letter to the editor

The first time I remember feeling a loss of a good thing by “things that come to an end”. I was a kid of seven or so. I had just finished enjoying my very first Tootsie Roll Pop. (A customer of mine on my Chicago Tribune paper route gave it to me as a tip for good service.)
It was cherry flavored. My mouth started watering just now just thinking about that taste experience I had long ago. I guess back then I had been sheltered from candy by my parents. With a bunch of brothers and sisters, candy was not on our weekly menu.

Edmund Waller once wrote
“For all we know
Of what the blessed do above
Is, that they sing,
and that they love.”

A happy heart is good medicine Dear Editor, Proverbs 17:22 tells us, “A happy heart is good medicine and a cheerful mind works healing, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.” Those words came as a reminder to me when my wife and I found ourselves in our van which became stuck in mud resulting from her husband's unfortunate choice of roads to travel. Actually, the 'road' was more of a trail through the woods in a desolate part of the county miles from nowhere. Mid-afternoon came with heavy clouds, intermittent rain and nightfall rapidly approaching.

Thursday, Oct. 17, one of your Journal Record employees, Scott, a very humble-spoken young man, called my wife and I at 9:30 a.m. and told me about a luncheon on Friday, Oct. 18, being held in your honor, Les, for your retirement. The luncheon was scheduled to be held in the Journal Record’s Hamilton office.

When I moved from North Carolina to Alabama two years ago, I assumed I would find a local doctor and continue to take the medications I had taken for twenty plus years. Guess what? The Opioid Crisis had arrived before me in the small town of Hamilton, Alabama.