am McCarty and Angie Strother of the Bee South

ern shop on The Square in Downtown Washington were delighted Monday of last week when they received a call from a lady in San Antonio, Texas. The lady said that she had tried "all over San Antonio" to find her size in "Rapunzel! Rapunzel" shoes which are the latest fashion in ladies' shoes. She had not found them, so she went to the internet, typed in Rapunzel, and up popped the shoes in the Bee Southern advertisement on The News-Reporter website. The lady promptly called Bee Southern and within the hour, the shoes were on their way to San Antonio. Need I say more, advertisers??

The renovation of the old Bootleggers building on the North ByPass will be completed in about a month. Harper's Personal Care, Assisted Living, and Adult Day Care Home will be opening in the building in about two months. Carolyn and Jimmy Harper are the owners and Carolyn says they will have 24 rooms, and will also have facilities for adult day care. There is a real need for these kinds of care and I'm glad Carolyn and Jimmy are providing this service to Wilkes County and the surrounding area. It should be a beautiful facility in a beautiful setting.

Dr. Charles Strickland, interim pastor of the First Baptist Church,

Washington, lives in the Mount Vernon, Glennville, Vidalia area of the state and makes the two-plus hour drive to Washington on Saturday night to be ready for Sunday services. Last Saturday night he arrived about 10:45 and discovered that he didn't have socks for Sunday. Now this was not the first time that this had happened. The first time he drove all the way back to Thomson about midnight to purchase socks. He didn't want to do that this time so he waited until Sunday morning and called Smythe Newsome to ask if he could borrow socks. Smythe and Jane had already gone to the church. There was no phone book in the pastorium where he was staying and he knew that three of the four people whose phone numbers he had were out of town. The only one left was Ken Bufford who now lives in Augusta, so Charles called him and Ken gave him the phone number for Edward Pope, who assured him that he would have socks on the kitchen table at the pastorium by the time he (Charles) got out of the shower. Charles found the socks and arrived at church on time, but he realized during the morning that there were "snickers" wherever he went. When the truth was revealed, the socks belonged to Martin Burgess who lives across the street from the pastorium and who had placed them there for Edward who had called and asked him to do so. (It occurred to me: why didn't he just wash the socks he had on?)

Scott Lewis brought me a copy of a book that Julie (his wife) is currently reading. The title of the book is The Still Hog Theory (Why He Always Got the Slop) and the reason Julie is reading the book is that the author, Ray Miller, has been a friend of her father in Henry County for many years. The book is sub-titled "The Times and Memories of Ray Miller." Ray and Judge Jim Burton of Washington-Wilkes were students at Georgia Tech at the same time and Ray was the Resident Assistant in Jim's dormitory in 1959. When the telephone man came to collect the money from the pay phones in the dormitory they were all empty, so Ray enlisted the help of our Jim in solving the mystery. They discovered that the students were putting a handful of quarters in the phone, calling home, or girlfriends, and when they hung up, the money would come rolling out of the phone. Upon investigation they found that these brilliant Georgia Tech students had rigged a device with a coat hanger crammed into the money slot and when the wire was wiggled it tripped a mechanism and all the money came pouring out. Investigation also found that most every room in Miller's section had a coat hanger phone jigger lying on the desk. They turned the money over to the phone company, but it wasn't long before the money was disappearing again. So the two sleuths went to work again and found that these "electronic freaks" had rigged a dry cell battery with two wires sticking out, grounded them to a water pipe, and some way were able to make the money come pouring out. . . . The book also included other mentions of Jim Burton, who the author said "enjoyed a good joke more than anyone I have ever known."

Buddy Blackmon was featured on the front of the Thursday Living section of the Athens Banner-Herald. Buddy plays a banjo (and guitar) and worked in Nashville, Tenn., for 30 years with such artists as Earl Scruggs and Dolly Parton, and has traveled "all over" playing his banjo. Buddy is the son of Wilkes County native Dr. Dilmus Blackwho mon and the late Marilyn Blackmon. He grew up on Old Lexington Road in Athens and now lives in that area. He is the nephew of Steve Blackmon and Norma Alice Blackmon Wallace of WashingtonWilkes.

Dr. Michael Davidson Brown is the sixth generation of his family to graduate from the School of Medicine at the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) in Augusta, beginning with his great-great-great-grandfather, Paul Chase Davidson, in 1842. Michael is a graduate of Washington-Wilkes Comprehensive High School, and his brother, Dr. Alan K. Brown, was a member of the Class of 1999 at MCG. Both are sons of Lawrence C. Brown of Atlanta and Renee Brown of Taliaferro County. More about these doctors later.

Ruthie Edwards Cole and her husband, Edward Cole, are both professional foresters in Florida and were featured in the spring/summer issue of "Florida Forests," an official publication of the Florida Forestry Association, and were shown on the cover with their little daughter Olivia. Ruthie is the daughter of the late Mac W. Edwards Jr. of Washington-Wilkes, and granddaughter of Nita Edwards Riley of Tignall. . . . More later about these two interesting people.

In this column last week I listed the names of men from Wilkes County who have lost their lives in the service of their country beginning with World War I and up to the war in Iraq today. The list was published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Memorial Day. I knew that there had probably been some not included on the list and have received calls giving me the following names: LeGrand Denard, William Beard, Marine Howard Lance, and Milton Heard. The names of the two men for whom the Blanchard-Echols VFW Post was named were not included either.