Around Town

Dear Santa, I want a t-shirtIt’s not too early to start hinting for gifts for Santa to put under my tree. Al Wilburn is a young (at heart) guy who lives in Harrah and has been known to provide Santa-type gifts for a wide variety of folks in the past.But he has hit the jackpot this time!

An 8th grade education in 1895(Note: I promised Christine Provence, my 10-11-12 grade English teacher at Holdenville High School, that I would run this column every year. She liked it better than any of the seemingly endless papers I wrote in her classes).

Thanksgiving has always ranked high on my personal list of favorite holidays and I feel a certain pain of regret when I say it is not my FAVORITE holiday. Christmas? Fourth of July? Easter? S o r r y !

A Poem Worth Reading (A GOLDEN OLDIE… WORTH A REPEAT! ENJOY) VETERANS DAY EXTENDEDJUST A COMMON SOLDIER(A Soldier Died Today) by A. Lawrence Vaincourt He was getting old and paunchy and his hair was falling fast, And he sat around the Legion, telling stories of the past.

Shoulda been a holiday I know that we have way too many holidays, no matter what the school kids say as they recuperate from Fall Break, look ahead to Thanksgiving and fully chill out with two weeks off during the Christmas holidays.

Kids say the darndest things School is definite ly back in session and it is like no other school year we have ever known, but some things remain the same. Namely, the humorous (often) true things that kids say and they don’t even know they are funny.

Pigs and wedding bells The Picnic A Jewish Rabbi and a Catholic Priest met at the town’s annual 4th of July picnic. Old friends, they began their usual banter. "This baked ham is really delicious;" the priest teased the rabbi. "You really ought to try it.

Billy Graham speaks to 9-11 tragedy {Note: Billy Graham’s remarks given at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on Friday, September 14, 2001, brought hope and healing to a shocked nation.

Some tips help beat the heat Maybe it’s because we have had a little hot weather or maybe it’s just that time of the year. It couldn’t possibly be that some of us are getting a little older.

Profound proclamations concerning life When you stand in front of a classroom of children for 57 years as I so enjoyably did, you encounter all sorts of questions, mostly about your personal life and sometimes about whatever topic we might have been discussing in class.