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The Snoop 8.18.2016

The West Plains Daily Quill reported this week that Edward Henegar, owner of Dawt Mill, has made application with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to remove a portion of the Dawt Mill Dam. The Corps is expected to approve the application within 30 to 90 days so that one-third of the dam can be removed. The dam has been damaged by flooding over the years. A damaged portion of the dam was blamed for the drowning of a 13-year-old Springfield girl in June of this year and has been responsible for numerous other near drownings over the years, according to the Quill article.

Dawt Mill is located on the North Fork of White River in Ozark County. North Fork flows into Lake Norfork.

Other news from our Exchanges…

Mansfield started school last Thursday, Aug. 11. Among the new teachers shown in the Mansfield Mirror is Sarah Peterson, teaching high school agriculture. She will be remembered here as Sarah Ross, an Ava High School graduate.

A Taney County audit shows county’s net assets in 2015 at more than $51 million, according to the Taney County Times.

The Webster County Citizen in Seymour reported last week that the “Million-Penny Drive to renovate the Owen Theater had received 36,000 pennies to date, as well as over $1,000 in nickels, dimes, quarters and currency.

The Ozark County Times reported that Lori Ellison, 14, of Dora, competed in the junior and open barrel racing at the Arkansas Family Rodeo at the Gainesville Saddle Club.

Licking Elementary School held open house on Monday, Aug. 8, according to The Licking News. School started there on Aug. 11.

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With almost all schools now air-conditioned, school districts are able to start classes in mid-August. This allows for more and longer breaks in the school calendar and still, depending on the winter weather, usually releasing for the summer by mid-May. When I was in school air-conditioned classrooms was unheard of (yes, we did have electricity) and school usually started at the end of August. You may remember several years ago the State made it mandatory to wait until after Labor Day to start classes with an exception for schools in agricultural areas. The idea was to promote Missouri’s tourism industry (Branson) by allowing families to plan vacations through the entire month of August.

It became apparent districts were not going to go along with that mandate when even the Springfield School District declared itself to be “agricultural” and started school before Labor Day.

Except when we had an unusually hot period at the end of August, going to school without air-conditioning was not all that bad because most of us didn’t have air-conditioning at home, either. A couple of well-placed fans in the classroom with open windows made it bearable, especially on those rare occasions when administrators even allowed us to bring a glass of water into the classroom. Bottled water? Not available. Who could imagine selling bottled water?

These same factors affected how we started football practice in the late summer. Two-a-days were actually a relief for those of us who had spent the summer bucking haybales. We didn’t need five days of “acclimation” to get used to the heat – or the hard work. Back in those days, hay bales were square (rectangular) and had to be picked up by hand and loaded onto a truck. Something you don’t often see these days.

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A doctor calls his patient and says, “The check you gave me for my bill came back.” The patient replied, “So did my arthritis!”