Straight From The Hart

Straight From The Hart Joan Rowden Hart I have had several weeks of unrelenting pain lately, and haven’t felt much like coming up with  something on my own, so for this week’s column, I am borrowing from my dad’s autobiography again.  Many of you mentioned  to him at the Hughes Center and elsewhere how much you enjoy reading his memories. This episode occurred the summer of  1928 when my dad (Francis “Fritz” Rowden) was 5 years old.   My Grandpa Lloyd Rowden had brought the family, which consisted at that time of my Grandpa and Grandma (Amanda Smith) Rowden and my dad and his younger brother, Russ, into town to see my great-grandparents, Walter and Jane “Bee” Rowden. They approached the city limits from the west and entered through Young Addition.  They turned right at 2nd St and passed Frank Kimball’s blacksmith shop and three blocks farther was the Lebanon Water and Power Plant.  One block more and they turned r...

  Did You Know?...Interesting information If you didn't know STUFF, well here is your chance. Really interesting stuff.... If you are right handed, you will tend to chew your food on the right Side of your mouth. If you are left handed, you will tend to chew your food on the left Side of your mouth. To make half a kilo of honey, bees must collect nectar from over 2 Million individual flowers Heroin is the brand name of morphine once marketed by 'Bayer'. Tourists visiting Iceland should know that tipping at a restaurant is Considered an insult! People in nudist colonies play volleyball more than any other sport .. Albert Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel in 1952, but he declined. Astronauts can't belch - there is no gravity to separate liquid from Gas in their stomachs. Ancient Roman, Chinese and German societies often used urine as mouthwash. The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. In the Renaissance era, it was fashion To shave them off! Because of the spee...

Straight From The Hart By Joan Rowden Hart I’m sure most of us who read the Lebanon newspaper on a daily basis are appalled at the number of drug stops, domestic abuse, and break-ins that take place in Lebanon every day.  I often wonder how our law enforcement men and women keep a straight face at the stupid statements made by the people they encounter during these incidents. We sometimes have to laugh, wondering how dumb these people think our officers are. But we become very serious when we think of so many drug and alcohol impaired drivers being out on the roads and highways at the same time we are transporting our loved ones back and forth over those same roads. And we must never forget that every one of those traffic stops, domestic disturbance calls and other 911 calls puts those officers at tremendous risk of serious injury or the loss of their own lives, even when the situation appears to be routine and mundane. Such was the case on December 9, 1991 when Deputy Sheriff Lesl...

Straight From The Hart Joan Rowden Hart As much as I enjoy using the Internet  and my computer, nothing compares to reading my daily newspaper while sitting in my recliner with my feet up and slowly sipping my morning cup of coffee. Cable TV will come later in the day with breaking  news , and commercials, and talking heads speaking at breakneck speed, but just for a while I can savor the quiet and the luxury of reading the newspaper at my own pace. I wrote the following essay thirty-some years ago as my submission to an essay contest sponsored by the National Newspaper Association and the Missouri Press Association.  The Lebanon Daily Record participated in the contest, and my submission won 2nd place.  The theme of the competition was “A Free Press, My Window To The World”. John Milton, in his “Areopagitica”, a tract addressed to the English Parliament in 1644, said:  “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above al...

Straight From The Hart By Joan Rowden Hart In the April 18, 2012 edition of the Lebanon newspaper,  Associate Judge Steve Jackson, speaking at the local Kiwanis club, is quoted as saying:  “One branch of our government is the judiciary, but really it is based upon words and concepts and ideas and principles that are in written and spoken words.  We  live in a time right now when there has never been a bigger danger to those principles because we have students graduating every single day that can’t read or write.” Judge Jackson added that people do not know the language well enough to carry on this country.  “I think it’s very, very important that we get a handle on this. If we go much farther, that’s going to start becoming a real problem,”  Jackson said. I wanted to stand up and cheer when I read that article because it really struck a nerve  with me.  There are always exceptions, but most young people nowadays seem incapable of communicating eit...

Jess Easley’s Memories of Downtown Lebanon I’m going back into Jess Easley’s book about early Lebanon to share some of his memories with you.  Jess was born in 1891 and died in 1983, and sometime around 1980 he recorded his memories of Commercial Street from 1896 to 1900.  The tapes were transcribed by volunteers at the Laclede County Historical Society but  the last time I checked the book was out of print. The booklet is full of interesting details about life in Lebanon and its people at the close of the 19 th century, details that only someone living here in that time period would know. For example, Jess tells about a Racket store located on New Street which is the alley currently running west from Madison between the Knight Building and Wehner’s Bakery.  In Jess’ time it went all the way over to Jefferson and there was a two story frame building  facing Jefferson which housed a hotel on the corner.  The Racket store was located in o...