Monty Fuller Celebrates 65th Birthday

William Montgomery "Monty" Fuller of Barnard, celebrated his 65th birthday on Saturday, November 16th.  He was born in 1948 to Richard and Mary Vauthan (Montgomery) Fuller in Dallas, TX.  He grew up in Highland Park, TX.  He graduated with a degree in Business Admistration from St. Edward's in Austin.

Monty became familiar with Barnard through his affiliation with the Wallace family.  He relocated to Barnard full time because of the quiet community with potential.  He has happily made it his home.

A birthday party has been planned for him and further details will be made available as they are confirmed.  He would love for all of his friends to attend.  The party will be at the Beloit Dairy Queen on Wednesday...time will be announced shortly.

UPDATE
The party will be on the weekend with more details to follow.

Farmhouse Ramblings by Charlene Watson

Farmhouse Ramblings

By Charlene Watson

Have you ever noticed that sometimes when things start going wrong they cascade into a landslide of ongoing unfortunate happenings that upset your whole equilibrium and send you into a state of major upset and irrational responses? Well, I am here to tell you that yesterday turned into that kind of day for me. Everything I tried to do ended in disaster.

I think my first mistake was getting out of bed. This progressed into the oatmeal boiling over on the stove while I was putting in the toast. From there I upset the Christmas tree while trying to move it to its place of honor by the dining room window. Next, I dropped a Christmas ornament and broke it while trying to put it on the tree after I set it up and put it back together. No, much to my embarrassment we now use an artificial tree. Something I swore I would never do. Moving on to the closet I tipped a box of ornaments upside down because I didn’t want to take time to go get the step stool. I am always in too much of a hurry to get things done.

I would like to blame it on “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” or say my friend Murphy was back again to upset my life but in all truthfulness, it was just my stupidity that caused all the trouble.

Then, I decided to wash some of my husband’s jeans and shirts. Big mistake! I remembered to check the jeans pockets and zip up the zippers and I even removed his pen from his shirt pocket. What I evidently did not do was check the pocket close enough to find his pocket diary for this year even though I would have sworn I did.

This little book has all of his addresses, phone numbers, when he did what, what he plans to do, cattle data, plus rainfall amounts and when they occurred listed in it for the whole year. My husband has every pocket diary from every year dating back to sometime in the 1980’s and probably before that if I looked hard enough.

Folks! I have to confess to you now that I committed one of the most unforgivable sins a farm wife can perpetrate against her farmer husband. I WASHED HIS SACRED POCKET DIARY. There was nothing left but the water soaked cover and even the year was soaked off.

To make it worse, he was sitting at the computer in the same room with me when I opened the washing machine and let out a shrieking “OH, NO!” loud enough to wake the dead. He jumped up and said with concern for my safety in his voice, “What Happened?” as I slammed the lid and put my hands over my head on the washer lid too upset to speak. I couldn't believe this had happened!

Then came the moment of truth when I had to confess my flagrant sin. This is something I have dreaded would happen all the years since I did it once after we were first married. All those years of abstinence and now I had once again committed this terrible sin. I couldn’t believe it.

All the pages were soaked into little chunks of white dotting the entire surface of everything in the washer. Nothing was left to salvage, not even an address or phone number. In short, there was not a single note or date left in one piece. NADAH! NIL! NOTHING! ZILCH!

I took a deep breath and said a short prayer before I raised my head to face the music. By then hubby had guessed what had happened and I saw my him sitting at the desk with his head in his hands trying to deal with my latest screw up. I put my arms around him and asked for forgiveness while I stood there feeling lower than the low woman on a totem pole (if there is such a thing)

While I know he would have liked to throttle me, he just shook his head and said, “It’s O.K.” Even though I knew it wasn’t O.K. I was glad to know I wasn’t going to have to sleep in the garage with the dog and cat that night.

As the days go by I will learn to live with this and I guess he will too. There will just always be a missing year in his drawer full of pocket diaries to remind me of this fateful day. In my self-defense, this is only twice in over 50 years I have done this.

I guess being able to forgive each other -- even when it hurts -- is one of the things that have kept us together all these years.

So ladies, take my advice and remember to check all the pockets of before you wash your husband’s clothes. Put this on your list and check it twice because it might just save a life and it may just be your own. -- Charlene. (Charlene’s Freelance Publications, Barnard, Ks.)

Farmhouse Ramblings

Farmhouse Ramblings

By Charlene Watson

Once again I will claim the wide and varying writing license given to me by the word "Ramblings" proclaimed in the title of this column to write this weeks wide, varying, and definitely 'rambling' subjects I want to cover.  Clear as mud?  Good, then I feel relatively assured that I have your undivided attention.  As I continue with rapid fire, be alert and follow the changes in subject matter as I switch from one topic to the next.  I hope you can keep up!

We are all caught up in the ups and downs of the stock market; the Wall Street bail out and the idiots camped out in the park in New York City right now.  How can we not be concerned with all that is going on and the affect it will have on our lives and our future?  However, with that in mind and with tongue in cheek, I would like to offer you the following lighter "banter" to break the tension of the situation.  (did you get the little play on words?  Lighter banter for the Barnard Banter.)

When I read the following synopsis, I had to share it with you.  In my defense, before you read this, I am not advocating that you drink beer.  I just thought it was an apt comparison to the values in our recent economy so take it for what its worth.

If you had purchased $1000 of shares in Delta Airlines, AIG, or Lehman Brothers one year ago, you might have $0.00 return on a good day.  But, if you had purchased $1000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the aluminum cans for recycling refund, you will have received $214.00 for your efforts.  Based on the above, the best current investment plan is to drink heavily and recycle.  (It is called the 401-KEG Plan.)

"A recent study found that the average American walks about 900 miles a year.  Another study found that Americans drink, on average, 22 gallons of alcohol a year.  That means that, on average, Americans get about 41 miles to the gallon!  Makes you proud to be an American doesn't it?"  In this same vein, I saw a sign awhile back that read:  "Beer is now cheaper than gas so 'drink' don't 'drive.'"

While I am on the subject of gas, I want to share this item taken from another old clipping I found in a box my grandmother saved.  It is entitled:  "Ponder This, Car Drivers."  While it is many years old, I think it has the same meaning today it did when it was printed:  "According to computations of officials of the Chicago Motor Club, a motorist driving his car at 60 miles an hour travels at exactly the same speed as if his car had dripped from a height of 120 feet or an equivalent of an 8 story building.  Should he collide with an immovable object while speeding at 60 miles per hour, the crash would be the same as though he had driven his car from the roof of the imaginary 8 story building to the pavement below.  With the power of 60 horses under his feet and traveling at 60 miles an hour, a driver has an engine of destruction under his control that needs a much clearer head and steadier hand than most of us have."--True?  It definitely applies in many cases I am afraid.  Just something to think about when you are speeding down the highway at 60 plus miles per hour.

IDIOT SIGHTING:  When my husband and I arrived at an automobile dealership to pick up our car, we were told the keys had been locked in it.  We went to the service department and found a mechanic working feverishly to unlock the driver's door.  As I watched from the passenger side, I instinctively tried the door handle and discovered that it was unlocked.  "Hey," I announced to the technician, "it's open!"  His reply, "I know.  I already got that side."  (DUH!)

In the upcoming 2012 election we have to STAY ALERT because they walk among us...and the scary part is that they VOTE and REPRODUCE and ACORN (or whatever their new name happens to be) is probably pre-registering them to vote for the umpteenth time as we speak.

Have a good week.

(Charlene's Freelance Publications, Barnard, KS.)

Farmhouse Ramblings by Charlene Watson

Farmhouse Ramblings

By Charlene Watson

Hi, Barnard Banter Bloggers,

Farmhouse Ramblings is a column I have been writing since back in the middle 1960's. It is so named because it allows me to cover various and sundry subjects as I choose to do so. Travis asked me about submitting something to the Barnard Blog so I thought this might give you all a few laughs this week.

This past weekend my husband watched a lot of football and I have to tell you, I never thought I would be so happy to have sounds of football commentary coming from my living room. If it isn’t K-State or the K.C. Chiefs I usually do something else in the house such as write a column, work a puzzle or read a book. This weekend, however, after listening to weeks and months of political bickering and accusations; and who did what to cause this country's financial crisis, football games were a pleasant relief.

I want to share these “NEW financial definitions” I heard this week. They sort of put the things going on in our country today in perspective and tell it like it is:

CEO – Chief Embezzlement Officer,

CFO- Corporate Fraud Officer,

BULL MARKET - A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius,

BEAR MARKET – A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no grocery money and the husband gets more headaches.

VALUE INVESTING - The art of buying low and selling lower.
P/E RATIO -- The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing. BROKER - What my broker has made me,

STANDARD & POOR -- Your life in a nutshell,

STOCK ANALYST -- Idiot who just downgraded your stock.

STOCK SPLIT - When your ex-spouse and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves,

FINANCIAL PLANNER -- A guy whose phone has been disconnected,

MARKET CORRECTION - The day after you buy stocks.

CASH FLOW -The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.

YAHOO - What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share,
WINDOWS -What you jump out of when you're the sucker who bought Yahoo @ $240 per share,

INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR - Past year investor who's now locked up in a nuthouse and last but far from least,

PROFIT - An archaic word no longer in use.

    Well, you can certainly tell I am a farm wife and know nothing about the stock market because all these years I thought the “Bull Market” was the price we can expect to get for our bulls for when we take them to auction. Shows what I know, huh?

Be assured as history will prove, this is not our nations first mess, nor will it probably be its last. These “quotes from the past show that nothing much has fundamentally changes with time:

 

Mark Twain said, “If you don’t read the newspaper you are ‘uninformed’; if you do read the newspaper then you can consider yourself  ‘misinformed.’” Twain also said, “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress…. But then I repeat myself.”

Winston Churchill said, “I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”

Ronald Reagan said in 1986, “Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

And finally a quote from Will Rodgers, that great man of wit and common sense, who said, “ I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.”

(Charlene’s Freelance Publications, Barnard, KS. 67418)