Busted! A case of mid-morning nostalgia...

It used to glow in the dark.  Wait...wait.  It still does!

I take pictures at the drop of a hat. And then some.  So this morning, – instead of doing chores that need to be done – Karen caught me rummaging through the "numerous" photos occupying space on my cell phone.  I had been busted....mesmerized by the photograph on the left above. 

It was nostalgia at first sight, a photo snapped a few years ago while visiting sister Linetha in Oklahoma.  

We were reminiscing about our days of yore, when I recalled a framed picture of a "vagabond duck" that used to grace her bedroom wall when we were kids.

"I still have it," she exclaimed.

"No!" I retorted in disbelief. 

"After all these years?"

Within minutes she produced the object of my interest.   It wasn't very big.  It wasn't framed.  It had faded a wee bit....and....horrors.....it wasn't glowing!"  Nonetheless, I captured the above image of Linetha with her duck friend.

Yep, as a kid, I was enamored with this vagabond duck, apparently running away from home, or maybe just exploring new places.  And perhaps most intriguing for me (when I was a kid....and maybe still) was that this wandering waterfowl had glowed in the dark.

Maybe my early exposure to Linetha's vagabond duck explains why Karen and I have lived in a gazillion places over the past half century or so.

But my excitement over seeing this long-lost "friend" really was tempered by the fact that it didn't seem to glow anymore.  After all, that was what had really intrigued me as a kid.  I'm not sure what kind of goop (read that "chemically-treated goop") was applied to it to make it glow, but it did.

Methinks that goop has lost it punch, just like the rest of us.  

But with a little help from Photoshop, I wanted to let my dear sister know that her Vagabond Duck still shines! 

Still standing...Whitney's old Methodist parsonage

In the mid-1930's  Alex Miller met a high school girl from Crawford named Mildred Saxton.  But it would be a couple of years later, after he returned from working in Michgan, that they would marry.  It was on  July 1, 1936; they were married in the Methodist parsonage by Reverend C. Curtis Norlin.   It was Alex's 25th birthday, and they  were married nearly 50 years before he died in April of 1985.

Alex and Mildred's children have often visited the Whitney area, usually to visit the cemetery and occasionally to see if the old parsonage is still standing.  It was on one of those visits about 15 years ago that Charlene Miller took this photograph.

Charlene and brother Bruce were in Dawes County within the past few months  (winter 2020), and report that the old parsonage structure is, indeed, still standing!  Thanks to Charlene for sharing this photograph!