Sculpture

This is one of his sculptures that was in his living room. It is made out of pewter and apparently years ago, he sold them for 6 to 7 thousand dollars each. He had several of these. I am sure he is a wealthy man, but he lives a very simple life. He has a lot of money invested in this Fox Fire Farm project. We also bought his book. It is his life story and I read it on our trip. He was converted after years of going through really dark waters. He let Bill pray with him when we left and was very touched that Bill would ask his permission to pray for him.

This was his old Ford truck

Can it really be you?

On our vacation, we went through Carthage, Mo. By husband is obsessed with John Deere stuff. Anything John Deere. We even got pulled away from our wedding in a manure spreader (John Deere of course). Bill's brother Howard is about as bad. We are on the main street and there is a flying manure spreader in the air on a big pole. Below are the words "crapduster" - Lowell Davis. While my husband is sitting in the car taking pictures, an old truck comes by with the words, "FOX FIRE FARMS, Red Oak, Missoura" (with an a) Bill recognizes all of this and gets out and asks the man, "Are you Lowell Davis?" He replied, "What's left of him." Well, he has created a lot of John Deere stuff for Ertyl and Bill had several magazines at home with his picture. He invited out to his little town. He has built a town called Red Oak and brought buildings in and refurbished them. So, on the way to his town, Bill calls his brother Howard to rub it in. Howard has his entire Christmas village. Howard told us he had gone crazy and burned his studio years ago. So, all the way out to Red Oak, I am freaking out thinking we are following a crazy man and he is going to harm us. Well, he ended up telling us his life story and he said he did loose it for awhile and burn up his studio. He invited us into his home and we just had a wonderful visit. Bill thought it was awesome, and I must admit it was a pretty cool experience. If you google his name, you can read all about him.

Friends from the past

We just returned from Branson. We first went to Pittsburg, Ks. Bill had three days of training at Pitsco for his new tech lab at his school. While he had three days of intensive training, I enjoyed reading and scrapbooking. Well, after the classes were over, we went on to Branson, Mo for the week-end. Bill's son met us there from Tinker Air Force Base and we had a delightful week-end. I have known for years that Ron Crooks lived in Branson and played the piano for the Mickey Gilley show in Branson and sang backup. I mentioned to my husband Bill how great it would be to reconnect with Ron after all these years. Well, I started off by looking in the phone book for a Ron Crooks. Bingo, there he was. We called up until 11:00 PM (no answer or machine) and started again the next morning early with no answer. We went to Hobe Sound Bible College together and he was one of my favorite people. I really would love to see him. Well, Bill lived in Kansas City for years and knew a lot of Ron's kin people. He ended up talking to Ron's sister Gloria and she gave us all of Ron's contact info. He manages a gym in Branson and is a personal trainer there. We finally reached him and asked him to squeeze us into his busy schedule. We were to meet at 1:00 (between clients). Well, we got there about 1:05 and he was at the front desk. I peeked in the window and was so tickled to see Ron sitting there acting busy. We had a wonderful visit with him. It was wonderful to see him again after 33 years. I will post more pictures later of our trip. We had some pretty awesome things happen, so stay tuned.