"COLUMN ONE"
By Mary Mayo, Editor

About this time 3 years ago, we were all enjoying a long stretch of balmy weather that had workers out in the fields on hands and knees setting out onion plants on the 70-acres of the Philkoff truck farm and Brother Mac McDonald was wondering what the good fishing weather was going to do to church attendance the next Sunday.

A year later, however, the weather was showing signs of getting back into character with the First Graders piping "Coats or sweaters, what shall we wear? One day it snows, the next day it is fair."

For the enlightenment of any of posterity who might peek at this week's Journal, I would like to state unequivocally that the weather in Jenks is TERRIBLE . . . it's COLD!

Don't ever yearn for the good old days of the latter part of February back in '62 unless you are an Eskimo like Elaine Mills.

Elaine is one of these people you read about who keeps herself looking beautiful by beng eternally cheerful and SPORTING about catastrophic weather tricks.

"Isn't this just wonderful?" she sang out as she handed the school news through the crack of our north-side front door.

"It's horrible," I rejoined, "You can take time to warm yourself a little, can't you?"

"Not today," she replied. "Anyway, I just love all this!" She waved her hand airily (burrr, what an adverb!) and skipped down the steps. And I might add, if that description comes out "slipped down the steps" in the printing, it won't change things a bit.

I'm going to have to go over that ordinance book at City Hall real carefully. There just has to be a law against people like her.

Since ailing children expect special "surprises" in payment for ailing, I did have to brave the snow or sleet or whatever that deep white stuff actually was and slosh down to the Variety Store.

Alice Warren, who has been on the job ever since the store reopened several weeks ago, has been joined by Marie Peters who started working a week ago last Monday to make up the friendly sales team there.

There's woefully few toys amusing to a child and yet designed to keep him in bed and reasonbably quiet as any mother can tell you.

"I don't know what to get," I said.

"These, maybe?" asked Alice with a sly grin and proffered a newly-opened box of huge, crawly black tarantulas.

It's hard to imagine someone sitting around for years making a study of tarantulas in order to duplicate them in black rubber, but these were fashioned by an expert and then mobilized by a pressure bulb enabling a practical jokester to squeeze air through the long tube and scare some happless victim to death as the monstrosity seems to lunge toward him.

Sick or well, mine is a goulish household, so I bought a pair of them and then went home to make use of a comparatively uninterrupted afternoon while the ailing ones enjoyed their new pets.

I usually shrink from testimonials of this type, but city folks just can't go far wrong on this choice of pet fun for the children since they are clean, quiet and economical. Turned out they were so popular at our house, the eighteen-year-old went down to the Variety Store later in the evening. "So now you want one?" commented Alice.

"Two," she replied. "Daddy's home and he wants one to play with, too."

While I was out and already half-frozen, I mushed on down to Mac's Drugs for a first-hand look at the really different, first-of-its-kind prize* Rexall is offering in a new contest. Hope you'll take time to read about it somewhere else in the paper.

And since it is more modern than day after tomorrow, I find myself hoping some lucky teenager here in Jenks will win it although anybody, any age, would derive a lot of pleasure from it.

Speaking of teenagers, I was tempted but it's not true that I chased a half-dozen or so outside in the snow to practice with drum, tuba, and all such noise-makers just because I had a paper to get out.

And did you hear of the sweet young thing who was trying hard to co-exist with her new country inlaws? "Well," she said brightly, spying the jar of honey on the breakfast table. "I see you keep a bee!"

(*The prize mentioned in the above article was a solar radio, powered either by the sun or by placing the radio 8 or 10 inches under a light bulb. It also had optional battery power.)