I just moved my extension ladder to Salina.  It has a warning label on it that reads: "Warning!  Weight capacity 180 pounds."  That label is a problem for me.  It is real hard to paint a house, ten feet off the ground, balanced on one leg. My rowboat has a label that reads:  "Warning!  Capacity 3 adults or 350 pounds."   Tom Thumb, Tinkerbelle, and Gary Coleman couldn't go fishing together in that boat!  I have a choice to make.   I can take my lunch, my tackle box, or my thi

When the seasons change it causes me to remember things from boyhood.  I like to remember good things, and I am sure that I romanticize some events in my mind.  At the same time, I worry a little bit that my children and grandchildren are missing out on some of the experiences that I enjoyed.    I was fortunate to spend many weekends and summer days on my grandparents ten acre farm.  Springtime helps me to remember the joy of running down a dusty country lane barefoot. But I

I was in the fourth grade. We were making Valentine’s Day card boxes out of old shoe and oatmeal boxes. It was a yearly grade school event, and we all enjoyed it. While we were working, Mrs. Lavender asked us if we like to know the origin of the holiday. She was going to tell us anyway, so we all nodded, “Yes.” I remember her lesson like it was yesterday, though many years have passed. “Three hundred years after Jesus ascended into heaven,” she began, there was a devout Chris

I was trying to get the Sunday School children to sing "Jesus Loves the Little children."  I was out of my element, a stand in for their regular teacher.  But everyone, everywhere, knows the words to this old favorite song.  But what the kids sang in the class wasn't the version that I knew as a kid.  They sand this version, loudly,  climaxed with riotous laughter:               Jesus loves the little children;             All the children of the world!             Red and ye