Leave town and the snow flies

Written by Joel Klaassen Tuesday, 17 April 2007 14:12

As Yogi Berra used to say, “It was déja vu all over again.”

We’re starting to believe that all we need to do is leave town and it will snow—even if it is April. All we saw when we returned Saturday night were the unmelted little white scoopfuls where people had cleared walks and drives.

Don’t put your snow shovels away yet. I’m leaving again on Thursday for Iowa.

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  The surest thing in the world is change. Life happens right in front of us and nothing can be taken for granted.

  We have been very fortunate to have Paula Emerson as our advertising manager for nearly three years. She has been great to work with and has done a superb job taking care of the many details that the job entails, and is pleasant all the while.

  We will miss her and the many talents she possessed. We wish the best for Paula as she and her family move to Mound­ridge.

   

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  We are also very lucky that Don Wipf has agreed to come out of retirement and pitch in as our interim ad man until we find the right person to take the position.

   

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  I met a publisher at the Association of Free Community Papers annual national convention in New Orleans who had never sent an e-mail until last week.

  Oh, he had e-mail, but had his secretary print them out for him to read. Then he would write his response in longhand and give it back to her to enter and return the e-mail. He didn’t want to be bothered with it and I get his point.

   

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  After returning from Atlanta last week I was going to transfer about 60 photos off of our digital camera from the trip. To my dismay all I got was a card error and the only option was to reformat the card. That wasn’t acceptable so I searched for a recovery software program and to my surprise found one that worked—and was free to boot!

  If it ever happens to you, you can send your card to a recovery specialist company, reformat the card and lose everything, or take matters in your own hands and download the following from Zero Assumption Digital Recovery: http://www.z-a-recovery.com/digital-image-recovery. htm

  Once you get to the Web site there is a flash demo that tells you how to proceed. I’m no genius, but I felt like one when I got all of my photos back.

   

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  We stayed in the French Quarter for the conference. By my observation it looked like it was 95 percent back in business. The area only had one foot of water, so the damage was minimal compared with other lower-lying areas. The French Quarter Festival was happening during the time we were there, so got to see Jumping Johnny Sasone and his band, which was terrific.

   

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  I wonder how many of you remember Jim Seibel, who had a radiator repair shop located in the downstairs of the old barn that sat on the west side of the alley which is now a part of Hillsboro Ford’s used vehicle lot on West D.

  According to my old phone books, he must have been there from about 1960 to 1964, which had the last entry for the business. Ennis Unruh owned the barn before he sold it to the Ford dealership.

  Jim was a happy-go-lucky guy and I remember that he whistled much of the time. He was also a baseball coach and maybe an umpire as well.