What she didn’t take home with her she put her name on for next time. I’m talking about my niece, Suzie, and all the stuff she gathered up at my house last week. She arrived fully prepared with the rear seats removed from her van. She is head-overheels into antiques and saves everything.

I really think I came out as the winner because I got my outbuilding cleaned. She kept wanting to go down there and look things over and the only way I would let her have the key was that she takes what she wants and clean and straighten what was left… for the first time in months, my shed is neat and clean. My neighbors probably thought I was moving from all the clutter she piled out on the side of the street to be hauled away.

She and my sister left here with two rocking chairs, a desk and chair and a bookcase, plus numerous smaller items wedged in the empty spaces. For a while there it looked like she would have to leave the bookcase, but being the daughter of a carpenter, she knew how to take the bookcase apart and stack the pieces, to be put back together once she got home.

My sister’s main goal in coming here was to go to Evening Shade and take a picture of something that said Evening Shade, Arkansas. People up where she lives doubt that the town even exists… but I have news for them, we have two Evening Shades, one in Sharpe County and one in Hempstead County. She went home armed with plenty of proof that there is, indeed, an Evening Shade with a placed called Woody’s.

The city had a big old oak tree on Fourth street, near the Post Office cut down last week and, as usual, there were some comments about cutting down such an old tree… I’ve got news for those folks, that tree was like the trees I had cut down in my yard last year, so rotten it was just barely hanging on and could have smashed one or more houses if it ever was toppled by a storm. I had two trees cut to the ground last year and one more would probably have caused my neighbors to draw up papers to have me committed. Once they got a good look at the inside of the trees, they settled down and gave me credit for doing the right thing. Anyway, back to the oak tree on Fourth street it was at least 100 feet tall, and estimates are that it was 100 years old. It was leaning toward the big two-story house that many of us know as the Webb home.

Took in the Pioneer Days Festival at Maynard, Saturday, along with about 5,000 more people and managed to get stung on the neck by a yellowjacket. As a rule, things like insect stings don’t bother me, but this one almost instantly made me sick to the stomach and a splitting headache for a few minutes. In the three or four years I have been attending, the festival has just about doubled in size and given two or three more years, Pioneer Park isn’t going to hold the crowd. They have one of the finest parades around, sort of reminds me of how our 4th of July Parade used to be with folks of all ages participating. This Summer we at The Courier have attended about a half dozen organization-

sponsored fish fries,

a couple political rallies, the Corning 4th of July Celebration, the Pollard Picnic, the Success Watermelon Festival, The Delaplaine Firemen’s Festival, the Naylor Lions Club Festival and now the Maynard event… and you know what? We’ve had a great time at all of them. Of course, we get tired and dirty, but we get to meet and greet a lot of long-time friends, eat all sorts of good things, hear good singing and have a front-row seat at all the beauty pageants. I’m already looking forward to all of them next year, but in the meantime, I’m going to the Harvest Festival at Wynn Park on Saturday, October 24… see you there!

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 1992.