Dogwood Acres, 10/04/10

DOGWOOD ACRES, 10/04/10, ELANE CRUM

Hello friends. Sunday morning at Sandy Church was good with Pastor Neal seeing that we heard from The Word and special guest Herschel Letsinger sharing about the ministry of the Gideon Bibles. Bill and Mary Lou Hodges had invited the Letsingers over after church for an afternoon of Catfish and Bluegrass. Bill fried the two six-pound catfish he caught in the Spring Pond while Mary Lou fixed hushpuppies and all the trimmings. Martin Hodges kicked off the music time with his fiddle singing the sweet tune of Tennessee Waltz, with LeaAnn backing him up on the guitar. They played my favorite called Jerusalem Ridge and so many others. Herschel took a turn or two on the fiddle and guitar and LeaAnn picked some good banjo tunes. We were surprised to learn that Herschel is Uncle to our neighbor, Nita Puchta.

After the pickin’ time was over Rick, LeaAnn, Ashton and Erin took a Sunday hike visiting a nearby cemetery tucked in the trees not far from the Hodges farm. Not sure if the cemetery has a name, but there are a number of Albright graves there.

It was a good afternoon and ended just in time for evening church service with sermon from Van Menzies. We have heard some excellent sermons from Van since he answered the call to preach.
We have had an interesting development with false pregnancy at our house. Now, before you get too worked up, read on as I tell you about Little Fox. Little Fox is “Rick’s dog”, now a year old, never been spayed, nor allowed to have puppies. When they came back from the Oregon vacation, our Treeing Feist puppies were just beginning to run around and she spent several weeks playing with them for hours at a time. Perhaps that triggered her maternal instincts, but we don’t know for sure.

The next maternal behavior she displayed was allowing Big Foot, the five-toed cat to “nurse”. Well, that just didn’t seem right and we put a stop to it, at least when we caught them. Then, the morning sickness phase began. I have never known a pregnant dog to have morning sickness, so to have a dog who just thinks she is pregnant throwing up is just crazy. Thank goodness that phase has subsided, but she is still in the baby stage with a rubber yellow bone dog toy. She treats it like a baby, picks it up and whines like we should do something to help her. She and baby bone go snuggle in the doggie bed for a good night’s sleep.

Rick’s cousin, Debbie Lathrope is here this week. I know she will give Little Fox a lot of love and attention, so maybe the “baby” can be phased out without too much trauma.

Debbie is here for the Lone Star Homecoming which will be next Sunday, October 10. She drove down from Kansas City and made it all the way to Sparta before getting lost in a major traffic detour which took her far off the beaten path. I called my brother to see if he got home okay and learned that he had been lost in the same detour and also came across Joyce Stenger in the detour maze. As far as I know everybody in our neighborhood finally found their way home.

My nephew, Colby Biggs, had a big surprise at work last week when the real Auntie Anne of Auntie Anne’s pretzel stores visited Branson Landing. With over 1500 locations, he never dreamed that Auntie Anne would visit their store. He and his co-worker thought this lady was just trying to get her pretzels for free until she pulled out her I.D. They tried to apologize, but she was very gracious and told them the look on their faces was just priceless.

I visited both of Mother’s sisters last week, Aunt Roma and Uncle Bill at Wedgewood Gardens in Branson West and Aunt Wan and Uncle Roscoe at Skaggs Hospital. Auntie Wan had some trouble with her heart and spent a couple of days there getting all better.

It is October birthday week with Abigail Biggs, Kasie Bilyeu and Christie Biggs all celebrating. We always remember Granny Nettie who shared this birthday week. Bye for now.