It seems summer has just arrived as the sun seemed to stay behind rain clouds for most of July and August while the temperatures rarely made it out of the 80s. Looking at the weather on Page 3, it's supposed to be sunny and in the lower 90s at least through Wednesday with no sign of fall on the horizon.
If it stays that way through next weekend, eldest son Jeff and a passel of traveling buddies from California (I think a couple of them are actually from Utah) will have good weather for a weekend up on the Current River on the 14th and 15th.
Jeffrey's been out of high school for almost 20 years now, and held a job (of some sort) more or less all that time, but he has managed trips to Paraguay (almost a year), Thailand (six months or so) and half a dozen lengthly excursions in the continental United States, one of which involved the California/Utah group heading in from points west.
For the last five or six years he's been in the golf course maintenance business in Columbia and Moberly, Mo., which gives him the dead of winter off for more excursions, but it has kept him in this country, anyway. Works out pretty good for him I guess.
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I was wanting to go up there myself, but working the next two weekends messes that up and I'll be lucky to sneak up there on a Saturday night and have time to fix some plumbing and mow the yard.
Life of a landlord can be pretty tough.
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My Dear Sweet Sainted Wife is still ensconced in Columbia, Mo., shuttling granddaughters Leah-Bo and Alexandra while their mother and father work and Grandma B, having returned from Vietnam, has headed to Morrilton to be with her younger daughter, Leah, who, being in a neck brace after a car accident, can't really handle her two toddlers at the moment.
Grandma B has been busy lately, and will be for a while it seems.
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I'm making plans to hit the Cardinals/Cubs games on the 27th and maybe the 28th to end the regular season. Those dates come right after middle son Kit's birthday, so I figure I'll get to buy him a ticket also and probably a few more.
One way or the other, the Cardinals will have to mount an even more efficient collapse than they have already not to make the playoffs. Both Wild Card teams will almost certainly come from the Central with Atlanta and LA pretty much locks for the East and West and only two other National League teams have winning records (Arizona and Washington), and they're both just 2 or 3 games over .500 while the Central teams are all 20 over or more.
So the Cubs games, if they mean anything, will just be for playoff position, most likely.
The one-game Wild Card playoff worked out for the Cardinals last year, but it's certainly worth winning the division to avoid it, if they can find some runs someplace and keep Lynn and Westbrook off the mound as much as possible.
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I only missed one in the Pigskin last week, and only Aaron got them all right (I think he grades the contest but maybe that's Mark). Boise State lost, so I guess their run of great starts to the season is over for a while, and that's the one I missed. I was worried about W. Kentucky/Kentucky and Georgia/Clemson, but my picks pulled those games out. Most of the rest were gimmees.
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I've been working on a special section to commemorate Nucor-Yamato's 25th anniversary in Blytheville which will be in Sunday's paper. It's full of interesting facts about Nucor and has a few things from a historical perspective that should be of interest.
The steel industry here in the greater Blytheville area is directly responsible for more than 4,000 jobs -- 4,000 good jobs -- and is about the best thing Blytheville has going at the moment.
And Nucor-Yamato brought it first-est with the most-est.
dtennyson@blythevillecourier.com