The trip of all trips was the float-plane trip my dad, brother and I took with Norman into northern Ontario. Brother Mark and I flew with Norman in his Beech Bonanza V-tail from Hillsboro to Buffalo, Minn., where we picked up my dad and then flew to Thunder Bay and on to Arm?strong.
It was a breathtaking outing to say the least and the fishing was great, too.
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I feel I should apologize for the shortest acceptance speech of all time at the annual Chamber banquet Jan. 12. One sentence didn?t do justice to the team effort that led to the Free Press winning ?member of the year? for its work to inform the public about the jail initiative.
It was a little late in the evening for this old guy to muster the energy to wax eloquent about the award. That said, credit should go to our news staff for explaining the issue about the jail through the news pages.
And credit goes to a few members of the business community, plus a few others, who put in the money and effort to keep the sales tax from passing, which would have damaged our already fragile economy.
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We found some old VHS tapes of family gatherings from Christmases past, so our family had a good time watching them and seeing my parents from nearly 20 years ago.
We also saw how we all looked then, too. How time changes things. Our grandsons had never seen my dad before except for still photographs, so it was a good experience for them as well.
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While going through my mom?s things we found a note in one of her coat pockets that read, ?This is not yours. Put it back!? with her name and address on it.
Apparently someone else had mistaken the coat for their own at one time or another.
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A death in the family has its upside. It brought our families together, which hadn?t happened for more than three years. And we got to see our niece and her husband?s new baby boy, who was barely a month old.
We?d all have liked to get as much sleep as the baby got, as it was late to bed every night for four nights straight.
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While we were finishing eating Sat?urday night we heard a loud crash downstairs. I ran to see what happened. The boys were playing in the hallway and Louie?all of his 50 pounds?ran backward into the front door glass.
It shattered and the big boys spent an hour or so boarding up the opening and cleaning up the pieces.
