Last week when I wrote about the “Ice Road Truckers” TV show I was going to segue into a little story about life in a mobile home in our early years of marriage. I didn’t have room, so it goes here.

When we lived in Lawrence in the late ’60s, early ’70s we didn’t feel we could afford to buy an $11,000 house so opted for a $5,300 mobile home, which many young couples did in those days.

Seemed like we always had problems with something. Plastic faucet handles would strip out, and then it took a pliers to open and close the faucets.

Ours had a kitchen in front and the bathroom and laundry were in the back. That made for a drain line from the kitchen sink that was about 50 feet long.

One weekend the kitchen sink plugged up and I thought I would take a garden hose and force out what was stopping it with water pressure. I unhooked the washer hose from the faucet in the back and ran the hose to the front and packed it in the drain with rags.

I then told Nancy to turn on the faucet full blast. The water was really coming fast for a while and then all of a sudden it sounded like it was raining.

Later I learned the drain was plugged because it was frozen solid. The only place the water could go was up through the drain vent and out on the roof.

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I have many readers who often tell me about things they think is column material. And I appreciate their interest and input. Three tips I received this week deserve mention.

Glenn Goertz told me about an unusual lightning strike on a tree across from the middle school. I went and checked it out. Usually the tree is split apart when a bolt hits, but this baby bolt caused a thin strip of bark to be missing all of the way down one branch to the trunk to the ground.

Agnes Steinert of Hutchin­son called to tell me that our word puzzle didn’t match the answers this past week. Ooops.

And Jan Amstutz told me about a 6-year-old girl who was competing in a talent show in England that has Simon Cowell as one of the judges. She sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” which was really amazing. I’ll put a link to the video in my online version of “Nonsense” this week.

We published a book of old photos contributed by our readers for the Hillsboro community in 2004. It was well received and we are now under way with a similar book for Marion to be released later this year. It takes about 300 photos to make a book like this. To date we have received many interesting photos from our Marion readers, but still need many more pre-1955 pictures to make a nice book of memories for long-time residents as well as those newer to the community.

We’re sure many photos exist in scrapbooks and boxes all around town and would be a treasure for years to come in hardcover book format for the Marion community.

Our own Dick Varenhorst is a history buff himself and is someone you may contact if you have photos to contribute.

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I hereby propose that all Kansas newspapers with a Web site run a poll with a uniform slate of candidates. It won’t take long to find out who the frontrunners are. It could be coordinated by the Kansas Press Association.

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