Guest Blogs

Editor’s note: To read more of retired Gainesville educator Jane Elder’s blog, Ozark Road, visit gainesvillemo.blogspot.com. This post is written in honor of Jane’s former teaching colleagues Patsy Hambelton, who taught business classes at Gainesville High School for many years, and Donna Hayes,...
For as long as I’ve been raising cattle, I have always turned the bulls in with the cows so that my spring calving season will begin around Feb. 1. There has only been one year where that turned out to be a mistake, thanks to an early February blizzard that stayed on for weeks. Now, I can make that...

Lonnie High
Ozark County native Lonnie High, now living in Camdenton, is one of the eight children raised by the late Elmer and Thelma High in the Grabeel community.   I saw a skunk walk across my yard last evening here in Camdenton, and it reminded me of a time long ago when I was a young man in Ozark County...
We weren’t the last family in our small farming community to get a television, but we sure weren’t the first, either. It was the early 1960s when, upon selling the spring calf crop, Dad reluctantly brought home a used General Electric, 21-inch, black-and-white cabinet-model TV. It was a hundred-...

At a recent Winter Farm Summit in her home in rural Ozark County, Amelia LaMair, left, and Wendy Lombardi of Laclede County discuss the joys of raising goats while Andrea Gaughan of the Eastwind Community, Jay Jacobs of Dora and Jan Windrider of Isabella peruse listings of locally available agricultural goods. Photo courtesy Sumner Nichols.
Twenty-four people, a handful of children and one dog trudged through the mud to attend a “Winter Farm Summit” at my house on Jan. 21. Thank goodness for the unseasonable warm spell that allowed us to spread out onto the screened porch; otherwise, it would have been a very intimate gathering packed...

As grandson Zeke Yarger made his shot in Friday night’s basketball game at Mark Twain School, his family and friends on the bleachers, including Times publisher and grandma Norene Prososki, holding granddaughter Bonnie Mae Workman, erupted into wild, joyful cheering. Photos/Karla Smith.
I wasn’t an athlete as a child. I never played on a team or had a coach. When I was growing up, we moved every time my dad got promoted in sales at the bread company where he worked, so there wasn’t much opportunity to earn a spot on a sports team. While moving to a new town with all its unknown...

The Zanoni post office operated out of this building from 1970 until the U.S. Postal Service closed it under “emergency suspension” in February 2016. Times photo/Sue Ann Jones.
Editor’s note: This ‘Pokin Around’ column by Steve Pokin is reprinted with permission from the Springfield News-Leader. The U.S. Postal Service continues to seek an 8,500-square-foot parcel of land where the proposed new Zanoni post office can be located. For more information or to suggest land for...
In my high school days, on the rare occasion of getting a date with a girl, the options for what we could do were pretty limited. We could drive 28 miles south, across the state line, to go to a movie in the closest town with a theater—or we could drive 25 miles north to go to the other town that...
I have total sympathy for the poor, fumble-fingered guy who wreaked chaos on Hawaii Saturday when he accidentally pushed the button that sent out a text message to every resident’s cell phone saying a ballistic missile attack was underway. On a much smaller but equally klutzy scale, I know the...

Times photo/Jessi Dreckman A hands-on exhibit in the Wonders of Wildlife Aquarium allows young visitors, and those young at heart, to touch rays, horseshoe crabs and other aquatic life.
I had just entered Springfield’s new Wonders of Wildlife museum, stopping to admire the massive short-faced bear perched at the entrance and continuing on to read the plaque of a white-tail deer headdress at one of the first  display boxes, when a teenage girl and two adults made their way up the...

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Ozark County Times

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