IVAN BURGESS'S ECHO ECHO

"One statistic

that you probably won't hear much about this basketball season," Ivan said, "is Sarah Tucker shooting one hundred percent from beyond the three-point line. Sarah is one for one from three-point range. That's a hundred percent on anybody's stat sheet."

"Last Wednesday," Ivan said, "all I could think of is what a revoltin' development this is. The KU-Iowa State basketball game was on at the very same time as the Big Joe Polka Show."

"It was 50 years ago, 1958, that the big snow storm started," Ivan reported. "Leo Tuxhorn was to get married, but the preacher couldn't get there, so they got married two weeks later. None of you kids remember that big un of 1958. Had to helicopter hay to cattle. Some people didn't get ther mail for six weeks. Eddie Sinden had some vehicle titles for a farmer out northwest of town. He put the titles in the mailbox and then the snow came and covered the mailbox. Farmer blamed his lost titles on the Post Office. They showed up during the spring thaw."

"Last Thursday morning I heard birds chatterin, chitterin, and chirpin," Ivan said. "I think, if I interpreted the chatterin, chirpin, and cheepin right, they were thinkin' of investin' in nestin'."

"They got to talkin' remote control planes," Ivan said, and "that reminded me of the time Ron McCary was into remote control planes. I asked him how far they would fly on a tank of gas. He said he didn't know. They always crashed before they ran out of gas."

"Had a lady from Pennsylvania call me wanting to interview me about things that happened years ago," Ivan said. "Said she was doing research for some Princeton professor. I declined. When you live in a town that has had a Rhodes Scholar, lots of medical doctors, people with PhDs, Master's degrees, and BS degrees, why would you want to hear anything I've got to say. I told that lady that the people in Smith Center consider me nothing more than a harmless buffoon."

"The question arose between Kendall Nichols and Dick Weltmer," Ivan said, "what is the county seat of Greeley County? Jennie, the waitress, brought Kendall Nichols the Paul's Cafe atlas. Kendall must have been playing hooky the day they taught map reading in the Gaylord school system. First he couldn't find the index. Finally he found it and discovered that Greeley Couny was located at F 2. He thumbed the atlas to the state of Kansas. He could find F but he couldn't find 2. Dick Weltmer, who couldn't even see the map, told Kendall, 'It'll be right down there,' and he pointed his crooked finger to the southwest corner of Kansas. Kendall leaned his head back so he could see more clearly and said, 'Here it is.' While they were loking for the county seat of Greeley County, everybody's coffee got cold. All they had to do was ask me and I could of told them the county seat of Greeley Count is Tribune. Tribune is midway between Selkirk and Horace."

Comments

[Troy Mullens]

This post
struck a cord.
I hummed,
quite a while.

I came back
Read it again,
and laughed
with a big smile.

Troy