Forum Flashbacks: August 4-10
FORUM FILE PHOTO
15 YEARS AGO: Town & Country Days – It was apparently a sweet win at the Burlington Junction Town & Country Days as Hunter Dawson and Erin Cook were crowned the 2007 Little Mr. and Miss BJ with Abby Bragg as princess and Blake Moore as prince. Third places were taken by Isaiah Ray, handsome little guy, and Ashlynn Roberts, little sweetheart.
5 years ago
The Biggest Little Horse Show in the World galloped through its 80th year over the weekend in Pickering.
Hosted, as it has been for decades, by the Pickering Lions Club, the Pickering Horse Show embraced nearly 50 classes of saddle competition and western-style racing contests in addition to Friday’s draft horse event — essentially an equine tractor pull during which teams of 2,000-pound Belgians and Percherons take turns hauling a metal sled weighted with concrete blocks.
The pull attracts competitive teamsters from across the region, and is one of things that makes the Pickering show stand out from other equestrian events over the four-state area that confine themselves to quarter horses, American saddlebreds, paints and other traditional riding breeds.
“I just want more power,” said Daniel Gray of Villisca, Iowa, who pulled Friday night with his prized pair of Belgians. Gray, who farms row crops and raises livestock on his 450-acre spread, has been working with draft horses for 35 years and competes in about 20 events each season.
“My dad and my grandpa did it, and now my son is doing it,” he said. “I started when I was 9 years old at a pony pull here in Pickering. It’s just something I’ve done all my life. I like horses.”
Many, if not most, of the riders and teamsters who participate in the Pickering show each year tell similar stories. The traditions of rein, harness, bit and bridle tend to run in families with parents and grandparents passing their equestrian skills on to a new generation.
15 years ago
There’s a new face at the Nodaway County Senior Center working to create the best environment possible for its patrons.
Amie Firavich has only been the new administrator at the Center since July 2, but she already has her hands full juggling an expanding schedule and working to plan the logistics of the Center’s noon meal, activities and special events, all the while trying to build closer relationships with the patrons who go to the Center regularly.
The Senior Center delivers about 117 meals to homebound seniors each day; and more than 70 seniors eat at the Center on a daily basis for the noon meal.
Firavich and her husband, David, along with their son, Justin, 5, moved to Maryville when David was relocated for his job with NSK Motion & Control, a Japanese-based ball-bearing company with a plant in Clarinda, Iowa.
While Firavich and her family are new to the Maryville area, having moved here in October, she’s no stranger to lending a helping hand and working with seniors.
“In Michigan, I volunteered with the Meals on Wheels (program) and volunteered at nursing homes,” Firavich said.
After seeing an ad in the newspaper for the administrator position at the Senior Center, Firavich applied and was hired for the role.
“It’s been a blessing in disguise,” she said. “I’m getting to know all the patrons. I absolutely love it.”
25 years ago
Maryville voters Tuesday gave their approval to a measure that will extend the half-cent sales tax which funds development at Mozingo Park for an additional eight years and eight months past its scheduled expiration date in 1999.
“The voters have spoken, and we are going to accelerate our programs at Mozingo,” Maryville Mayor Pro-tem Dale Mathes said Tuesday night after learning 74 percent of Maryville voters had given approval to the extension.
Yes votes totaled 742; not votes totaled 259.
Mathes said much of the money generated by the sales tax through its scheduled expiration date is tied up in loans, but the City Council will consider refinancing the golf course loan to make more money available for projects immediately.
One of the first priorities will be improving the roads at Mozingo, both those leading to the park and those on park property.
100 years ago
Throw Out Your Net, Oh Ye Maid Of Little Faith
The agility of the bridle-shy young men in side stepping the matrimonial net is believed to be the cause of an alarming slump in summer weddings this season, and is causing considerable anxiety among match-making mammas, who have charming daughters awaiting the psychological moment to throw out the net and haul “him” in.
Girls are just as pretty as they ever were. Porch swings are just as inviting and the moon shines just as seductively through the vines on the piazza, while the phonograph wails out a saccharine love song, but the young men simply don’t rise to the bait.
During June last year Dan Cupid literally humped himself (Editor’s Note: According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, this phrase means “to exert oneself: hustle.”) and has to his credit on the court house records, an average of a wedding a day. June and July of this year combined, only furnished twenty-seven weddings with possibly three or four consummated outside the county.
In the words of the immortal Caesar — “How Come?”
The 100-year flashback is courtesy of the Missouri Digital Newspaper Project from the State Historical Society of Missouri, viewable at shsmo.org/collections/newspapers/mdnp. The original column ran in the Aug. 10, 1922, edition of The Maryville Tribune, a predecessor of The Maryville Forum.
