Village Voices - We don't write papers, we build scrapbooks

The nurse came in and said "Doc, there's a man in the waiting room who thinks he's invisible." The doctor said, "Tell him I can't see him today." We are in the gray, dreary days of winter. My dad...

A few weeks ago, I went on a one-day road trip to Kokomo, Indiana. I don’t follow a map anymore - just my GPS. The beauty of GPS is that if you take the shortest route, you usually end up on the...

I grew up a farm kid. My folks started out in Indiana as grain farmers and eventually became dairy farmers. That’s just the opposite of most people in the farming business. Usually, a person dairy...

On Thursday, January 5, 2023 my dad woke up in the Land of Glory! This is from my journal from last week ... My dad is in the last hours of his earthly life. We got him home from the hospital on...

Merry Christmas Everyone! I hope your Christmas is great and memorable. What would a perfect day look like? This past Sunday turned out to be a pretty great day in my life. It started at about 6:45...

Christmas is weird. What other time of the year do you sit in front of a dead tree and eat candy out of your sock A few weeks ago on a nice, warm fall day, my wife strung Christmas lights up outside o...

I have never understood why women love cats. Cats are independent, they don't listen, they don't come in when you call, they like to stay out all night, and when they're home they like to be left...

With the rise of self-driving vehicles, it's only a matter of time before we get a country song where a guy's truck leaves him too. As I write this, my wife and I are in southwest Florida where...

When my boss asked me who is the dumb one, me or him? I told him everyone knows he doesn't hire dumb people. My first paying job other than working on my parent’s farm was working on our...

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. There are several reasons, but one of the main ones is that growing up on the farm, Thanksgiving always was a celebration of the end of the work...

Being in the profession that I am in, when meeting strangers, their reaction to me can be all over the board. My profession can either be a conversation starter or a conversation killer. When hearing...

“Signs, signs, everywhere a sign, blocking out the scenery, breaking my mind. Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign?” So say the vocals to the song “Signs.” According to...

A few months ago, somebody sent me an anonymous package in the mail postmarked from Tinley Park, Illinois. I was most curious about this package, because I don’t know anybody from Tinley Park, Illin...

Not long ago I had a meeting in our church parking lot with the editor of this newspaper, Dan Stevens. He’s a likable chap, (although he can get a little intense around deadline time). We met in...

We went shopping for trees today. It seems when you plant trees in the fall they have a better survival rate than spring planting. Last fall at this time, we planted nine trees around our new parking...

With fall comes the harvest. And with the harvest our church has an annual garden produce contest. So far, the biggest watermelon has weighed in at 38.8 pounds and the largest tomato is 16 inches in...

My phone rang just after five o’clock. I was still in bed and I figured I’d get it when I got up in a few minutes. Sometimes one of my brothers will call early so I didn’t worry about it. About...

Today I’m going to blow off a little steam. This is an opinion piece after all. Recently, I was reading a story in a newspaper publication on why the Dairy Breakfast was canceled this past June in...

My day started early yesterday and ended late, but it couldn’t have ended better. A young man who was visiting our church with some friends, came to Bible study, heard the message of God from the...

My wife and I were working on a home improvement project and needed to rent a certain piece of equipment that would spray and scrub concrete and then suck up the gray water. We checked all the local r...

Last week my wife and I took a trip to Nashville, Tennessee to visit our daughter and son-in-law. It used to be when we traveled, we hit the pavement with the tires squealing and we didn’t slow...

Did you know that the first french fries were not cooked in France? They were actually cooked in grease. Fun facts about teeth The first set of teeth (baby teeth) has 20 teeth. The second set of...

Everybody messes up from time to time. One time when I was a kid working on the farm, Dad decided to sell some grain. The guy came out with a semi and parked it under the auger and started loading....

It had been a few years since my wife and I visited Branson, Missouri. When we were last there, our children were small and the town was too. Actually, we’ve been there twice before. The first time...

My wife and I are in Branson, Missouri this week along with some friends at a Fellowship of Christian Farmers International Convention. On the way down here, St. Louis got 9 inches of rain before we...