Friday, February 1, 2013

Great Memory

It has been five years since Carol Berkland, who was looking through old  newspapers online, showed me a pile of printed out references to Johnson County that she had found.  Many interesting tales, lots of railroad news, and this one.    From the Kansas City Star 1919, it just happened to be a drawing of W.A. Tompkins, my great grandfather which we printed in the Bulletin at the time..  I had hoped that there would be room in the newsletter for the rest of the story, but alas there wasn't. 

So, now, the end of the tale.   I took the newspaper clipping to my brother Mark who lives on the Tompkins place.  It was a cold January day, much like today, but he said, "Do you want to see where that is?" and we took off across the field.  I have had bad luck with cameras and memory cards over the past few years, but  found that I hadn't lost all this morning when I stumbled across the file. 
Please consider this a tribute to the generations of farmers of Johnson County, MO, you know who you are, the unsung heroes, the careful stewards of our  precious resource, the fertile earth.