By Katie McDougal The green rolling pastures around our rural Kansas neighborhood are filled with baby calves sleeping contented under the watchful eyes of their mothers. The air is filled with the sounds of birds calling to one another, while others are floating high in the sky. Gardens are being planted and lots of flowers [...]
By Shirley Erickson 100 Years Ago The Wilson-Brown Studio of this city is now locating a branch studio in Lane. The firm is now operating three well equipped studios in Osawatomie, Lane and Parker. The Osawatomie studio is headquarters and all the finishing for their branch studios will be done here. The Lane Band entertained [...]
A rocking horse sits on my front porch. His matted mane has worn off on one side. White plastic shows through the once black saddle. Recently he has begun to resemble the Skin Horse from the children’s classic The Velveteen Rabbit. This Mother’s Day the horse reminded me of three things. 1) My children have [...]
I have a bunch of plants on my back porch that grow like crazy. They are hard to manage, vine-like entities that, if left untended, take over everything. When they first started growing, I stressed about them endlessly. I trimmed, cut, pruned, dug up, and whatever else I could think of to keep them at [...]
William Quantrill betrayed four associates of Eli Snyder, an Osawatomie blacksmith and cohort of John Brown, in December of 1860 to convince proslavery forces that his desire to serve the proslavery cause was genuine. Quantrill had to do this because he was known in the area as a Free State advocate and proslavery forces had [...]
By Jeff Gulley The John Brown Jamboree is a month away and plans are almost set for four-day festival. Toby’s Carnival is back this year and will open on Wednesday, June 15. The annual Jamboree parade on June 16 will honor the 150th anniversary of Kansas. The best-themed float will win $200, with $100 for [...]
By Jeff Gulley Ken Tyson was one of many helping prepare the Vineyard of Hope’s float in the 2009 John Brown Jamboree parade. Months earlier, Tyson began to drive down from Kansas City to help the small church as they tried to reenergize and grow a youth group. That night at the parade, Tyson saw [...]
By Kevin Gray They didn’t know where it came from, but – like the General Lee, the car from the television show the “Dukes of Hazzard” – the last thing members of Osawatomie’s Silver Bullet Band knew before impact was seeing the under carriage and tires of a small pickup truck flying up and airborne [...]
Target doesn’t open until 8 a.m. There are exactly two Target stores between my home and my work. The only conveniently located Walmart between my work and my home is about a mile from my house. I know all of these seemly random facts because I needed them to not be true last week. I [...]