KU tourney games are stressful

Written by Joel Klaassen Wednesday, 21 March 2007 19:13

If time (and money) were no object, I would have been in Chicago this past weekend to watch my Jay­hawks. It’s hard to explain, but these tournament games always have me tied up in knots.

One has to wonder, though, how so many people are able to pony up $100 to $500 per ticket, not to mention the travel expense, to attend these events.

I’m going to miss running into Marion resident Jim Helfer, who died recently.

I learned to know him 30 years ago as one of the gentlemen golfers from Newton who came to play in the Hillsboro Golf Club tournaments.

Every time I saw him in later years, after he moved to Marion, he was genuinely interested in how I was doing.

 

We’ve launched a new Web site for the Hillsboro Free Press. This is after having had our site hosted with a large corporation since 1999.

We feel there is so much more we can do if we have greater control over our site. The new site went live last Thursday, but not without a few glitches. Please bear with us as we make the transition.

Our plan is to bring you the latest and most complete information possible for Hillsboro and the area. We would welcome your comments and suggestions.

 

With the warmer weather, we decided to put the park benches back out in front of Nancy’s store.

While moving the benches from the garage to the sidewalk, I noticed that some of the little bolts holding them together had come loose or were missing.

It’s a mystery how those little devils can come loose. Could the vehicles that drive by each day vibrate them to the point of coming loose?

 

I don’t know about the rest of you but I have discovered that I am not smarter than a fifth grader. It occurred to me, too, that I hadn’t needed to know the answer to any of the questions until I saw them on that game show.

 

I’m trying to figure out what it means when so few people show up for the legislative coffee put on Saturday by the Hillsboro Chamber of Commerce.

It’s one of the easiest methods of registering your concerns with Rep. Don Dahl and Sen. Jim Barnett. Plus, there was free coffee and coffee cake.

 

Here are two things that concern me about our fine state:

Since March 2001, Kansas has lost 26,100 private sector jobs and has added 15,700 government jobs. Kansas’ government debt has grown from $424 million in 1992 to $3.95 billion in 2005, an increase of 832 percent.

Buller Manufacturing, located where Quilts & Quiltracks and the Mennonite Brethren Church office are now, was one of the early cornerstones of Hillsboro industry at 132 N. Main.

It was owned by Levi T. Buller, who also was Hillsboro’s mayor for a number of years. The company was known for the coupler hitch and mineral feeders, which are still manufactured today in Hillsboro by Prairie Products.

It was impressive to see how employees took flat pieces of metal and stamped them into the parts to make their products.

As a printer in the early 1960s, one of my jobs was to print letter-size promotional flyers for the mineral feeders on green paper with black ink.