ORIGINALLY WRITTEN JOEL KLAASSEN
If you like high school basketball like I do, then I think you’ll agree the Hillsboro vs. Marion boys’ game on Friday night at Marion gym was one for the ages. It had all of the intensity, drama and see-saw action you could ever want.
We sat rather close to the floor, which gives a better perspective of the intensity than sitting high. It was obvious to me both teams had their “A game” going, although it took Marion longer to get up to full speed.
That it went to overtime made it all the more interesting. Both teams can be proud of the way they competed and fought until the wild finish at the buzzer.
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Ice fishing looks like a lot of fun to me, but I could never do it because I don’t like to be cold- and I think it has to be very cold to have ice thick enough to get out there.
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My Uncle Ben used to go out on the lake ice in Minnesota without a fish house and just sit there out in the open and fish through a hole he had cut.
He didn’t even wear gloves.
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Our good friend and former employee Don Wipf recently retired from ad sales at the Hesston Record.
He moved over there when we bought it a few years ago so he could work closer to home and so we could take advantage of his expertise in getting that paper back in operation. He stayed on after we sold the paper to help the new owners get their feet on the ground. Mission accomplished.
Don is one of the most knowledgeable, organized, persistent and thorough sales people I have ever known and we will miss not seeing him on a regular basis.
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We purchased a few new computers to upgrade our pre-press operations, which were lagging behind the rest of the world. When we started more than eight years ago our equipment was leading edge and now we were becoming trailing edge.
Anyway, it takes a while to get everything updated and new software upgrades loaded, so everything is still on the shelf.
Our friends in Hesston needed a keyboard a few weeks back because one of theirs malfunctioned so I loaned them one of our new ones thinking they could just replace it.
After a few weeks we got back to setting up the computers again and a keyboard was missing. I couldn’t believe that anyone would take it and we couldn’t find it anywhere.
To make this rather long story short, I woke up one morning and it dawned on me that I was the one who took it.
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Had a pleasant surprise last week when all four Unger brothers (David, Mike, Matthew and Andy, who all previously worked at the Free Press) stopped by to see us. They have been in south Florida and were home for Christmas. Matt was coming back to finish his final semester at Tabor. I learned they had been spreading their made-up stories about Marion County to anyone in Florida who would listen.
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I don’t remember very much about Violetta Groening, but I know she was a car dealer and owned Groening Motor Co. at 201 S. Main, where the Hillsboro Ford body shop is now located. It was unusual in those days for a woman to own a car dealership.
My parents bought a new 1957 Plymouth from her. It was the year of the big tail fins. The car was gray and it was the coolest car I had ever seen-except we didn’t say “cool” then.
