With extreme winds on Tuesday blowing in snow Thursday, was the March Lion arriving early to our hometown, offering as a consolation prize the chance of mild weather and early planting in late March?

Will we have a lot of snow in early March as forecasted? Gas utility manager Tommy Bible expects the first two weeks to be colder than normal. But, I hope bad weather does not jostle the Parrottsville Ruritan Club's planned March 9 antique appraisal fair. Joan Beaver was in the Plain Talk office a week or so ago to place the advertisements for it. We will visit the school to photograph the many objects brought in for an appraisal.

Perhaps the wind damaged some of your property, as it arrived with a fury on last Tuesday morning. At the Hollis Allen farm, I viewed the roof on his large hay shed, and most of the steel and wood framing was in the adjacent farm road or his pasture. Later, he and friends were on the roof of his larger hay and cattle barn to inspect for damage. Hollis said he must have used a thousand screws to fasten the metal down years ago during construction on the advice of Warren Bryant, who was working at Cocke Farmers Cooperative at the time. Hollis said he kept going back to get more and more screws and finally Warren asked him why he was using so many. Hollis replied, "Because you told me to." Warren's procedure worked and that roof has held in place. It seems only two-three years ago that wind destroyed his old tractor/tool shed.

There was a piece of news I came across some weeks ago but think this did not make my weekly column. During a visit to the Cocke County Courthouse, I bumped into former chief of detectives Robert Caldwell, who was to testify in a criminal case. He was holding a cane, and I had heard he is recovering from a medical problem. Robert told me that his lower back became so bad late last year he could not walk and was diagnosed with a herniated disk. After surgery a couple months ago he is now pain free and doing much better.

While stopping in Capital Bank last week, I glanced over to make sure Jeff Fancher was at work and he was talking with an older man. When I left, so did the man who said "Hi!" We talked a few minutes before I realized I had forgotten his name. Ray Fancher is the oldest of the Fancher men but still only 63. He has been retired from Cocke County High School for about six years but still stays active helping out at First Methodist Church.

 

Responsible gun owners

 

Sheriff Armando Fontes makes it clear that with gun ownership and handling comes responsibility in safe handling, storing, and instructing your children of guns' potential danger. Because he is concerned about safety he is already working on other programs for our schools and teachers and is expanding this for some classes you will want to learn about and join this year. We will let you know about these and their scheduling. Last week we began talking about the sheriff's dept.-sponsored handgun carry permit classes, one of which I attended last October with about two dozen other citizens.

"Honest citizens need to be able to defend themselves," he said. As I sat at the training table last year and looked around there were people who had used guns and others who had not, Juanita Frazier, who works for Trustee Rob Mathis being one of the later. Next to me was John Strange of Denton's TV and his business associate Tommy Denton, who at the firing range showed he knows how to shoot straight and fast. His grouping of a dozen shots from his .22 caliber pistol could fit into a dollar, some hitting George.