Fish Fry Fridays

An awesome day it was today — Sunday.

Sixty degrees and almost spring. People out for walk on as sunshiny day. Mamas pushing baby carriages. A motorcycle cruising Norris. Hope is in the air.

And yes this little corner of the state dodged a bullet. A cyclone named “Bomb” ravaged the rest of Nebraska but left us almost damage free. On east large areas flooded. Cattle and lots of little baby caves died due to driving wind and snow. Tough for cattlemen. Roads covered with water and some washed out. Dams breeched and bridges gone. Farmsteads covered with water and large chunks of ice. Friends with flooded basement. What a mess. Yet this is the state in which we choose to live. Be thankful others have it worse with hurricanes and tsunamis. We all share thunderstorms and tornadoes. It is good to be a survivor.

People here are good and efforts are being made to help those unfortunate east of us. Some are generously donating and I would recommend my church’s UMCOR, United Methodist Committee on Relief, as all the funds given are used for the relief of the people in need. None siphoned off for administration, no big salary for those in charge, just money spent where it will do the most good. There are other places to give so look into how much of what you give goes to the funds administration.

Good food, friendly people and a chance to visit with about all your neighbors and friends. Grannie Annie and I went to the annual, every Friday during Lent, Knights of Columbus Fish Fry.

My eyes were bigger than my needs so I ate too much but enjoyed every bite. I’m not sure if we Protestants outnumbered the Catholics but no matter the proceeds go to a good cause and a good time was had by all. See you there next week!

Good causes include the 100 year celebration of St. Patrick’s, McCook’s parochial school. I well remember their old church and school building both since replaced with new and better. I also remember the well behaved and well prepared Catholic school graduates that joined us country school grads when we joined the Junior High, ninth grade, together back in 1951. For most it was the first time in our young lives that we were mixed together with other kids of somewhat different backgrounds. In retrospect it was a growing time for all of us. Many became one—well almost.

I have long admired how the Catholic community here comes together to support their school where personal faith is taught in addition to the reading writing and arithmetic required of public school.

The St Pat’s community does it by fundraisers which include their fish fry, a Fall Festival and Saturday night’s GIFT Gala along with its accompanying “Sip N See” silent and live auction. It is an awesome responsibility for the church flock and understand that they also pay taxes which go to support the public schools. For me it is a good argument for “school choice” where the tax money follows the student for whichever school his or her parents choose. Not exactly a popular idea with those who run the public schools.

Lots of good stories about students attending St. Pat’s back in my youth. One of my sister’s brothers-in-law had pretty bad behavior problems in his public grade school. So his mother enrolled him in St. Pat’s where the teachers at that time were nuns, Sisters of Sienna, as I best remember. Evidently the Sisters brooked no nonsense and the young man quickly learned to modify his ways, getting along better with his fellow students and even absorbing some subject matter. It helped and he wasn’t the only one. Discipline, even corporeal punishment, but administered with love. ‘Tis a shame that such is not allowed anymore.

A reminder. Last Wednesday’s Gazette had a superb article on our St Patrick’s Catholic Church’s school written by Rhonda Graff. Good read!

Your old columnist received a compliment from a truck driver in regard to last week’s column. He appreciated someone being for the truckers. Then he told how much he doesn’t care for the stop light on west 10th and B. Forbidding use of the Jake Brake was also high on his list of frustrations. Somehow our City Council saw it the same way last night and a majority voted NO on the first reading of the ordinance proposing banning the use of trucker’s Engine Brakes. I love it when good sense prevails.

That is how I saw it.

Dick Trail