The Mornin' Mail is published every weekday except major holidays
Tuesday, June 26, 2007 Volume XVI, Number 7

did ya know?

Did Ya Know?... Youth cheerleading signups will be held today from 6-8 p.m. at the girls softball fields, Fair Acres YMCA. For more information call 358-4813.

Did Ya Know?... The City of Carthage will be spraying for mosquitoes Monday, June 25th through Friday, June 29th. Areas will be sprayed in the evening of regular trash pickup, between the hours of 8 p.m. and midnight. It is recommended to turn off attic and window fans when the sprayer is in the immediate area.

Did Ya Know?... Spare Cat Rescue will help pay for the spay or neuter of your cat. Call for details. 417-358-6808.

today's laugh

An "economy luncheon" menu begins with beef broth and ends with mince pie; it definitely makes both ends meat.

How’s your uncle’s tobacco plantation coming?
Not so good. He finally gave it up. He couldn’t make up his mind whether to plant cigarettes or cigars.

Sorry if our hammering disturbed you. We were hanging a picture.
Oh, that’s all right. I just came over to ask if it was all right if we hung a picture on the other end of the nail.

His clothes are made to order.
Yes, but not to his order.

1907
INTERESTING MELANGE.
A Chronological Record of Events as they have Transpired in the City and County since our last Issue.

Country Burglary.

The house on George W. Koontz’s dairy farm, 3 1/2 miles east of Carthage on the Avilla road was entered by burglars yesterday while the family who occupy it were away on a visit. The thieves cut a screen, unlocked the door and walked in. They made of with a watch belonging to Dave Thomas, who lives on the place.

Cars Will Run Thru Saturday.

Beginning today the cars on the electric line will run through to Galena without change. The cars will leave Carthage at the same time as heretofore. The running time from Joplin will still be an hour and a half. The time from Joplin to Galena will now be 30 minutes.

Pepsin, just over the Jasper line, in Newton county, ought to be able to attract the favorable attention of dyspeptics who are looking for a health resort, if it comes anywhere near living up to its name.

 

Today's Feature

To Discuss Budget, EMS Building.

Carthage City Council will meet this evening at 7:30 p.m. in the Council Chambers of City Hall. Items on the agenda include the second reading of the ordinance that would adopt the City annual operating and capital budget for fiscal year 2007-2008.

Council is also scheduled to reconsider the ordinance that would authorize a lease of land for the purpose of constructing an Emergency Medical Services building near the new McCune Brooks Regional Hospital. This item was rejected by Council at the previous meeting. A special session was held Friday of last week for the Council to hear more information about the lease.


"Salute A Veteran" Blood Drive.

News release

Beimdiek Insurance will be hosting their 4th annual Salute a Veteran Blood Drive on June 29th from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The Community Blood Center of the Ozarks mobile unit will be located at 303 West Third Street.

Honor a former or current military service member by donating blood in their name. CBCO will provide cards that can be sent to them, and a t-shirt to let people know that you both honored their sacrifice and saved lives!

To be eligible to donate, persons must be at least 17 years of age, weigh above 110 pounds, have not given blood in the past 56 days and feel well and healthy. First time donors should bring Photo ID. Appointments can be scheduled by calling 358-4007 but walk-ins are welcome as well.

Free Salute a Veteran T-Shirt for all participants and Free Cholesterol Screening.

Just Jake Talkin'
Mornin',
I completely changed my attitude ‘bout pitchin’ horseshoes. I was always taught to time the turn of the shoe so it was facin’ the stake at the same time it reached its destination. Worked a lot a hours tryin’ to perfect that task. Never did get it right.

My brother-in-law says a fella he knows who plays a lot showed him ta make the shoe flip end over end several times while it’s air born. With the shoe flippin’ several times, it not only is simpler, the momentum of the flip will likely carry the shoe onto the stake if it hits it. It leaves some room for error.

I haven’t tried it enough yet ta get used to the simplicity of it yet. As with most things, throwin’ shoes is hard ta learn by watchin’ until ya get out there and toss a few, all the learnin’ in the world doesn’t help much.

This is some fact, but mostly,

Just Jake Talkin’.

Sponsored
by:
Oldies & Oddities

To Your Good Health
By Paul G. Donohue, M.D.

Inactivity and Smoking Promote Artery Clogs

DEAR DR. DONOHUE: My wife has a problem. About a year ago, she saw a doctor about her legs. The doctor couldn’t find a pulse in her legs. She is not active. She sits on the couch or in bed all day. When she walks, she has a lot of pain. She has to stop and rest. She is a heavy smoker. She is only 53. What’s the story? -- H.S.

ANSWER: The story is a potential tragedy unless your wife makes some big changes. The cause of her pulseless legs and her leg pain when walking is most likely blockage of her leg arteries with cholesterol and fat. That’s atherosclerosis -- artery hardening -- and she is quite young to have it. If her leg arteries are clogged, the chances are great that her heart and brain arteries are clogged also.

She needs a careful examination of her arteries. Determining the blood pressure at her ankles and comparing it with the blood pressure in her arms provides evidence of artery blockage. The two pressures should be about equal. If the leg pressure is lower than the arm pressure, there’s an obstruction in leg arteries. An ultrasound of the arteries is also most helpful.

She has to stop smoking. Smoking is a major cause of artery obstruction. She must become more active. She should lose weight if that applies. She should be checked for diabetes and high blood pressure.

I don’t mean to scare your wife, but she must understand that if she doesn’t make significant changes, she is in danger of losing her leg or legs to gangrene. She might also need some psychological counseling. Her inactivity could be due to depression.


LETTERS from
a SELF-MADE
MERCHANT
to his SON.

by George Horace Lorimer
First published October, 1902

Being the Letters written by John Graham, Head of the House of Graham & Company, Pork-Packers in Chicago, familiarly known on ‘Change as "Old Gorgon Graham," to his Son, Pierrepont, facetiously known to his intimates as "Piggy."

No.7
FROM John Graham, at the Omaha Branch of Graham & Co. to Pierrepont Graham, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago. Mr. Pierrepont hasn’t found the methods of the worthy Milligan altogether to his liking, and he has commented rather freely on them.

VII
Omaha, September 1, 189-

Dear Pierrepont: Yours of the 30th ultimo strikes me all wrong. I don’t like to hear you say that you can’t work under Milligan or any other man, for it shows a fundamental weakness. And then, too, the house isn’t interested in knowing how you like your boss, but in how he likes you.

I understand about Milligan. He’s a cross, cranky old Irishman with a temper tied up in bow-knots, who prods his men with a bull-stick six days a week and schemes to get them salary raises on the seventh, when he ought to be listening to the sermon; who puts the black-snake on a clerk’s hide when he sends a letter to Oshkosh that ought to go to Kalamazoo, and begs him off when the old man wants to have fired him for it. Altogether he’s a hard, crabbed, generous, soft-hearted, loyal, bully old boy, who’s been with the house since we took down the shutters for the first time, and who’s going to stay with it till we put them up for the last time.

But all that apart, you want to get it firmly fixed in your mind that you’re going to have a Milligan over you all your life, and if it isn’t a Milligan it will be a Jones or a Smith, and the chances are that you’ll find them both harder to get along with than this old fellow. And if it isn’t Milligan or Jones or Smith, and you ain’t a butcher, but a parson or a doctor, or even the President of the United States, it’ll be a way-back deacon, or the undertaker, or the machine. There isn’t any such thing as being your own boss in this world unless you’re a tramp, and then there’s the constable.

Like the old man if you can, but give him no cause to dislike you. Keep your self-respect at any cost, and your upper lip stiff at the same figure. Criticism can properly come only from above, and whenever you discover that your boss is no good you may rest easy that the man who pays your salary shares your secret. Learn to give back a bit from the base-burner, to let the village fathers get their feet on the fender and the sawdust box in range, and you’ll find them making a little room for you in turn. Old men have tender feet, and apologies are poor salve for aching corns. Remember that when you’re right you can afford to keep your temper, and that when you’re in the wrong you can’t afford to lose it.

When you’ve got an uncertain cow it’s all O.K. to tie a figure eight in her tail, if you ain’t thirsty, and it’s excitement you’re after; but if you want peace and her nine quarts, you will naturally approach her from the side, and say, So-boss, in about the same tone you would use if you were asking your best girl to let you hold her hand.

Of course, you want to be sure of your natural history facts, and learn to distinguish between a cow that’s a kicker, but who’s intentions are good if she’s approached with proper respect, and a hooker who is vicious on general principles, and any way you come at her. There’s never any use fooling with an animal of that sort, brute or human. The only safe place is the other side of the fence or the top of the nearest tree.

When I was clerking in Missouri, a fellow named Jeff Hankins moved down from Wisconsin and bought a little clearing just outside the town. Jeff was a good talker, but a bad listener, so we learned a heap about how things were done in Wisconsin, but he didn’t pick up much information about the habits of our Missouri fauna. When it came to cows, he had a liberal education and he made out all right, but by and by it got on to ploughing time and Jeff naturally bought a mule - a little moth-eaten cuss, with sad, dreamy eyes and droopy, wiggly-woggly ears that swung in a circle as easy as if they ran on ball bearings. Her owner didn’t give her a very good character, but Jeff was too busy telling how much he knew about horses to pay much attention to what anybody was saying about mules. So finally the seller turned her loose in Jeff’s lot, told him he wouldn’t have any trouble catching her if he approached her right, and hurried off out of range.

Next morning at sunup Jeff picked out a bridle and started off whistling Buffalo Gals - he was a powerful pretty whistler and he could do the Mocking Bird with variations - to catch the mule and begin his plowing. The animal was feeding as peaceful as a water-color picture, and she didn’t budge; but when Jeff began to get nearer, her ears dropped back along her neck as if they had lead in them. He knew that symptom and so he closed up kind of cautious, aiming for her at right angles and gurgling, "Muley, muley, here muley; that’s a good muley," sort of sooth and caressing-like. Still she didn’t stir and Jeff got right up to her and put one arm over her back and began to reach forward with the bridle, when something happened. He never could explain just what it was, but we judged from the marks on his person that the mule had reached forward and kicked the seat of his trousers with one of her prehensile hind feet; and had reached back and caught him on the last button of his waistcoat with one of her limber fore feet; and had twisted around her elastic neck and bit off a mouthful of his hair. When Jeff regained consciousness, he reckoned that the only really safe way to approach a mule was to drop on it from a balloon.

I simply mention this little incident as an example of the fact that there are certain animals with which the Lord didn’t intend men to fool. And you will find that, as a rule, the human varieties of them are not the fellows who go for you rough-shod, like Milligan, when you’re wrong. It’s when you come across one of those gentlemen who have more oil in their composition than any two-legged animal has a right to have, that you should be on the lookout for concealed deadly weapons.

I don’t mean that you should distrust a man who is affable and approachable, but you want to learn to distinguish between him and one who is too affable and too approachable. The adverb makes the difference between a good and a bad fellow. The bunco men aren’t all at the county fair, and they don’t all operate with the little shells and the elusive pea. When a packer has learned all there is to learn about quadrupeds, he knows only one-eighth of his business; the other seven-eighths, and the important seven-eighths, has to do with the study of bipeds.

I dwell on this because I am a little disappointed that you should have made such a mistake in sizing up Milligan. He isn’t the brightest man in the office, but he is loyal to me and the house, and when you have been in the business as long as I have you will be inclined to put a pretty high value on loyalty. It is the one commodity that hasn’t any market value, and it’s the one that you can’t pay too much for. You can trust any number of men with your money, but mighty few with your reputation. Half the men who are with the house on pay day are against it the other six.

A good many young fellows come to me looking for jobs, and they start in by telling me what a mean house they have bene working for; what a cuss to get along with the senior partner was; and how little show a bright, progressive clerk he had with him. I never get very far with a critter of that class, because I know that he wouldn’t like me or the house if he came to work for us.

I don’t know anything that a young business man ought to keep more entirely to himself than his dislikes, unless it is his likes. It’s generally expensive to have either, but it’s bankruptcy to tell about them. It’s all right to say nothing about the dead but good, but it’s better to apply the rule to the living, and especially to the house which is paying your salary.

Just one word before I close, as old Doc Hoover used to say, when he was coming into the stretch, but still a good ways off from the benediction. I have notice that you are inclined to be a little chesty and starchy around the office. Of course, it’s good business, when a fellow hasn’t much behind his forehead, to throw out his chest and attract attention to his shirt-front. But as you begin to meet men who have done something that makes them worth meeting you will find that there are no "keep off the grass" or "beware the dog" signs around their premises, and that they don’t motion to the orchestra to play slow music when they talk.

Superiority makes every man feel its equal. It is courtesy without condescension; affability without familiarity; self-sufficiency without selfishness; simplicity without snide. It weight sixteen ounces to the pound without the package, and it doesn’t need a four-colored label to make it go.

We are coming home from here. I am a little disappointed in the showing that this house has been making. Pound for pound it is not getting nearly so much out of its hogs are we are in Chicago. I don’t know just where the leak is, but if they don’t do better next month I am coming back here with a shotgun, and there’s going to be a pretty heavy mortality among our head men.

Your affectionate father,

John Graham.

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