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

Wonder why we don’t have a “First Load of Rice” contest? During the years that cotton was king in the area, local merchants sponsored a “First Bale” contest with a $100.00 gift certificate to the person delivering the first 500-pound bale of cotton to a local gin… that’s how important cotton was to the local economy.

We don’t have much cotton anymore; it’s all been overshadowed by rice. Since rice is our leading crop and it is just as important to our economy as cotton ever was… how’s come we don’t act like it is important?

Last Tuesday at noon, one of our hottest days, I was scuffling with Putter inside the house and that led to trouble. When I got a good hold on one of his front paws, he growled real mean like at me and I said, “Okay, if you are going to be bad, mama will “just leave” and out the door I went, slamming it shut behind me. Of course, I was just teasing him, and it was all fun and games until I tried to get back inside the house… the door was locked tight. My keys were on the kitchen counter.

There was one thing to do, take off on foot, hoping for lots of shade along the way. I had to call on local locksmith Jim Ballenger to go open the door. Don’t advise me to hide a key outside, because at my age I would forget the hiding place in a few days… I’m the one who loses things inside the house, much less trying to hide things in the yard… forget it!

Well, I hate to report it, but we are having a bit of a vandalism problem at Corning Cemetery… some of the older stones have been broken, vases knocked off, and that sort of senseless stuff. A person who resides within sight of the cemetery reported that school children were cutting across enroute to and from school and that some of them were seen tossing flowers into the air.

I don’t know how the law could handle any such a problem… people have a right to be in the cemetery during daylight hours, so they can’t go up there each morning and afternoon and arrest every child who shortcuts through the cemetery.

The only solution I can see is for parents to talk with their children, explain to them that it is wrong to vandalize, especially at places such as cemeteries and churches… and then “beat the tar” out of them if they do so! That’s where it is going to have to start, parents teaching respect. And if that doesn’t work, the guarantee of a good stiff fine, plus public ridicule, might do the job. Money is too short these days and it takes both parents working to even meet the necessities… just the thought of having to pay a fine because their child went on a spree at the cemetery, might cause parents to step in there and talk with their children.

The mosquitoes have been bad this year, no doubt about it… when it gets to the point that a person can’t be out in the yard long enough to put out the trash or sweep off the walk before being attacked by the onery critters, that’s bad!

But I’ve seen them worse.

We moved onto a rice farm up in the Williams community the Summer that I was four years old. The family had lived for about five years in Hoxie (that’s when they acquired me) while my dad worked with the Missouri- Pacific but when the round-house was moved (to Poplar Bluff, I think) he was out of a job.

We arrived at our new home, surrounded by rice fields, right at dark and discovered there were no screens on any of the windows and no electricity. Mom later told us that she put us to bed, then sat up all night and fanned the mosquitoes away with a fan made from a shoe box lid.

In preparing to move, most of mom’s dishes were packed inside an old wooden ice box and my brother managed to turn the thing over, in search of something to eat, breaking every plate, cup and saucer we owned.

There we were, way up there in the country in sweltering weather with no electricity, no screens, no dishes, no money… and people think they have it hard today!

Just about all the local fairs, picnics and festivals are over for this year, with the exception of the Harvest Festival here on October 27 and the Maynard Pioneer Days Celebration and the Old Folks Singing at Maynard, this weekend.

Everyone should make an attempt to attend these Fall events… the weather is cooler by then and there are no mosquitoes! I’m not sure, but I believe that Success is also planning some kind of Fall Festival. I’ll have to check into that, too.

Have you noticed how much less daylight we have these days? Won’t be long before it will be dark when folks get off from work. That’s when it is easy to feel that you are working your life away… leave home when it is just daylight and not get back until after dark. I like to get home long enough before dark to at least look around the yard.

To all folks who got hail dents in their vehicles in the recent hailstorm… I have been told that in many instances the vehicle can be left parked in the hot sun and that the dents will pop out on their own.

You might know we would get the hailstorm of the century right after I got a new roof… I was beside myself until the man who installed the roof came by and checked it out. Luckily, the roof got through that one in flying colors.