Lake: Missouri visit includes peach-picking trip
By TOOTSIE SNELLING
Marion County Park & Lake reporter
We traveled to Breckenridge, Mo., last Monday to spend a few days with my sister and husband, Regina and Ed Prothman. It's dry there, too, but not as dry as around the Kansas and Missouri line. There, the beans are brown and the corn doesn't even look like it made ears. So I guess it could be worse here. At least our beans still are green and there is corn on the stocks.
We went to visit and to get peaches. We got up at 4 a.m. Wednesday morning so we could be in Jamesport, Mo., at 5 a.m. You pay for how many bushels you want and they give you a number. We were number 19, then you wait for them to unload the truck which traveled all night from Illinois. About 5:30 or 6, they start calling numbers and you get your peaches. They usually are sold out by 6 to 6:30 a.m. The truck holds 300 bushels.
On the way there, there was a car in front of us and two behind us and we were wondering what they were doing up that early in the morning. We soon found out, because they went the same place we did (we weren't the only crazy people out). A lady in front of me said she had gotten up a 3 a.m. to get there, she came from St. Joe. She asked where I was from, I said Marion, Kansas, her mouth fell open. I assured her I was visiting my sister in Missouri and hadn't come all the way from Kansas that day just for peaches.
Jamesport is an Amish community. We had to watch out for the horse and buggies traveling on the roads which are really hilly. It's hard to see black buggies at 6 a.m. The store had no electricity. Their lights were Coleman lanterns, the adding machines ran from a solar panel battery, and the ceiling fans were run by an air compressor. Quite the life.
While we were out wandering around in the middle of the night, or morning, we did see Mars, the bright star or planet in the southern sky. In case you haven't heard or read about Mars, the Red Planet, it will be the closest to earth in history. The next time Mars may come this close to earth is 2287 and it may be 60,000 years before it comes this close again. Mars will be the closest on August 27, and will come within 34,649,589 miles. With a modest 75-power magnification, Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. At the beginning of August, Mars will rise in the east at 10 p.m. and reach its highest point at about 3 a.m. But, by the end of August, when the two planets are closest, Mars will rise at nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30 a.m. That's pretty convenient when it comes to seeing something that no human has seen in recorded history. So mark your calendar for Aug. 27. Get out now to see Mars grow progressively brighter and closer throughout this month. Share this with your children and grandchildren. No one alive today will ever see this again. (This is my science lesson for the month.)
We had several campers out over the weekend, some for the reunions that were held here and others getting one more campout in before school starts.
The Hamm reunion used one half of the hall on Sunday and the Hetts used the other.
Fishing slowly is getting better. There are a few more reports of channel cat biting and the bass boats did better this weekend. The wipers still are hitting and a few walleye were caught.
These cooler nights are helping to cool the water a little and should help fishing, too.
