News and Observations from Wapella, Illinois: Home of the Wildcats.

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Friday, March 26, 2010

Wapella Wildcats Gym Clothes Coming Back


You may have thought Wapella High Sporting Goods were a thing of the past, but then you may not had heard of an old sparring partner of ours from Clinton, one Junior Monkman, who is working in the sports clothing industry.

Junior was a ferocious competitor in his day, one of the best pitchers in the strong Clinton Khoury League of the 1970's and 80's. Always a good sport, Monkman took his victories in stride and suffered only a few defeats from his northern neighbors in Wapella. So what better way to bring it home than selling sweatshirts to Hog City's sporting types.

Monkman now hangs his warm up jacket at Minerva Sporting Goods in Bloomington, Illinois, and has worked on a design project to get some Wapella Merchandise into circulation. This so far is the marketing plan (and a good one, I may add)

They will be gray w/ WAPELLA above the old wildcat head and WILDCATS below. Richie Underwood is researching the opening and closing years for the school to put that at the bottom as well. I guess Raymond Toohill and Susie Underwood had been part of a group of about 35 who ordered the first wave of tees recently...
These are ballpark estimates of cost...
$10 - short slv tee
$13 - long slv tee
$19 - crew neck swtshrt
$30 - hoodie swtshrt
$35 or more - two-tone hoodie (gray & royal blue)
These are for size Youth Med-XL
XXL add $2
XXXL add $4

I am all in on this project, and would be glad to post a link Junior, if you have a way to buy on line. That not happening, Toohill's and Underwood's are fantastic contacts for pretty much anything Wapella related. Richie, Raymond and Susie are a killer combo...go with it.

It's all Facebook, Mobile Phones, Computers and Technology anymore, and everyone is getting in on the act from Junior Monkman to George Jones, who went hi-tech a long time ago with this (update of the Love Bug number) Hi-Tech Redneck. Order in Bulk and Save!








Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Signature Drink


Is there a signature drink for Danville?

Like a boilermaker in Lafayette, or a Manhattan in Manhattan or one of those Blue Frosty drinks that Gary Moeller drank 13 of one time at a Red Lobster in Kalamzaoo.

If not, can our readers develop one? All suggestions welcome

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Congrats ISU Redbirds


The Dayton Flyers stuffed the ISU Redbirds 63-42 in NIT Action in Dayton. The Redbirds end up the season a respectable 22-10. The dream matchup at Madison Square Garden vs. the Illini will not occur.

Like many of our commenters, I relish a good game between the Redbirds and the Illini. Also, green tomatoes and onions soaked in a light vinegar makes a delicious relish, but has very little to do with intrastate basketball.

Is there any chance of a matchup next year? How about Illini Football vs. Northwestern at Wrigley, there a vinegarry relish for you.

Friday, March 19, 2010

This Sounds Good

Irish Circle Wapella TONIGHT: WALLEYE (ALL YOU CAN EAT), TILAPIA, SHRIMP, OR CATFISH. ALL SERVED WITH BAKED POTATO AND SALAD BAR 5:00-8:00. 8:00-12:00 D.J. CHAD

RIP Fess Parker, American Pioneer Actor


Fess Parker, the embodiment of Daniel Boone and Davey Crocket has died at age 85

Mr. Parker's portrayal of Daniel Boone was true and wise. I am certain he warmed the hearts of many of Wapella's natives with Kentucky roots (and the rest of Wapella as well) in his portrayal of the best of the Scotch-Irish pioneers. Whether is was hunting, trapping, fighting when need be, maybe a little loving, or founding a country of free men and women, Fess delivered a character who became as much of a hero as the historical heroes he portrayed. Let us honor his memory.

Lifted from the LA Times

Fess Parker, whose star-making portrayal of frontiersman Davy Crockett on television in the mid-1950s made him a hero to millions of young baby boomers and spurred a nationwide run on coonskin caps, died Thursday. He was 85.


Parker, who played another pioneer American hero on television's "Daniel Boone" in the 1960s before becoming a successful Santa Barbara hotel developer and Santa Ynez Valley winery owner, died of complications from old age at his home near the winery, said family spokeswoman Sao Anash.

A longtime presence -- and sometimes controversial figure -- in Santa Barbara County, Parker had numerous real estate holdings in the area, including Fess Parker's Doubletree Resort in Santa Barbara and the Fess Parker Winery & Vineyards and Fess Parker Wine Country Inn & Spa, both in Los Olivos.

Building of an as-yet-unnamed new beachfront hotel in Santa Barbara is also underway.

Parker was a struggling 29-year-old actor, with rugged, boyish good looks and a soft Texas drawl, when Walt Disney was looking for someone to play the lead in a three-part saga about Crockett in 1954. The three hourlong shows were scheduled to air during the premiere season of Disney's weekly "Disneyland" TV show, which began on ABC that fall.

James Arness was one of the many actors considered for the role. But although Disney watched Arness during a screening of the science-fiction thriller "Them!" another young actor in a small part caught his eye: the 6-foot-6 Parker.

"Davy Crockett, Indian Fighter," the first of the initial three Crockett adventures, aired on "Disneyland" on Dec. 15, 1954, and unexpectedly turned Parker into an overnight sensation.

TV's "King of the Wild Frontier" also touched off a merchandising frenzy: 10 million coonskin caps reportedly were sold, along with toy "Old Betsy" rifles, buckskin shirts, T-shirts, coloring books, guitars, bath towels, bedspreads, wallets -- anything with the Crockett name attached.

Viewers also fell in love with the show's catchy theme song. Bill Hayes' version of "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" soared to No. 1 on the hit parade and remained there for 13 weeks. And there were a couple of dozen other recordings of the song, including one by Parker himself.

"It was an explosion beyond anyone's comprehension," Parker told a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1994. "The power of television, which was still new, was demonstrated for the first time."

Even Disney was taken by surprise.

"We had no idea what was going to happen to 'Crockett,' " he later said. "Why, by the time the first show finally got on the air, we were already shooting the third one and calmly killing Davy off at the Alamo. It became one of the biggest overnight hits in TV history, and there we were with just three films and a dead hero."

The studio quickly rebounded, rushing two Crockett "prequel" adventures into production for the second season of "Disneyland" and editing the first three episodes into a feature film, "Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier," which was released in May 1955. The two later TV segments, again featuring Buddy Ebsen as Crockett's sidekick George Russel, were turned into a 1956 feature film, "Davy Crockett and the River Pirates."

During a cross-country personal appearance tour in the summer of 1955, as many as 20,000 fans reportedly showed up to greet the actor when he landed at each city's airport.

Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger already had captivated television's first generation of young viewers when the first Crockett adventure aired, but nothing before had equaled the effect of the buck-skinned hero.

"Those Davy Crockett episodes really brought American history -- indeed, a Disney version of American history -- to the playground as well as to the American living room," Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, told The Times some years ago.

"You not only could watch these programs, but you could play them, dress up like them, make the Davy Crockett aesthetic infiltrate every part of your life," he said. "And, of course, those coonskin caps: No self-respecting kid under the age of 12 could go through American life without one."

But although "you can merchandise and market and promo something like crazy," Thompson said, "I think, in the end, for something like this to succeed, you've got to have an actor who can pull it off, and Fess Parker made a great Davy Crockett."

Moves to Hollywood

Born in Fort Worth on Aug. 16, 1924, Parker served in the Navy during World War II. He graduated with a degree in history from the University of Texas on the GI Bill in 1950, but by then he had developed a new interest: acting.

Parker moved to Hollywood in the summer of 1950. With a year left on his GI Bill, he enrolled at USC with the goal of getting a master's degree in theater history. But small acting jobs soon got in the way of that goal.

While under contract at Disney, the post-Crockett Parker starred in "Old Yeller," "The Great Locomotive Chase," "The Light in the Forest" and "Westward Ho the Wagons!"

But as far as Parker was concerned, Walt Disney did his burgeoning film career no favors.

One day, Parker recalled in a 1998 interview with the Dallas Morning News, Disney offhandedly told Parker that director John Ford had wanted him for the role played by Jeffrey Hunter in "The Searchers" opposite John Wayne. Disney told Parker he had turned down the role on his behalf. Ford "never forgave me for that," Parker said. "He thought it was my decision."

Parker said he also turned down a role opposite Marilyn Monroe in "Bus Stop" based on Disney's advice that "I don't think this is something you should do."

But Parker was determined to play modern roles, preferably in romantic comedies. "While I regard Mr. Disney as a good friend and a genius, he's set in his ideas," Parker said in a 1958 interview. "We don't exactly see eye to eye on my new ambition to spread out." In the end, the studio agreed to let the disgruntled actor walk away.

Although he was under contract at Disney, Parker later told The Times, "the studio had no experience dealing with live human beings as performers. They were really all animation.

"I simply don't believe they understood the value of an actor they had placed in a prominent position in the marketplace."

After leaving Disney in 1958, Parker spent four years at Paramount, but he didn't fare much better in landing movie roles.

In 1962, he starred as a junior congressman in the ABC series "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," which was based on the Frank Capra screen classic. But the series was canceled after 26 weeks.

In the fall of 1963, Parker suddenly found himself being bombarded by an unusually high number of requests for autographs. Disney, it turned out, had re-broadcast the three original Crockett episodes on his weekly TV series and the King of the Wild Frontier was again a hit with a new crop of young viewers.

Thinking he could capitalize on his celebrity status, Parker interested producer Aaron Rosenberg in doing a weekly TV series with him starring as the frontiersman. But when Parker asked Disney to release the Davy Crockett name to him, Disney refused.

"We were going to do it anyway because Crockett is in public domain, but neither Lloyds of London nor Fireman's Fund would insure us against lawsuits from Disney if I played the part," Parker told The Times in 1964.

Instead, Parker and Rosenberg decided to do a TV series about another famous frontiersman. "Daniel Boone" had a successful run on NBC from 1964 to 1970, with Parker owning 30% of the series.

By the mid-1970s, Parker had a partnership in a large mobile-home park in Santa Barbara, where he was a longtime homeowner, as well as other real estate holdings, and he decided to turn his attention full time to his business interests.

He bought 32 1/2 prime waterfront acres previously owned by the Southern Pacific Railroad and, in 1986, opened Fess Parker's Red Lion Resort. Since renamed Fess Parker's Doubletree Resort, the hotel and conference center not only enhanced the city's waterfront but also have been a boon to the city's economy.

"We didn't have a big convention facility in the city before the Doubletree was built," Janice Hubbell, project planner for the city of Santa Barbara, told The Times in 2001.

But because Parker initially pushed for a much larger hotel and convention center complex, she said, "a lot of people have mixed emotions about him. In many respects, he's done good things for the community, but on the other hand there are people who feel he's pushed too hard and pushed for more than is appropriate."

Buys 714-acre ranch

In 1987, Parker bought a 714-acre ranch in Los Olivos, in Santa Barbara County's Santa Ynez Valley. Although he had planned to live there and run cattle on the land, the climate and the soil were ideal for a vineyard.

The Fess Parker Winery & Vineyards had its inaugural harvest in 1989. Parker's wines, whose label includes a tiny, sepia-toned coonskin cap, never quite achieved cult status. But by 2001, they had won more than 30 medals.

The winery was a family affair. Parker's son, Eli (Fess III), became president and director of winemaking and vineyard operations, and Parker's daughter, Ashley, became vice president of marketing and sales. Parker's wife, Marcella, whom Parker married in 1960, reportedly was largely responsible for the landscaping and interior decor.

In 1998, the Parkers bought the landmark Grand Hotel in Los Olivos, which they turned into Fess Parker's Wine Country Inn & Spa.

For many of his rural Santa Ynez Valley neighbors, Parker's good-guy TV image was shattered in 2004 after he announced his intention to sell 745 acres of Santa Ynez Valley ranchland to the local Chumash Indians in a joint venture calling for building up to 500 luxury homes, a resort hotel, two championship golf courses and an equestrian center.

Because the land would be annexed by the tribe on sovereign land, The Times reported, the development would not have to adhere to county zoning laws and land-use regulations.

In protest, many residents boycotted businesses that served Parker's wines and placed "Fess" stickers on stop signs. Others, including some of Parker's friends, even shunned the actor-turned-businessman.

"I just can't find anything in this whole thing to regret," Parker told The Times. "It does give me great pleasure to do this for the Indians. If they don't deserve to live in the most beautiful portion of this valley, who does?"

In October 2005, however, Chumash leaders and Parker abandoned their development plans after they failed to agree on the size of the hotel, the value of the land and other details.

Although he had severely strained his relations with many in the valley, he remained popular with tourists. Parker, who for many years divided his time between homes in Montecito and the Santa Ynez Valley, often greeted visitors to his winery, many of them aging baby boomers who would reach out to shake the hand of the gray-haired man who had once portrayed Davy Crockett or have their picture taken with him.

"I think I'm the luckiest guy in the world," Parker told the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1994. "I've lived long enough and observed enough to make myself very comfortable with the realization that the Disney films and particularly Davy Crockett gave me an image that is unbelievably durable. It's been 40 years and people are still talking about it."

In addition to his wife of 50 years, Marcella, and his children, Parker is survived by 11 grandchildren and a great-grandchild.

Services are pending.



No Emmy, Just the most popular Actor in the USA

In 1955, academy voters couldn't ignore him when he emerged as a sudden superstar leading a national craze for Davy Crockett lore. The Emmys nominated Fess Parker for best new personality of 1954, but he lost to George Gobel.


Parker's TV show "Davy Crockett" wasn't a stand-alone program. It was comprised of several one-hour dramas that were part of "Disneyland," an anthology series that also included mysteries, family dramas and cartoons. One of its Fess Parker segments, "Davy Crockett and River Pirates," got nominated for best single program of 1955, but lost to Mary Martin's classic "Peter Pan."


The huge popularity of the "Davy Crockett" segments helped "Disneyland" to win best action or adventure series of 1955, beating "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Dragnet," "Gunsmoke" and "The Lineup."


Fess Parker's other hit TV series, "Daniel Boone," was never nominated for Emmys.

Fess Parker died news davey crockett


Thursday, March 18, 2010

Wapella.com Mourns The Loss of Alex Chilton

Wapella.com is sad to note the passing of ex-Box Tops and Big Star leader, Alex Chilton.

For me personally, Big Star are one of the, if not the best power-pop band ever. Doing a mix of the Beatles meets Memphis soul when it wasn't fashionable, Big Star were critical faves, but got lost in the shuffle as the record buying public turned their backs on this classic sound, but only for a little while.

Big Star and Chilton went on to influence some of the biggest names in rock, such as REM, and also heavily influenced one of the best midwestern bands ever, The Replacements.

Accused of underachieving, Chilton says below: "If I did become really popular, the critics probably wouldn't like me all that much," he said. "They like to root for the underdog."


As The Replacements noted in their tribute song "Alex Chilton": "I never travel far/without a little Big Star." Indeed.

RIP Alex.

(Maybe JBP will post a video later. I'd probably go for "Ballad of El Goodo" but JBP thinks Wapella might be more of a Box Tops town.)

JBP Here I am going with a straight tribute, "Alex Chilton" by Paul Westerberg, another non-hit from the non-hit makers The Replacements.

I'll chuck in that Chilton wrote "In the Street" the theme to "That 70's Show" (played by Cheap Trick) and got $70 for every broadcast episode, not bad if he got syndication too, which is probably $70 more than he ever got paid for the #1 Hit "The Letter" (Chilton was 16 when he recorded that song)

Chilton was really a terrific Rock and Roller as were his bands, the Boxtops and Big Star. Commerically, if anything, he stood as the link between the mass market hits of the 1960's and the obscurism that made it possible for record stores to thrive in the 1970's and 80's. Albums and singles that never came near the top 40 were selling hundreds of thousands of copies due to the performers reluctance to co-operate with a botched royalty system, as Chilton knew very well. When Nirvana (and Kenny Rogers) picked up on this trend, they sold 50 million albums, with a deep bow to Alex Chilton.






Full story below:
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Singer and guitarist Alex Chilton, who topped the charts as a teen and later became a cult hero with Big Star, died Wednesday. He was 59.

Chilton died at a hospital in New Orleans after experiencing what appeared to be heart problems, said his longtime friend John Fry. Fry said Chilton's wife, Laura, was very distressed by the unexpected death.

"Alex was an amazingly talented person, not just as a musician and vocalist and a songwriter, but he was intelligent and well read and interested in a wide number of music genres," said Fry, the owner of Memphis-based Ardent Studios.

As the teenage singer for the pop-soul outfit the Box Tops, Chilton topped the charts with the band's song The Letter in 1967. Their other hits were Soul Deep and Cry Like a Baby. Chilton grew up in Memphis, and formed the band with friends from school.

His short run with Big Star brought less mainstream success but made him a cult hero to other rock musicians, as evidenced by the title of the 1987 Replacements song, Alex Chilton. Big Star's three 1970s albums all earned spots on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest.

Chilton said in a 1987 interview with The Associated Press that he didn't mind flying under the radar with Big Star and later as a solo artist.

"What would be ideal would be to make a ton of money and have nobody know about you," he said. "Fame has a lot of baggage to carry around. I wouldn't want to be like Bruce Springsteen. I don't need that much money and wouldn't want to have 20 bodyguards following me."

"If I did become really popular, the critics probably wouldn't like me all that much," he said. "They like to root for the underdog."

Chilton had been scheduled to perform with Big Star on Saturday at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas.

"Alex Chilton always messed with your head, charming and amazing you while doing so. His gift for melody was second to none, yet he frequently seemed in disdain of that gift," the festival's creative director, Brent Gulke, said in an e-mail.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

A Bit Cracked Story in the Pantagraph


From the Daily Pantagraph with my bitter and spiteful annotations

If today's McLean County Irish are indeed lucky, as the saying goes, they may have their very unlucky ancestors to thank. (oh horsesh*t, just getting here was extremely well planned, hard work, and more than a little bit lucky. My gggrandparents could have stayed in Ireland but they didn't. At least my grandmother, who I knew very well never looked back one minute, and was one of the happiest people I ever met)

Today is St. Patrick's Day, an excuse for many to drink 'til they see green. For others, it's a time to look back on McLean County's Irish history, largely written by early immigrant laborers and business leaders whose life's works are still visible in Central Illinois.

Fleeing a potato famine that first hit Ireland in the 1840s, the Irish and other immigrants came for work, many on the Illinois Central Railroad, then the largest private construction project in U.S. history. The rail line reached Bloomington in 1853, with laborers paid $1.25 per day. (Hey wasn't $1.25 pretty good money in those days? If you had $100 you were considered wealthy, so...80 days of work and you hit it big!)

The brutal conditions would be almost unrecognizable to many of today's workers. Common were 14-hour days without overtime, poor sanitary conditions and threat of cholera, said Twin City labor leader Mike Matejka, who has studied labor history. (Unrecognizable to whom? A Wapella Hog Farmer "fixing" pigs? A mother (or father) taking care of a sick kid? A plumber making a service call to unclog a kitchen sink on Christmas Day? I am one of the laziest people in Wapella's history and I have put in enough 14 hour days to recognize hard work when I avoid it)

"If you get hurt on the job, they said, 'Tough luck, we'll go find somebody else,'" Matejka said, adding that the Irish carried with them a long tradition of organizing resistance to British rule. (Right, thats why they got $1.25 per day and traveled halfway across the world to get it. Working for the Illinois Central or one of the various ditchdigging operations was by no means equivalent to armed resistance to the English takeover and occupation of Ireland)

Their hardship is visible today at Funks Grove Cemetery, where about 50 Irish workers who apparently died of cholera in the 1850s are buried in a mass grave marked by a Celtic cross. (Sad to hear, and I am sure some of my relatives were buried there, but cholera hit everyone regardless of nationality in the 1850's.)

By 1880, the 6,300 or so Irish immigrants and their children were about 13 percent of McLean County's 50,000 residents, said Greg Koos, executive director of the county's Museum of History.

Though the notion of immigrant ethnicity faded as a stronger national culture took hold after World War I, Koos said, a familiar Irish stereotype -- drinking -- traces some of its origins back to this time.

"The social destruction these people experienced as a result of famine, seeing their culture and families totally torn apart - it creates a tremendous grief," Koos said. "Alcohol becomes a means of drinking away that pain."

(And was a means of bringing families together for a toast. My grandmother would tell stories about driving 15 miles on a horse drawn cart with my grandfather to visit with various and assorted Toohills, Kiley's, Flaherty's, O'Brien's, and most of all the Donovan's to enjoy (just grandpa) having a beer, and considering it the some of the best times in her life)

Generations later, the mark of the Irish is still on the Twin Cities, namely Holy Trinity Catholic Church, or the Constitution Trail (on the old Illinois Central rail line). (Sure, and St. Patricks on the West Side and St. Patricks of Merna had at least a tiny connection to the Old Country)

As of 2008, the Census Bureau estimates about 25,690 McLean County residents, or 16 percent, have Irish ancestry (not including Scotch-Irish) - the second most common ancestry behind German (about 32 percent).

Today's Irish

The oldest continually operating funeral home in Bloomington-Normal, Carmody-Flynn Williamsburg, is now in its fourth generation of Irish-blooded ownership.

Founded in 1872 by C.C. Deneen, it was bought around 1910 by George R. Flynn, who was joined in business by his son, John, whose son, Tim, joined in 1979 and is now owner. (George Flynn's father, J.C., ran a local grocery store and served Irish railroad workers.)

Today the funeral home serves all faiths, but it grew in its early years in large part to its Irish customers.

"It was a building block in our business for several decades, and it's still a part of our business today," said Tim Flynn (Tim is a fine gentleman as was his father and the rest of his family, they are only bright part of this lame story).

The Irish-immigrant experience was even the impetus for the fictional lore behind Maggie Miley's, named for the real-life great-grandmother of one of the uptown Normal Irish pub's founders who may (or may not have) departed Ireland with dreams of running a pub.

Still, the pub's interior is authentic Irish, and general manager Peter Connolly is a Dublin native, said owner Tyler Holloway. "(Customers) want to feel like they've gone out of the country for an hour or two," he said.

(Er, what about Don's World of Beef, that was the best thing ever to hit Bloomington)

For a less-boozy way to honor St. Patrick, Matejka said it's a good time to consider the harsh conditions today's immigrants experience. The anti-immigrant "Know-Nothing" movement that challenged Irish laborers is similar to what today's Mexican laborers experience, added Koos.

"Let's think about what it's like to be an immigrant, not just of the 1850s, but for the immigrants of 2010," Matejka said. (There...I thought about it, now move on to the next subject and quit degrading my ancestors for using their own common sense to get out of the hellhole that was Ireland and cheer the day that DeWitt County seceded from you McLean county gripers.)

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Easter in Hog City....and More


This just in - though Wapella needs no excuse for throwing a party, Easter is always an excellent reason, and thus, Wapella.com announces TWO upcoming parties for the community.

FRIDAY GAME NIGHT
SATURDAY MARCH 20TH
WAPELLA COMMUNITY CENTER
6-8PM
Games, Free Pizza and Drinks! Everyone Welcome!

WAPELLA COMMUNITY EASTER EGG HUNT
SATURDAY MARCH 27TH
WAPELLA PARK
11am
Ages 0 -12 Years!

Be there, or be square!

Some Celtic Rock for St. Patrick's Day

I would have never thought it, had my daughter not asked me yesterday if this was the Rolling Stones (not bad for 6 yrs old) on the radio. But after sternly correcting her, telling her this was the Yardbirds with Jeff Beck and not the Stones, she said "the Yardbirds sound like the Stones if they were an Irish band" Why that? "because of the bagpipes".

I'll hand it to her, there is a bit of Celtic resonance/dissonance going on here, amid the mayhem that was the Yardbirds. So what better way to celebrate St. Pat's than Having a Rave-Up with the Yardbirds, (re-doing "Rock Around the Clock") as "Over Under Sideways Down".

Beck is on the studio recording, Page on the live video for the obsessive rock-and-roll fans.

Erin Go Bragh!

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Urgent! St. Pats is Early at the Irish Circle


Irish Circle Wapella

Irish Circle Wapella TODAY...FREE CORNED BEEF AND CABBAGE! ST. PATRICK'S DAY PARTY! KARAOKE 4:00-8:00. $2.25 16 oz Bud Lite

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Wapella in the Springtime

Spring has seemingly sprung on Wapella, as pleasant weather has taken hold, and new life is afoot.

Interestingly enough, three (scratch that, FIVE!) former Wildcats are also in line for new life in the upcoming months. Anne (Roesch) Leischner (WHS 1993), Lisa Holt (Not sure of married name)(WHS 1993), Sarah (Settles) Turner (WHS/CHS 1995), and Trisha (Mills) Isaac (WHS/CHS 1996) are all to be congratulated, as Spring in Hog City welcomes these new tykes with Wapella connections.

We're told Dawn (Sims) Fantuzzi (sp?) (WHS 1993) has HAD her twins (no details yet) so a big round of congrats go out to her and her family! My classmate, Uncle Derrick Sims especially!

Future visits to Wapella (their ancestral homeland, after all) for the newborns promises swimming in ditches after rain-fall, hanging out on Main St, and frequenting the Casey's gas station for underage booze and smokes (No Playboys like Buck's used to have, though.) This must excite the parents to no end! We kid, we kid! Congrats to the FIVE new Moms!

Lingering Question: does the birth of six Wildcat children within mere weeks of eachother support the long held (and somewhat disturbing) theory of mine on the mating pattern of Wapella residents?

My class (91) in high school had 3 people that shared the exact same birthday of 1/24 (Mills/Schick/Burdine) and myself and Kendra Honecker were also January brood. My Dad shares the same birthday with a Powers (M.R. (Kinsella) Powers) and two Toohills (Rebecca and Clem Jr) but you get the general idea. Wapella mating patterns. Worth a special on Discovery channel? The libido of the Wildcat was never in question, but is there something in the air that dictates these patterns?

Who else out there shares the excact same birthday, and what months (like the front-loaded January above) are heavy with visits to the maternity ward for Wildcat Moms?

(Pictured is Russell Brand, an English guy with a libido like a Wildcat and short shorts to match.)

Friday, March 5, 2010

Pets Only Please at Wapella Rabies Clinic

Here's a tip for anyone looking for some excitement this Saturday in Hog City. No word on whether you can microchip your inlaws with the same procedures. Bonus points if you can work "Second Chance" into your comments.


Come out on one of the Saturdays in March and get your pet vaccinated for a low cost!Only $8 for Parvo/Corona/Distemper vaccine and $8 for a rabies vaccine. We're also microchipping pets for $15. Times for each clinic are 1:00pm-3:00pm

March 6th Wapella, IL – Wapella Equipment Shed – 103 Maple St.

March 13th Waynesville, IL – Township Building

March 20th Weldon, IL – The old Fire Station (across from library)

March 27th Clinton, IL – The County building (corner of Hwy 51 South & North Walnut St.)

See our events page for more details.


**

Here's the Damned featuring Rat Scabies doing "New Rose" as a toast to Pet maintenance in Wapella.



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