COLUMN
Hopefully winter weather will be coming to an end soon. Are you preparing your yards, landscaping and any garden plots you hope to have this year? Maybe you want to try container gardening this time. It seems to be lower maintenance than a traditional garden.
Here’s a memory of mine from our area that happened close to 90 years ago:
One day in the 1930s, our teachers at Florence Chapel Elementary School, including my Aunt JoLee Rodke, took us to Pauls Valley to see a sight!
My dad, Paul Rodke, volunteered to drive all of us kids in his hay truck with six foot high side boards on it to the Pauls Valley train station to see a WHALE that was one boxcar long!
The men showing the whale had it split open to get what they wanted to use out of it— and that “whale of a main event” from the Traveling Show stunk to High Heaven!
There were other “Side Shows” just next to the stinking whale that a truck full of kids were excited to see. These included a man who stuck big needles in his biceps as if it didn’t hurt and a pig with a man’s head that ran around and startled all of us kids!
All of the oddities were on the railroad car going town to town along the line that came through Garvin County.
If you have Paoli news, please send it to this paper before noon on Mondays for the following Friday’s issue. Communication with me is difficult at the moment because I am in Jan Frances Care Center in Ada and am not always able to use my telephone effectively, but I still have my Paoli telephone number here.
Yours truly, VPR
