Monkeys In Seymour?

This is a photo I took while in Panama of a howler monkey.

If you read the Webster County Citizen and the police report for June 25th you will see an entry that says "Possible monkeys running loose". I contacted city hall and they didn't have a clue, the good folks over at the Citizen didn't have a clue other than what was written in the report. So, is it possible that there are monkeys running around in Seymour? Years ago a monkey got loose from what was then Exotic Animal Paradise and wondered all the way down to east of Seymour; it was found in a tree by one of the Overholt boys when he was going out the milk cows in the morning, this was where the Drive & Dreams place is located on US-60.

According to Seymour Police Chief Mike Ross at 8:40 P.M. a call came over the radio for the police to "be on the lookout for possible monkeys, yes monkeys" According to the report some monkeys escaped from a monkey farm near Cedar Gap and one or more made it to Fordland where a man was actually attacked by a monkey, no word about how, I wonder if he was hit by the monkey with an object or attacked by the teeth of the monkey; and another question about this story, are these monkeys or apes? Remember Travis the Chimp, chimps are actually great apes, larger and much stronger than many grown men. Until we have further answers this is all we have to go on.

Route 60, Seymour, MODot

So someone commented on here saying that the people of Seymour complained and didn't want an overpass; well that isn't true. I emailed MoDot and got a response. From this response you can see that MoDot just doesn't think our area is important enough to spend money on right now. They are even might put up a 5th stoplight in the area!

Here is MoDot's response, and I repeat it was not people in Seymour complaining that kept us from getting a stoplight.

Mr. Davis,

Thanks for your email asking about possible plans for interchanges along Route 60 at Rogersville and Seymour. I hope to provide information that will be useful to you.

We have developed a concept to make Route 60 a freeway with three interchanges and a series of outer roads between Route 65 in Springfield and Route B/VV at Rogersville. We had a public meeting in the Fall of 2007 in Rogersville to show people what approach we think should be taken. I have attached the informational brochure from that meeting. No money has been identified to design and build the project, with an estimated cost of $75 million to $100 million. Besides, other projects, particularly in Springfield, have been judged by transportation planners we work closely with in the Springfield metro area as having greater need. However, no one disputes the Springfield-to-Rogersville corridor needs improvement.

The situation between Rogersville and Seymour is a bit different. Traffic is lighter, although increasing. The need to make Route 60 a freeway, with limited access at interchanges, is much less. The logical sequence would be to build the Springfield-to-Rogersville freeway and continue looking eastward as population growth and traffic increase in that direction. We know the situation gets more serious with each passing year, but we cannot keep up with the growth and development that is occurring.

When existing Route 60 was planned and built in the late 1960s and early 1970s, MoDOT/Springfield bought property for an interchange in Seymour. However, funds we had available to use over the years had to be spent on other projects where the need was greater. The traffic signal and advance-warning flashers at Route C/K, though not the ideal solutiion, has helped improve safety for much less money than an interchange. We have begun studying whether to add a traffic signal at Clinton Road (where the McDonald's restaurant is located). Again, it's not an ideal fix, but it may be the best we can do.

Interchanges along Route 60 to the east in Wright County were built -- at state highway intersections in Mansfield, Macomb, Norwood and Mountain Grove -- in times in the 1970s when that area was part of the MoDOT/Willow Springs district and money was available to devote to the corridor. Yes, it looks incongruent, but ......

Many people ask why federal economic recovery funds (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) can't be used for projects like the ones you have brought up. That's a natural reaction. The reality is that MoDOT has charge of $525 million of the huge $787 billion "stimulus" package, and that doesn't go very far in meeting the $31.3 billion in needs we have identified across the state. We had to follow constraints contained in the economic recovery legislation and follow the normal project planning and selection process we use in cooperation with transportation planners across the state under rules described by the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission. The commission oversees MoDOToperations.

To use the federal economic recovery money, the law required the highway and bridge projects to be virtually ready to build. That means the design had to be completed, most or all of the right-of-way in hand, all environmental and other federal and state construction requirements met and plans ready to put out for bid. That also means the projects had to have gone through MoDOT's planning and selection process to have gotten to that point. The term you probably heard was "shovel ready." Needless to say, nothing is shovel ready as far as freeway and interchange construction along Route 60 east of Springfield.

We are aware of the highway needs in the Rogersville, Fordland, Diggins and Seymour areas, but other areas we are responsible for in this fast-growing region have greater needs and we can't meet all of those. And unless something changes, our funding projections beyond 2011 put us in a position where we will be able to undertake very few major improvements to the system statewide.

I have used a broad brush stroke to try to explain what's happening where Route 60 is concerned. If you wish to discuss it, feel free to call me at 417-895-7600 and I can go over this in greater detail. Also, please voice your concerns to the Southwest Missouri Council of Governments, the transportation planning agency for your area (417-836-6900), or Webster County Clerk Stan Whitehurst, who is the county's representative on that council. Those folks need to know what their constituents want in the way of road improvements.

Sincerely,

Andy Mueller
Assistant District Engineer
MoDOT, Springfield

Chickens, Mushrooms and Cedar Gap

We got a new chicken house even though it wasn't the one mom wanted to be built. We got 100 baby chicks that will grow up there and then make their transition to the freezer and then to a bbq grill. Yum chicken liver.



The morel mushroom season may be coming to an early end, today the temperature was very high and the next two days it is suppose to be in the 80s and this can spell the end for this year's crop; I was really hoping to get more than I did. I got a total of 12 with about 4 hunts. Most hunts were shorter than I would have liked, it seems like I just haven't had the time to look for them. I need to spend less time sleeping in the mornings. We went to Cedar Gap CA and found only 3 morels in about an hour; I hear of people finding buckets full and I just don't know where to go I guess. It seems like the folks who find that many have been hunting for years and KNOW where to go. I think without help it could take a person years to find the right spots. Not all morels come up in the same area when others are. I've read that the bottoms and south facing slopes come up first; you could be in an area and say that they don't grow there and come back in one or two days and find mushrooms.


I also noticed a fallen down old building at Cedar Gap I had never seen before.

Morels

Spring is here and a couple of cold snaps have killed some of the mushrooms, but later ones are popping up; last nights rain will hopefully cause more of them to grow. Most people find morels under ash trees and elms. Of course you should consult guides or other reliable sources to properly identify any mushrooms you plan on eating.

After going into the woods and finding some morels, which I usually have a hard time finding more than just a couple, you can take them in the house, slice them longways in two and soak them in salt water over night in the refrigerator. I like to roll them in flower, salt them and fry them in oil in the skillet. You can also beat some eggs and a drop of milk and dip the mushrooms in this batter and fry them also; these are some of the best tasting things in the world; nothing else has the wonderful flavor and texture of a fried morel mushroom.

For more information on mushrooms go to www.mdc.mo.gov or http://missourimorels.blogspot.com/

Seymour R2 School Board Race

Well there is going to be an election come April 7th; I think that the only thing I will be voting on is 2 positions for the Seymour R2 School board and something about the Southern Webster County Fire Protection District. For school board I will be endorsing Kim Wilkins and Kevin Rudolph. I would like to say that Travis Sturdefant and David Coutchie are great candidates, their answers of the questions in this week's Webster County Citizen were wonderful; I just feel that in this time of uncertainty that I will be voting for two experienced incumbents. I have no idea who the fifth person is running for school board is so I won't comment on that candidate.

I know that Travis Sturdefant can throw a dodge ball really hard, I had gym class with him; he's a great guy, if he does win a seat on the school board he will be a good fit.

I had David's mom as my gifted education teacher since I was in 4th grade, I never had a class with David and don't know him personally.

I don't know if anyone from Seymour actually reads this blog, and I wish if you are from Seymour that you would contact me and let me know that someone is actually reading this stuff. I just hope you all get out and actually vote this April 7.

Time for White Bass

This morning on my Natural Events Calendar from the Missouri Department of Conservation it says "White Bass begin spawning, Flying squirrels bear young through early April." On Thursday my brother, wife and I went down to Bull Shoals Lake and it was the first time I ever caught a fish on the first cast. A green swimmin' minnow (minner for us hillbillies) caught fish after fish like it was magic or something. It was only my wife's third time fishing and was the first time she ever caught a fish. She pulled in a few good white bass, small males, she caught a lineside and brown bass but they were too small so we threw them back. I ended up catching about 15 fish and throwing 5 back leaving me with ten bass to take home, my brother took home his limit of 15 white bass.

So the next day Friday we got in the truck and headed out earlier and showed up around 10:30 am, I fished and fished and only caught two linesides that were two small, one was about 9 inches, about 12:30 my dad's cousin showed up, I ran up and started yelling "hey this is our fishing spot, we claimed it, get the hell out of here." He started yelling, "what the hell are you doing in my spot!" We were joking around of course but I don't know if the guys in the boat out in the lake knew that or not, they probably thought they were going to see a fight; I guess some people do get a little crazy about white bass fishing and there have been more than one fight on the banks of a lake when the fish are running, I've never seen one but it sounds like it could be a good show.

We fished for a while, everyone caught more fish than me and my wife, we only caught one a piece, my brother caught two big females. One of my dad's cousin's kids caught a big crappie, he threatened to whack me with his fishing pole when I pretended I was going to steal it. While fishing near a bluff I felt a wet thing hit me in the head, I knew it wasn't raining and no one was close enough to fling water on me, I felt on my cap and there was crap on it, I looked up and saw a turkey vulture flying over head. At the end of the day my brother asked how I did, "I caught one fish and got shit on." I said. I guess I was too busy fishing to take any pictures.

Recession? Depression? Possum Stew!

You've heard it, I've heard it, we are in some kind of recession, Obama wants to use 900 Billion dollars to try and get out of it; I don't know if that sort of thing will work. Building roads and bridges is a good thing, but we need a way to bring back manufacturing to the United States. American corporations sent their manufacturing to places like Mexico and China during the 1990s because the taxes here were raised so high they couldn't hardly operate, then we got this free trade thing going that further increased the incentives to send more jobs to China, Communist China that is. Remember when the Lee plant moved from good ol' Seymour, Missouri USA to America's basement Mexico? So red Communist China can pay their billion people a few cents a day to make American shoes, tvs, tires, toys, lead paint toys, poison toothpaste and every other thing we buy today, make if from our raw materials then send it back and it is suppose to be cheaper for us? Well if we don't have a job how are we suppose to pay for all these cheaply made Chinese goods? If we all just cut each others hair or wait on each others tables, or put frozen burgers under heat lamps at McDonald's how are we going to make money? These are some of the reasons we are in this recession.

If a CEO of an American company would have suggested moving its manufacturing during the 1940s to a foreign country they would have been arrested for treason, back then Americans were tougher, the country was more patriotic and more people gave up their personal needs for the war effort. Americans grew gardens to support themselves during the war, there were meat free days so that the troops would get some of the meat. Today can anyone say they have gone a day without eating meat, getting new tires or having to give up car parts because they were needed for the war effort? I don't think so, we haven't rationed tires, gas, metal or food for the war effort.



US Post Office built in 1932 during the Great Depression, this is a copy of actual photos taken by the government to document the building of the Post Office, they were thrown in the trash in the 90s by someone who worked there; fortunately a friend I worked with was a mail man there at the time and saved them from the dump; can't believe some people would throw away such historic photos.

During the Great Depression FDR's government programs actually put people to work. We can see some of these things built during that time today. The post office in Mountain Grove, the Busch Building in Springfield, the rock building in Seymour, trails at Grand Canyon National Park and many other lasting works by the WPA, TVA and CCC. Do you think that there will be a NEW DEAL from President Obama? Someone told me they thought that if such work programs were put into place it may just be giving a lot of people who get such construction jobs a chance to goof off on taxpayer money, maybe, maybe not. I certainly think that the work ethic of people today probably isn't that of 1940.

If you really think this recession is getting bad then you need to think of a few things. You are probably still driving a car or truck, watching satellite TV, eating out at restaurants, going to ball games and many other activities that people during the great depression didn't have the luxury of doing. I suggest reading some books about the subject, "Ava's Man" by Rick Bragg. This book is a true story of a man who lived during the depression, the book describes how many people in the southern United States actually died of starvation during the depression. It describes how some parents actually killed their children because they couldn't afford the medicine to cure them or didn't want them to go through the pain of starving to death. I can't imagine doing something like that.

On a lighter note about such depression activities; many of you may have heard about possum being common table fare during that time. Its no joke, people ate possum, lots of possum. Raccoons, possums and all kinds of other critters modern day Americans wouldn't want to think about eating were eaten with relish during the Great Depression. Armadillos were referred to as Hover Hogs after the president who was in office when the stock market crashed; these were eaten to, not to many people got leprosy from them. So I say we may be on our way to worse times, I don't know if we should spend 900$ dollars, if we do and it doesn't fix things, at least Obama will be blamed. So until people start having to eat possums I say we are still in pretty good shape, in the event we do I'll start posting recipes!