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  Fried Apples and Friendship I don’t consider myself an unfriendly person, but I am selective when it comes to forming lasting friendships.  There is in my view a huge difference between people we call friends and those we call acquaintances.   Friends are those with whom we share  “enduring affection, esteem, intimacy and trust.” That definition according to Britannica and I must agree.   An acquaintance on the other hand is someone you know and see on occasion.  Most people make hundreds of acquaintances in a lifetime, and many of those may be good people.  However, only a few of the people we meet ignite a spark that results in lasting friendship.   Such a spark struck my core when I met Rose, the Librarian in a neighboring town when the library hosted Kent Haruf’s 1984 book signing for his first published novel,  The Tie That Binds .  Haruf, who died of cancer in 2014, went on to write many other novels, including  Plainsong , which was adapted into a  Hallmark Hall of Fame  movie
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Enchanted Pineapple Juice A Tantalizing Memory I suppose I drank pineapple juice as a kid, but the first time my taste bud memory recalls the tantalizing experience was in the mid 1960s during my first visit to The Enchanted Tiki Room, an attraction at Disneyland Amusement Park in Anaheim, California.  The Tiki Room, which was sponsored by the Dole Pineapple Company, opened at Disneyland in 1963.  I visited the park for the first time a few months later. By that time, I was no longer a kid.     In fact, even though I was not yet old enough to vote, I was old enough to drink beer in a Kansas beer joint. Kansas didn’t ratify the 26 th  Amendment to the United States Constitution, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, until April 7, 1971.  And, it wasn’t until 1984 that Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which mandated that only those who had reached the age of 21 years could purchase and/or drink alcohol.  The 21-year-old age limit included all states in the uni
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  Sweet Potato tastes better dressed simply The only sweet potatoes I recall eating as a youngster swam in brown sugar syrup and hid beneath toasted marshmallows.     Consequently, this dish, generally served on Thanksgiving or Christmas, seemed more like dessert than a vegetable side dish.     To be polite, I rolled my eyes and placed a small spoon full on my plate and hoped I could dump them when no one was looking.     I preferred good old mashed white potatoes topped with gravy or smothered with homemade noodles. A few years ago, I decided to try a baked sweet potato at a steak restaurant and was surprised when it arrived smothered with butter and brown sugar.  It looked a lot like the syrupy side dish I recalled from my childhood, but I decided to dump the topping and try the unadulterated vegetable itself.  I was surprised to find a mildly sweet delicacy beneath the overly sweet topping.  I have been baking and enjoying baked sweet potatoes ever since; usually topped with a small
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  Life is ever changing and often without a deadline Building a website for my church recently enticed me to revisit this blog, which I started in 2011.  I then sputtered with occasional stalls until May 2017.  I suppose I could blame the happenings of life for the inconsistency of my writing, but I know deep down to blame the real culprit, which was not having a deadline to drive me. haxtunchurchofthebrethren.org Publishing a weekly newspaper for nearly 30 years created a drive in me that forced compliance when confronted with the dreaded deadline.  I couldn't begin to count the number of last minute editorials I pounded out, forcing the words from mind to fingers and then through the computer keyboard and ultimately landing on the page in time for the page to head to the printer. That same fear of failing to meet a deadline drove me to research and write Homesteading Haxtun and the High Plains , a history book commissioned by the History Press, once I retired from the Herald .  T
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Rhubarb, Phyllis and the queen’s dessert

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            Thirty-plus years ago when I moved to Colorado, my mini high-plains acreage came with three rhubarb plants.  Rhubarb fell somewhere between liver and homony in my less-than-fond childhood food memories, so the first six or seven summers I watched these plants go to seed and mowed them down when the leaves began to fade from neglect by fall.  It proved a forgiving plant, however, and returned each spring, green and lovely as ever.               The waste of these plants, not really a fruit, but often considered one, continued until one fall when I attended a Phillips County Fair Queen lunch as part of my duties as a reporter for one of our county’s two community newspapers.   The fair queen that year happened to be Jodi Starkebaum, the granddaughter of Phyllis (Anderson) Starkebaum, a wonderful, gentle-speaking woman who went off to college, returned to the area, spent one year as a teacher then dedicated the remainder of her life to working beside her husband Loren o
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Seasons, life and soup

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           The seasons come and go and life continues even as blogging takes a three-year hiatus.   The purple blooms on the lilac bushes outside my back door signal the arrival of spring and remind me that last year at this time I was away in Texas offering support to my granddaughter as she began the battle of her life against breast cancer.  She continues to fight, showing more courage than seems possible from that remembered toddler who would climb onto the back of her highchair daring it to tip over.  She speeds toward life head on, just like that two-year-old who raced on short, chubby legs to the dog door where she poked her head out and shouted, “train, train,” each time one traveled past our back yard; even when no one else heard the “clack, clack” of its iron wheels beating against the tracks.             Shannon continues to thrive as she battles this horrid disease, faces her fears, works in her chosen career as a nurse and cares for her and husband Femi’s two-yea
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