For your reading enjoyment, we continue to publish Rambling Vines by the late Marylea Vines as she recalls events and names of Corning folks from many years ago. We are currently in the year 1990

I witnessed something Saturday that renewed my faith in the human race. I saw families… fathers, mothers, and children (grandparents in some instances) doing something together besides watching television or riding in a vehicle!

They were part of the crowd at the Fish Hatchery for the annual children’s fishing day… and everyone was having fun as mamas and daddies helped their child to put on jus the right amount of bait and cast it in the “best spot”, they laughed and talked with other adults, they ran around the pond to help other youngsters bring in a big one and everyone was having an old-fashioned good time doing some fun activity as a family unit, without benefit of air-conditioning or television!

It was rough out there in the sun, but it was rougher at the Emergency Day activities on the Wal-Mart parking lot. I took Putter along and he had a great time at the fish hatchery, but by noon I had to carry him in at home, one pooped little puppy.

Had in been anyone else but Gene Kellett they would have shot at us, called the law or something other than stand out in the yard yelling “Wrong row!” For several years Gene has been trying to raise head lettuce and his prospects this year were the best ever… I do mean “were”!

They had told me to help myself to the onions, lettuce, etc. in the garden and the other evening Putter and I went over to pick my uncle and aunt some lettuce. Dot volunteered to help, and we were really working on his head lettuce (we didn’t even know he had any head lettuce out there) when he put in an appearance and caught us. We are sorry we got into his head lettuce, but thankful that he discovered us before we wiped out his complete crop.

Putter has a brandnew swimming pool, just his size and you know what? He is terrified by it. I thought it would be nice to fill it with water and let him have a splashing good time late in the evenings but, next to his pen, he hates it more than anything else in the whole world.

Father’s Day is coming up, June 17. My dad, the pipe smoker, used to always get a box of cigars that he later had to pay for. Every opportunity we gave him cigars, trying to get him away from the old pipe that was the source of so much confusion. He smoked the same old pipe for years, no matter how many new ones he acquired, and he was always having trouble with it. We knew that the thing wasn’t drawing right when he would start running a broom straw through the stem. Then when he would fire it up and it would still not draw to suit him, he would throw it as far out into the yard as he could… of course by daylight the next morning he was out there looking for it. We were raised in a cloud of smoke from that old pipe and sometimes he would have to get up in the middle of the night and fire it up in order to blow warm smoke into the hurting ear. He never did catch anything in the house on fire because mama watched him like a hawk… but the car seat!

My dad never smoked cigarettes and didn’t particularly like cigars, but he spent many an hour with his old pipe loaded with Prince Albert.

Mrs. Drilling was visiting here from Heber Springs over a recent long weekend and as usual, we had a great time. We laughed over and over about some of the scrapes that we have all survived through the years. Mrs. Drilling had to put up with a group of girls smearing and gomming in her kitchen all through high school. We had our famous hamburger suppers at her house mostly because none of the other mothers would put up with us. We would each buy one pound of hamburger meat from which we would make two patties the size of the bottom of a skillet. There would be four skillets on the stove, the burners turned high as they would go (to get finished faster) with grease splattering everywhere and smoke so thick that it was hard to see across the room. But boy were they ever good.

Mrs. Drilling was, and still is, an immaculate housekeeper and she never left home to go to the store until everything was just so-so in her house. Poor thing, she would come in home when the store closed for the day to find her kitchen in shambles… plus all her other food (which she had thought about having for supper) gone. Never once did she complain, or even act like she wasn’t glad we were there. Of course, she got a lot of encouragement from her across-the-highway neighbor Grace Belford, who had earlier survived what Mrs. Drilling was going through and kept telling her that things would get better.

Then, we all got to fishing and no joking, if I could just settle down and put all of our fishing escapades on paper I could being mingling with the rich and famous. But I have no desire to be anything other that what I am now… poor as Job’s turkey!

I tell you I got so made the other day that I just about had fire shooting from my nostrils! I was going up Highway 67, planning to turn off on the Success blacktop. At the proper time I begin indicating that I would turn left, and this car behind me just keep gunning it… and to add to my worry there was a vehicle coming from the North that I was going to have to wait for. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind, as I pumped the brakes, that the car behind me was going to push me right off the highway. Next thing I knew he was going between me and a mailbox, one the rightof- way, throwing rocks in every which way and probably saying a bunch of ugly things about “crazy woman driver.”