A spring trip through the Narrows along U.S. Hwy 25W, between Morley and Highcliff, aboard an ETHRA rural transportation van, was an unexpected treat for a local history writer. Since my release from a convalescent home in late September, I had not attempted to operate a motor vehicle.

My mother made the best chili sauce. I use her recipe, but you know how it is, two cooks can use the same recipe and it won't taste quite the same. Maybe it's nostalgia working on me, but her chili sauce tasted so good.

I know chili sauce is a condiment, but I like it on mashed potatoes. I have eaten it that way since I was a kid. Place a good pile (I mean heapin’) of mashed potatoes on your plate. Slather it with gobs of butter. The bed is ready. Add a generous topping of homemade chili sauce and dig in! Mashed potatoes and chili sauce is good eatin'.

It's another first for Union County, and a win for Union County's canine companions. The county is one of 37 statewide winners of the Boyd Foundation's 2018 Dog Park Dash grant, aimed at creating pet friendly spaces throughout Tennessee. Fifty communities applied for the grant.

Communities are keen to implement next generation fiber optic infrastructures, as they recognize such assets are crucial to economic development and growth strategies and are not merely an entertainment medium. Only about 25 percent of Tennesseans have access to fiber with rural areas lagging far behind, and that’s bad news for rural economies. Big Telecom has little interest in expanding to small towns and farmlands, as shareholders are out for a return on their investment; running fiber optic cable into rocky Appalachian soil isn't cheap.

As I read the morning paper, I was again reminded just how important our public records are. It is also important that our citizens have access to those records when they need them. The Tennessee Public Records Act allows access–but even so–sometimes that access is not easy. There are many exceptions to access–so many and so frustrating that the Tennessee Legislature has created the Open Records Ad Hoc Committee to review the why and the need for so many exclusions.

Gee, wished I was as smart as you all!

Then, I wouldn’t believe in God either. What a life we could then have. Let us eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.1 If it feels good, do it! After all, when we die we cease to exist.

It was in 1970 and I needed a job. My husband was sick and unable to work. A friend of mine drove a school bus for the school our children attended. She told me there was an opening for a bus driver. How hard could that be? I was to apply at the superintendent of schools' office.

Mincey’s Musings
Year One, Week Thirty-Two

I once had a student who said aloud quite often, “I’m skeered!” If you could have known that child as I did, I’m sure you would have agreed that in reality he was scared of nothing.

I was having a conversation with my nephew the other day and the question of when we were the most scared in our lives arose.

There have been many theories and guesses about conditions on the moon, such as: It’s a dead, dry world; that it has Earth-like mineral soil; that weathering doesn’t occur because the Moon is surrounded by a vacuum, and the like. Information retrieved from the Lunar Prospector probe launched to the Moon several years ago, along with long term study of lunar rocks retrieved from the Apollo missions, have turned up some interesting facts.

In my family, we called them “get togethers” instead of a family reunion. I can still remember the feeling of magic and anticipation of those special occasions.

When I was growing up, we got together right before Christmas with my Papaw’s brother’s family. I loved it when everybody came over to my mamaw and papaw’s house. My mom and my mamaws cooked in the kitchen as they whipped up the feast. The aroma was awesome. And they happily bantered and laughed as they worked.