I received a rather long, but very interesting missive from Hadley Ford the 96 year-old cotton farmer originally from Hornersville who now plows a different sort of field in Springfield.

Mr. Ford has taken to recording his recollections of a lifetime that spanned two world wars, the second of which he has vivid first hand memories of, for his grandchildren and posterity. Those memories include meeting such personalities as George H.W. Bush and Henry Ford II.

He was on board a U.S. Navy ship, affectionately referred to as the "Unsinkable" U.S.S. Pritchett (I checked, the ship isn't named after Dolph Pritchett) that survived a killer typhoon in the Pacific Ocean. Another memory from those days includes the shooting down, rescuing and guarding of a Japanese kamikaze pilot.

Having survived the war and literally seeing the world Mr. Ford returned to his beloved hometown and began the equally serious and hard tasks of farming and raising a family with his wife, Mary.

Now some headlines from the November 17, 1936 edition of The Twice-A-Week Dunklin Democrat, courtesy of the DDD's unofficial, but much appreciated historian Vivian Helton.

"Police Find Two Legs Near Depot" was the headline over a story about two artificial legs and a valise found stashed under the Frisco depot. It was later learned the legs and case belonged to a traveling salesman who had stopped off here to sell shoelaces and pencils. The artificial limbs hurt him on occasion so he stored them until they were needed again.

"Engineer to Talk at Mass Meeting" was not a headline over a Catholic Church service announcement. Kenneth Huff with an engineer with the rural electrification program. He was attending a Farm Bureau meeting to tell farmers how they could get electricity to their property.

"City Co-operates in State Survey" was a story about the Missouri State Planning Board's statewide canvass to prepare a list of public works projects. The letter was addressed to Mayor Clyde Oakes. The mayor replied that the biggest need he saw was treatment of the city's water supply.

"Indians Downed by Bulldogs 47-0" was the headline over a season-ending loss to the Sikeston team. According to the article, even though the Indians played hard, Sikeston was too big and too fast.

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How about a little more on the Al Gorenomics of global warming?

"Hurting us for nothing: … Congress (should) pause before doing real economic damage in the name of saving us from Al Gore's hallucinations. One of the most damaging proposals is a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gas emissions. The idea is that each year the government will mandate an overall amount of permissible emissions. This cap will gradually be reduced, which, in turn, will pressure businesses to reduce their output of greenhouse gases. A company, such as a utility plant, that cuts back its emissions could sell its credits to an outfit that wants to build a facility that would emit the gases.

"Apart from the fact there's no proof carbon dioxide has any impact on global temperatures, a cap-and-trade system will create an economic disaster. The government -- i.e., politics -- will decide how quotas are allocated. Already a bevy of companies like DuPont and Duke Energy are proffering ideas on how to do this -- ideas that just happen to have particular benefits for them. The artificial scarcity cap-and-trade creates will increase the cost of energy and electricity, making U.S. companies less competitive at a time of intensifying global competition. The EU has had a cap-and-trade system since 2005, and it has already boosted power prices between 5 percent and 10 percent.

"Fraud will become a fact of life. Plants in developing countries that claim they've reduced emissions are selling credits, but in many cases the reductions are fictions.

"Moreover, a cap-and-trade program doesn't work. In 2006 emissions in EU countries participating in the cap-and-trade program went up while U.S. emissions went down. In other words, free-market pricing leads to fewer outputs of carbon. EU bureaucrats are busily revising their scheme. It turns out they set their cap too high. But revamping the project has raised a storm of protest from European industrialists-they fear the extra costs will force them to move facilities elsewhere.

"Cap-and-trade is one European import we should do without. -- Steve Forbes, Forbes magazine"

The comments above were excerpted from Gary Rust's column last week

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Fair trade or not

I noticed in my emailed copy of the Rotary newsletter that President John McClellan was unable to attend the 6:30 a.m. meeting on Thursday. I also noticed that the president's wife did attend the meeting. In fact, Robin and Anita Blackmon were the program. The duo favored the club with several selections including, "Tomorrow," "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," and "I Believe."

Where was the president if his wife could make it to the early morning meeting, you ask? John was home getting the boys, Will and Warren, ready for school while his wife serenaded a civic club and had breakfast prepared for her.

Something tells me Robin got the better end of this deal.

Bud Hunt is publisher of the Daily Dunklin Democrat.