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

Putter and I had a delightful weekend… we spent most of Saturday morning at Wynn Park where the Bike-athon for St. Jude’s was going on and h ripped and romped with the younger children, exploring a big area of the park even letting them feed him cup cake and orange juice. He had such a great tine on Saturday that he wasn’t taking any chances o being left behind… as I cleaned the car early Sunday morning, he sat inside it and watched me like a hawk. Sunday afternoon we attended the Early Day observance which called for planting of three ornamental pear trees on Second street. The street was blocked to automobile traffic and again he was a busy little critter, taking care of things on both sides of the street, Saturday, and Sunday nights he was “plum tuckered out” and didn’t require any coaxing to go to bed.

I’m still chuckling to myself every time I think about Lilly Mae Carter and how sweet and cute she was Saturday at the bike-a-thon. Her brothers, Brent and Jeremiah Carter, were participants and Lilly was their cheerleader… evidently she thought it was a race because as the cyclist were coming in from each round, Lilly would get as near the street as allowed and would start waving her arms and calling, “Come on Jeremiah!”, “Come on Clint!” Lilly, with her dark naturally wavy hair and big blue eyes… plus brand-new pair of “jellies” on her feet, won me over in a short time. They are children of Mrs. and Mrs. Brent Carter, and their mother was at the Park for the event, and their daddy joined them at noon to haul the bikes home.

This time next week it will be the month of May… where in the world is all that money I’m supposed to have been squirreling away since January 1?

May is a super busy month with special emphasis on Mother’s Day, Spring Clean-Up Campaigns, Graduation, Memorial Day, and lots of special week designations, such as “Be Kind to Animals Week,” and “Older Americans Month.” That takes care of Putter and me.

May used to signal the beginning of the barefoot season and hours of practice for the May Day Festival at school, which was the big event of the year when that old wooden frame gymnasium on the corner of Fourth and Olive would be crowded almost to the dangerous point with folks who wanted to see the youngster perform and see who would be the May Queen. My two best May Day Festivals were the May Pole dance as a Fourth grader and “the Arkansas Traveler” as a Sixth grader.

May also meant the beginning of the picnic season. I loved picnics because they were my only hopes of getting my fill of potato chips and pork-and-beans, two things we never had a home. The others could have all that stuff like potato salad, deviled eggs, fried chicken… I’d just feast on pork-andbeans and potato chips. And, you know what, I sill like them… nothing tastes better on a fishing trip than pork and beans eaten right out of the can, with a few captured gnats gently lifted out with the plastic fork.

The Department of Health and Human Services has issued a warning that chewing tobacco causes cancer. I’ve got news for them… it can also make a person too sick to die!

My friends and I gave it one try when we were about 16 and we didn’t need any punishment or lectures from our parents, we had already learned our lesson. It was even worse than the time we decided to all smoke cigars while on a hike to Sandy Ford. We were all down there puffing and blowing until it must have looked like Indian smoke signals for a while, until one by one we began to get really white and quiet, hoping that awful feeling, whatever it was, would soon pass.

See, we made this chewing tobacco thing up at school one day and as soon as we could make it a getaway we hitched-hiked to the Arkansas-Missouri state line where we went in Van Wells Station and Store and each bought a fivecent plug of chewing tobacco. Walking back toward Corning we began the ritual of chewing and spitting, all except for one friend who thought that a person was supposed to chew and swallow! Ooh-e died she ever get sick. Here we were up by the Lutheran Church curve, sitting on the roadside trying to decide what to do with her and all the time it was coming up a thunderstorm, getting all dark and everything. The first car to come along, headed for Corning, was driven by the late Ralph D. Shelton, Sr. and he had no choice but to stop from all the begging and pleading we were doing. We were so scared that his car wheels had hardly stopped rolling before all five of us were piled in the back seat. Of course he know everyone of us and wasted no time in telling all about the tobacco chewing to the first person he saw after he got rid of us… that defeated our whole purpose because we knew that if we bought the chewing tobacco in town, someone would tell our folks… it would be safer walking down the highway (there weren’t that many cars and no big trucks back then) but how were we to know that it was going to come up a thunderstorm? More proof that there is no such thing as “the perfect crime.”

The following is a snack food recipe handed to me by Mrs. Stephanie Zepecki: Puppy Chow… Two cups chocolate chips, one cup peanut butter, one stick oleo, 12 ounces rice or corn chex, three cups powdered sugar.

Melt chips, peanut butter and oleo in large pan and pour over cereal and sugar in large brown paper bag. Pour in cereal and shake.