who may not have all the right knowledge and training.

We still need the Good Lord’s protecting hand. Look at all the years of peace we have had in the schools in Cedar, St. Clair and Vernon Counties. As one citizen told me, back then if you got a new gun you took it to school to show the teachers who were glad to see it. And another told me about going to shooting classes at Carl’s Gun Shop and it was OK to carry your shotgun down the hall as long as you had the ammunition in the other hand.

I think at heart we are still like that as a community. Don’t you?

-Three big community events are fast approaching: Saturday, April 21, is ElDo Clean Up Day; Thursday, May 3, will mark the National Day of Prayer; Friday/Saturday, May 4 – 5, will be the Community Wide Sale.

– I had trouble believing it when an email from the MDC Monday that said, “Spring turkey season starts this morning.”

Talk about changing seasons – below freezing Monday morning. Temperature maybe getting to 50 on Monday. Tuesday it was pushing 80.

– I have yet to hear a turkey gobble this spring. And that’s why I hunt: to hear a gobbler coming to my call letting out gobbles so powerful it seems like they will knock down small trees. Making more noise than my pounding heart.

Davis tells me he may take his new bride, Erica, hunting Wednesday or Thursday. I probably need to stay home those days. The woods can get crowded real quick with one too many people in the hunting party.

– Della Bailey sent me a photo that stirred memories almost as old as I am. There was a photo of Martha Chambers along with a bill for the stay of Della’s grandmother in Martha’s Emergency Hospital.

Upon seeing the photo, I think I remember Martha Chambers. I recall a large, friendly lady dressed in white wearing dark glasses, just like in the photo. I told Della the last time I know I was there was when I was five years old and had pneumonia. I also had diarrhea because I remember streaking on the bare, bright wooden floor in what I recall as the northeast room and my bare feet weren’t the only thing that was running. KL