Staff take late trip to Wichita

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN JOEL KLAASSEN
For a summer outing, our Hillsboro Free Press and Hesston Record staff, their spouses and significant others, took a little trip to Wichita this past Friday night. The purpose was to see a late movie at the Warren Old Town theater and then tour the Wichita Eagle’s printing, assembly and distribution operations, since that’s where our newspapers are printed each week.

What the Eagle calls “the main” doesn’t go on press until 12:22 a.m., so we needed to kill a little time with a movie first. Besides, who in their right mind would go to Wichita at midnight?

I think everyone enjoyed the excursion. The doughnuts, caps and coffee mugs provided in the Eagle break room were a nice touch. Arriving home after 3 a.m. isn’t the best idea in the world, but what we saw with our own eyes seemed to be worth it.

Saturday morning, after I had been around town for a while, Nancy informed me that my T-shirt was on inside out. I looked and sure enough it was. But at least it wasn’t backward. Blame it on a short night.

Randy Hagen walks by the Free Press every day of the week. One day as I met him as I was leaving the office, we stopped to chat a minute and talked about the days when he was my neighbor as a little boy.

I waxed philosophical and asked him if he “looked up to me” when he was little. His answer was “yes,” but that was because I was taller than him.

I think Kansas is listed as a drought state. Looks like things are changing a little around here. There is no substitute for nature’s moisture.

I finally found a little time the other night to watch the Alton Brown “Feasting on Asphalt” segment we recorded on DVR that featured Florence. I really like that show and the high energy Brown brings to it. He did a great job in Florence with the Spring Fling and the Harvey House, too. Money can’t buy that kind of positive exposure.

The professional football preseason is upon us again-and I just can’t get into it. I’m not sure what it is, but I think I have become completely bored with it.

High school and college football is another matter. I can’t wait to see how our local teams come together this year. Can Tabor pull off another outstanding season? Will K-State come back from the doldrums with the new coaching regime and will KU match or beat last season?

Some people thought I might be retiring from what I wrote recently. Reality is, I am dreaming about it.

We took the Cameli grandsons to Mid-Continent Airport for the flight home a week ago this past Sunday. They were flying, but their parents were driving home to Atlanta-to take my daughter’s bedroom furniture in their van and therefore no seats for the kids.

Everything seemed to be fine until Amy called to say Alex and Louie were on the ground in Atlanta and AirTran wouldn’t let Uncle Joe pick them up because his name wasn’t in the computer.

After a few frantic phone calls to the airline, officials there finally figured everything was OK. Uncle Joe said they would have let him have the boys sooner or later because airport personnel would have gotten tired of feeding Louie, who is always hungry.

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