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It is not true that the Great Wall of China is the only man-made structure that can be viewed from space - many man-made objects, including the Dutch polders, can be viewed from space.
And Now You Do
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10:24, The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him: but the desire of the righteous shall be granted.
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Tales from Elm Flat: A Family Christmas on the Farm
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
Christmas comes but once a year, but it is a time that calls forth memories like no other season. There is much to remember in our family, particularly of childhood Christmas seasons–a tree decorated with chains of red and silver tinsel strands, chains of threaded cranberries and popcorn, alternating red and white, all the old Christmas ornaments, tinsel, and artificial snow. And didn’t the tree always stand in the northwest corner of our living room? And wasn’t there always a star on top of the tree?
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Posted by Webmaster on Monday, May 21 @ 17:42:13 EDT (661 reads)
(Read More... | 5067 bytes more | Score: 5)
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Tales from Elm Flat: A Superfluity of Ecomiums
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There is a relatively new educational philosophy that suggests the desirability of praising children and avoiding negative comments and remarks at all costs. This philosophy apparently has the objectives of creating motivation and assisting children in developing feelings of self-esteem. The philosophy suggests the desirability of offering constant praise to children, bathing them in praise, so to say, with the thought that in this heightened state of self-worth they will feel more like improving their performance.
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Posted by Webmaster on Friday, May 18 @ 15:20:49 EDT (1520 reads)
(Read More... | 7836 bytes more | Score: 4.85)
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Tales from Elm Flat: Getting By on the Farm
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
Use It Up, Wear It Out
The decade of the fifties was not the age of affluence on most family farms, certainly not on ours. A big family with limited income had to learn lots of ways to get by with very little expenditure of cash. The old depression era saying still held real meaning for us: “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.” Our family learned a multitude of ways to give practical meaning to this old adage.
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Posted by Webmaster on Friday, May 18 @ 10:41:01 EDT (650 reads)
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Tales from Elm Flat: Cotton Picking Days on the Farm
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
Cotton picking season was payday for the Vernon kids. All summer long we worked free alongside the hired hands–chopping cotton to thin the stands and hoeing to remove the weeds. If you asked Dad why the hired hands were paid $4.00 a day, while we received nothing, he might just remind you that the family provided food and a roof over your head! When the cotton bolls started opening up and some white began to show in the field, we got dollar signs in our eyes!
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Posted by Webmaster on Sunday, May 06 @ 22:47:33 EDT (3185 reads)
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Tales from Elm Flat: Our Grandmother's Flowers
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
From a landscape perspective, broad expanses of neatly clipped green lawn are the custom today. Modern lawns are set off by bushes and hedges along the house, perhaps punctuated by a few plantings and trees elsewhere in the yard. Such landscaping is modern, trim, and efficient to maintain. Chemicals, fertilizer, and equipment abound to keep our landscapes looking their best, and if you are too busy to bother, just a few hundred dollars a week will suffice to have a professional landscaping firm come out to clip, snip, fertilize, spray, water, and keep it neatly mowed for you.
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Posted by Webmaster on Tuesday, May 01 @ 15:15:39 EDT (823 reads)
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Tales from Elm Flat: The Four Sycamore Trees
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
Four great sycamore trees stood in a square pattern dominating the front yard of the Vernon place east of Kerens. They were tokens of my Father’s youth, as they were planted and grew to maturity when he still lived there as a boy during the decades of the twenties and thirties. They survived to see the next generation of Vernons – all nine of the sons and daughters of Steve and Madeline Vernon.
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Posted by webmaster on Tuesday, May 01 @ 10:44:54 EDT (678 reads)
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Tales from Elm Flat: Teachers in Kerens
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
I am one of the graduating class of 1958 who spent their entire 12 years of school in the Kerens Public School System, just like my father before me. I started the first grade in 1946 and finished high school in 1958. Most of us did not realize it then, but the Kerens schools of that time were really excellent. A high percentage of high school graduates were college bound, and all the graduates met a high standard in terms of writing, math, and science skills and knowledge.
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Posted by Webmaster on Wednesday, March 14 @ 12:11:51 EDT (840 reads)
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Tales from Elm Flat: The Cotton Belt Railroad
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
The Cotton Belt Railroad forms the northern boundary of Elm Flat, and the railroad runs right through Kerens, in an east-west direction (or west-east direction, because trains run both ways). Our family moved from Elm Flat to the old Vernon homestead around 1949 after Grandpa Vernon died and Grandma Vernon moved into Kerens. She bought a little house on the Bazette Road, across the street from Carlton Dobbs. Mr. Dobbs was the fixit man, and he fixed all sorts of home appliances, from lawnmowers to toasters. It was a familiar sight to see him picking up and delivering the items he worked on in a little motorized vehicle he had built for that purpose.
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Posted by Webmaster on Monday, March 05 @ 11:02:00 EST (1527 reads)
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Tales from Elm Flat: Tales from Elm Flat
Breakfast on the Farm
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
One thing about breakfast on the farm–there was plenty of it! Breakfast was the biggest meal of the day. When you are getting ready to put in a full 10- or 12-hour day of farm work, you need something that will stick to your ribs, and that is exactly what we got.
Let’s start off with the cook–my Dad, Steve Vernon, was it. Mom was generally otherwise occupied in the morning, with babies, helping kids get ready for school, and maybe even on some occasions enjoying a few extra moments of sleep. Dad was pater familias to a brood of children that eventually numbered nine, and cooking breakfast was really no threat to his masculinity. In addition, he had been a cook down at the Highway Cafe and in the Kerens National Guard artillery unit before the war, so he had all the necessary skills.
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Posted by Webmaster on Monday, May 30 @ 13:52:19 EDT (888 reads)
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Tales from Elm Flat: Tales from Elm Flat
I Heard It on the Party Line
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
In this modern day world, we have become accustomed to highly efficient communications. Carrying a cellular telephone, you are literally connected to the world. There are also message services, beepers, and FAX, and if all else fails you can send an e-mail message.
Communications were not quite so easy when my family lived out on the old Goforth place in Elm Flat. When we first moved there, there was no electricity and no telephone service, and during the winter time when the dirt roads turned to mud, you couldn’t even get a letter delivered to your mailbox or drive a car into Kerens. You could get into town on a horse even in the worst weather, but that alternative that was saved for real emergencies.
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Posted by Webmaster on Sunday, May 22 @ 20:45:43 EDT (997 reads)
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Tales from Elm Flat: Tales from Elm Flat
A Tribute to a Pen Pal
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
In the olden days, there was no e-mail, but people still managed to communicate. Using e-mail is fast and easy, assuming of course that you have access to a computer and know how to operate it. I think e-mail is just great. You can get messages out to a business, a friend, or a relative quickly and inexpensively. With the convenience of e-mail, you may even communicate more frequently than before the days of computers. I love e-mail, and would never want to give it up. Yet, sometimes I wonder . . .
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Posted by Webmaster on Saturday, May 21 @ 01:47:11 EDT (895 reads)
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Tales from Elm Flat: Tales from Elm Flat
Country Vegetable Gardens
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
When I was a child growing up, our family always had a vegetable garden--every year without fail. Gardening was fun, but our gardens were not just for fun. They were the main source of our food. We ate fresh beans, green peas, radish, onions, okra, cabbage, turnips, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, cantaloupes, watermelons, lima beans, squash, beets, and lots of other things in the spring and summer.
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Posted by Webmaster on Sunday, May 15 @ 17:42:34 EDT (909 reads)
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Tales from Elm Flat: Tales from Elm Flat
Laundry Day in the Flat
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
Laundry day out in the Flat was Monday, so the week started off with a bang. There was no electricity, so there were no washing machines. Pumps also run on electricity, so there was no pump on the well. We drew the water from the well using a rope, pulley, and water bucket. Laundry day, in other words, was fairly labor intensive.
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Posted by Webmaster on Wednesday, May 11 @ 13:18:30 EDT (908 reads)
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Tales from Elm Flat: Tales from Elm Flat
The Butane Man
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
My grandparents built the old farmhouse on the Vernon place east of Kerens in 1917, the year of my Father’s birth. They constructed the house in the old-fashioned Southwestern style of architecture. The floor joists rested on upright wooden blocks, and there was no basement. The walls were formed of 1" x 12" boxing planks, with an exterior covering of wooden shiplap siding. The walls were not hollow, so they contained no insulation. The windows were single-pane–no insulation here either. The roof was covered with wooden shingles, and the attic was bereft of insulation.
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Posted by Webmaster on Tuesday, May 03 @ 23:12:13 EDT (846 reads)
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Tales from Elm Flat: Tales from Elm Flat
Talk of the Town
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
The men I grew up with around Kerens were never particularly noted for their loquacity. In other words, they did not talk a lot, at least not in public. Many were of the strong silent type, and John Wayne can serve as the basic model. Now it is true that not every man was strong, but of course anybody can stay quiet . . . well, at least most people.
In a place where silence is valued, talking too much can be considered a character defect. I recall, years ago, asking my Dad about a certain individual, perhaps a mutual acquaintance from Kerens or maybe from one of the nearby communities. After holding his silence for a decent interval, my father finally uttered the devastating verdict, “Well he talks a good bit.” Another time, I heard the equally critical variation, “Well, he is a good talker . . .” Once I recall hearing a talkative person along with the whole of Protestantism resoundingly demeaned in the following acerbic assessment: “Well he won’t work, but he can sure talk–maybe he ought to be a preacher.”
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Posted by Webmaster on Friday, April 29 @ 18:53:14 EDT (760 reads)
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88 _STORIES (6 _PAGES, 15 _PERPAGE)
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 Symptom: Floor swaying.
Fault: Excessive air turbulence, perhaps due to air-hockey
game in progress.
Action Required: Insert broom handle down back of jacket.
Symptom: Everything has gone dim, strange taste of peanuts
and pretzels or cigarette butts in mouth.
Fault: You have fallen forward.
Action Required: See above.
Symptom: Opposite wall covered with acoustic tile and several
flourescent light strips.
Fault: You have fallen over backward.
Action Required: If your glass is full and no one is standing on your
drinking arm, stay put. If not, get someone to help
you get up, lash yourself to bar.
-- Bar Troubleshooting
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| Tuesday, September 09 | | · | A Bazette Hunting Trip |
| Tuesday, September 02 | | · | Sullivan’s Shoe Shop |
| Monday, September 01 | | · | Clotheslines |
| Monday, July 21 | | · | Scrapping Cotton |
| Thursday, May 22 | | · | Trombone Torture |
| Wednesday, April 09 | | · | Progress in the Cotton Patch |
| Thursday, April 03 | | · | The Day the Bus Fell into the Creek |
| Friday, December 28 | | · | Reflections upon Two Barns |
| Tuesday, November 27 | | · | The Old Yellow Fire Escape |
| Tuesday, November 13 | | · | A Trip Out of State |
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