As many of you know, I lived in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex for a little over 30 years, and I did take the daily newspaper, Fort Worth Star Telegram.
Once a week, they had a section in the paper for their letter writers called “Cheers and Jeers. Well, I’ve got a few cheers, and I’ve got a couple of jeers.
As president of the Barry County Historical and Genealogical Society, I would like to thank all the members of the society for all of their hard work last year, and to the local community Citizens, who contributed money to pay for the replacement of the rotten columns on the front porch of the Bayless-Salyer House.
I would like to thank our Higher Power for causing the 100-year-old pine tree to fall southeast instead of southwest, so that there was very little damage to the house. The Society thanks JD and AJ Hunter for removing the remainder of the giant tree at no cost to the society Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And, I would like to thank the Cassville Democrat for their coverage of our situation.
Speaking of the Democrat, congratulations to Kyle and Jordan for again being selected as Missouri’s best Small-Town Weekly Newspaper. Sometimes, I do wonder how Kyle finds the time to cover all the things that happens around our town and county.
Now for a few Jeers: 1. Who in their right mind thought it was a good idea to underline the wording of a 2000 plus word law amendment? It was very hard to read in the paper, hard to read on the ballot, and even hard to read on the Internet.
2. It is so hard to believe that in this “greatest country in the world” with a population of 320,000,000 (plus) that we cannot find better than the three presidential candidates than what we have had, or have to choose from. One wants to use our tax money to buy votes, and the other just wants to call people names and tell you how great he is.
3. I grew up on a farm here in Barry County in a very religious, Southern Baptist home, so I grew up knowing that all life has meaning and is special, including plant life, farm animals and of course, humans. Early in my career, I lived in a suburb of Chicago and became aware that many young ladies (and their boyfriends – Note, I did not say “the baby’s Daddy”) were having babies just so they could get more welfare money. One of our next door neighbors who had a son that flunked out of high school, joined the Navy, got a 14 year old girl pregnant, went AWOL, had the baby, got her pregnant again, and had to go to military prison. The girl’s mother was in prison, but the girl’s stepdad showed up, moved her somewhere, got her signed up for welfare and then started selling her to make money. I am certainly not for abortion in every case, especially after 16 weeks, but it looks to me like these two young people could have used some help. Also, I lived in the Dallas suburbs for 30 years and personally saw some of the squalor that babies of teenage mothers had to live in. But, the main reason for this letter was to support Jordan in that the Government shouldn’t be telling people who can have babies, and when they can have babies, and they certainly shouldn’t be threatening to send mothers to jail who want to terminate a pregnancy, especially if the life of the mother or the child is in danger.
Lynn Hilburn Cassville
