Please read this......a Black Friday visit to the woods

Sigh. Not again.

Maybe you sat down last Thursday or Friday to scan the latest edition of this publication.

You made your way to page 2 in Section B of the paper, and started to read a story about what had happened in Union County way back in November of 1967.

Your finished page 2, and headed to page 3. And you immediately realized that the local newspaper forgot to provide a decoder ring. Again.

For reasons which we do not know, the Computer Gremlins once again paid a visit to The Paragraph Factory. Actually, the Gremlins probably were hiding somewhere between your editor's laptop computer and the printing plant in Cape Girardeau where the newspaper is published.

The Gremlins are very, very good at hiding. And they are very, very good at not letting us know that they are going to cause some mischief. Very frustrating.

All the editor (that would be me) can say, again, is: Sorry, folks. And, I'm working on getting some of those decoder rings...

Meanwhile...

Were you among the gazillion folks who ventured into the Black Friday madness?

We did. Sort of. Well, not really.

Our Black Friday adventure involved a journey to the woodlands. The woods were quiet, except for the whispering of the wind through the trees. Not all that crowded, except for the one person we saw riding a bicycle.

The Other Half and yours truly motored to the Trail of Tears State Forest last Friday afternoon. The day was bright, sunny and unusually warm for almost the end of November. We were accompanied by two special visitors, one from the City of Brotherly Love and the other from the corn fields and flatlands of Central Illinois.

We spent about an hour or so wandering through the woods, enjoying our visit and each other's company. Well, I hope our visitors enjoyed the company.

Our journey involved a little bit of hunting, too. Yours truly bagged a nice picture of creatures which lived hundreds of millions of years ago in the ocean which covered our neck of the woods at the time. 

The Other Half discovered several very nice fossils. She often does this. Just to irritate me. We took pictures of our finds, just so she would have a permanent reminder of her success.

The highlight of our visit, however, was the giant, trophy leaf which we spotted during our hunt. We're not tree experts, but we think the leaf came from a sycamore tree. The leaf was more than a foot wide, had about 31 points and weighed, well, not much. 

Our leafy discovery got me to wondering: How would one field dress a leaf? I've cleaned, or helped to clean, deer, rabbits, frogs, fish and various birds on The Journey Through Life. Never a leaf, though.  

I thought about taking the leaf to a taxidermist to get it mounted, but was not sure if that would be a violation of some sort of law. Pictures had to suffice.

After our adventures at the state forest, we headed back home, where we spent some time basking in the warm November sunshine and shared some hot chocolate.

As you can probably tell, the time we spent together with our visitors on Black Friday was special. Hope you had a chance to share some of those kind of memories, too. 

One last thing this week...be sure to check out Christmas in the Village, which is coming up this Saturday in our hometown. 

 

The Gazette-Democrat

112 Lafayette St.
Anna, Illinois 62906
Office Number: (618) 833-2158
Email: news@annanews.com

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