ORIGINALLY WRITTEN JOEL KLAASSEN
Hillsboro lost two of its finest citizens this past Saturday. Dean Ollenburger and Eldon Knak both died on the same day. Both men were two of the nicest you’d ever meet.
For many years they rode together to work at the Hesston Corp. It’s ironic that they rode “home” together one last time.
We will miss them both.
–We have wanted to be more accessible to our friends in eastern Marion County for some time. Now that goal is coming true with our announcement this week that we will have a service desk on Marion’s Main Street.
We’ll be located in the office of Great Plains Computers & Networking beginning April 1. We’re looking forward to our new relationship with Lloyd Davies and Shelley Plett and wish to thank them for making it possible.
And since our sales representative and ad person Tina Groening spends most of her time working in Marion and has children attending school in Marion, it just makes sense to have her based a little closer to the action.
–Almost everyone would like to have a little more money in their pockets each month. I’ve been mulling this over for quite some time and I came up with a short list of why there might be less money to spend.
— Internet service-from $19.95 to $69.95 per month.
— Cell phones in addition to the land line at the house. About $30 per month and up.
— Caller ID, caller waiting, caller forwarding, voicemail. A couple of bucks here and there.
— Multiple credit cards, some with annual fees and exorbitant 20 percent plus interest rates on unpaid balances.
— Casino and dog-track gambling. (How much?)
— Multiple soft drinks per day costing 50¢ and up.
— Cablevision and dish TV from $30-some to $100-and-some.
This is not intended to make any judgments-just an explanation.
–We’re all wondering where the price of gas is headed these days.
Based upon what I learned from a knowledgeable source in the refinery business, the problems aren’t going away anytime soon.
Our refineries need to run at 95 percent capacity to keep up with the domestic demand, which is not likely to be attainable. Foreign producers of oil are not wishing to contract with U.S. oil companies anymore, which makes prices unstable and volume uncertain. India and China are buying more and more, which diverts supplies away from us. Standards for fuel used by other countries are lower, which is cheaper to produce and therefore more likely to be sold there first.
When supplies are tight, prices are high. Is the bus on its way back?
