Last Saturday at the Regional Cross Country meet in Waurika, the Ryan Cowgirls made history by winning their first Regional Team Championship.  The team is comprised of Katelyn Dabbs, Grace Stamper, Alicen Williams, Lily York, Juliet Spangler, Whittany Spangler and Lilybet Harmon.  These young ladies have achieved so many first time accomplishments that I could probably fill the entire page of the paper, so I will just hit the highlights.  Besides the team championship, Lilybet Harmon had the best individual finish in school history with a 5th place finish and a time of 13:13.  It is also the first time that Ryan has had two girls on the medal stand in the same regional.  The Cowgirls have won 6 meets this year.  From here the young ladies go on to State.  It is worth mentioning that Ryan had only one Cowboy running at Regional and although he did not qualify for State, he did run his best time of the year.  Mason Adsit is young and it will be interesting to see how far he and the Cowgirls go in the future.  Congratulations to you all.

     Ryan Future Farmers of America will be walking on to the stage in Indianapolis, Indiana to receive the National Three star Chapter Award.  The three things that it takes to win this award are community work, agricultural work and building leaders.

     So far I have written about students accomplishments in sports and FFA, but I have to think that the qualities they are learning will make them the leaders of the future, be it at the local level or beyond.  It is a pleasure to see young people do big things.

     The ag boosters will be selling “Boo Bags” this week, if you are interested, contact any of them.(I had to ask what a boo bag is.)

     The Baptist Church is going to be working this coming Sunday doing clean up work around town as mission work.  They will be working all day and if anyone wants to help you can contact any of the Baptists or I am sure it would be okay to just show up.

     Books have played an important roll in my life.  From Dr. Seuss as a small child to the books I started checking out of the school library here at Ryan in the 7th grade.  I read whatever was available and I must have seemed like an odd kid to Clifford Peacocks parents, he would be playing with toys and I would be reading.  The first book that I remember checking out was a book about the racehorse, Man of War.  The horse was sold as a yearling for $5000 and became one of the biggest sports figures of the time.  At home I would read World Book Encyclopedias, novels or The Readers Digest.  As an adult, I discovered bookstores.  There was one in the mall in Duncan that was owned by an older gentleman and it was there that I discovered Robert Service, Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman.  Then when Hastings came to town, I thought that I had hit the mother lode.  I made many discoveries among the shelves and if you could not find it there then they would order it for you.  Waurika has a pretty good library and has always proven to be helpful in finding what you might want.

Another Cemetery Fundraising lunch has come and gone.  Thanks to the hard working volunteers and the good turn out on the part of both the townsfolk and the out of town visitors, it was a success.  The menu consisted of pulled pork and sausage with sides of potato salad and coleslaw.  Desserts for both the lunch and the bake sale were supplied by the local women.  Many donations were received by mail, sent in by people that are making their homes elsewhere but still take the time to help out with the upkeep of the Ryan Cemetery.  The contract for mowing this year has been awarded to the Wesley Martin family.  Several years ago they worked for the contract holder and proved themselves more than capable of doing a good job.  I’m sure that their standards will be maintained.  Dustan Bryant did the cooking again this year, I think that most folks will agree that Dustan might have figured out how to smoke meat.  Ol’ Dusty spent most of Saturday night and early Sunday morning tending to his cooker, so if you get the opportunity, say thank you to Dustan for the fine work that he does every year.  Councilwoman Tammy Cotton and her band of merrymakers spent a lot of time and effort planning and preparing for this event and then spent a lot of Saturday evening cooking for the bake sale.  I never did see this rum cake that she was talking about.  A special thank you goes out to Tammy’s friend Holly for all of her hard work.  Holly comes to Ryan every year to lend a helping hand with the event.  After the meal and bake sale, the names of the raffle winners were drawn by an honest disinterested third party.  Each winner got a $25  gift certificate to one of the local businesses, if you won you will be notified or you can check with Town Hall.

 The summer reading program will be starting on June 16th and will be on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:00 am until 12:00 pm at the Ryan Sr. Citizens Center.  Mrs. T. J. Dewbre said that you can go to her Facebook page and find the Amazon wish list if you would like to help out, also volunteers are always welcome and they can use more arts and crafts supplies.  Lunches will be provided.  June’s theme will be insects so the kids will be learning more about all the creepy and crawly things.  Most of the activities will be at the Sr. Citizens Center but there will be ample opportunity to be going outdoors.

 I went looking for further inspiration for something for this week’s column and I found it in the guise of a fellow named Mike Rowe and a show called “Returning The Favor”.  His description of the show is that they go out looking for do-gooders.  They search out, celebrate and try to understand people whose efforts are spent trying to make the lives of people in their communities better.  I have watched veterans helping other vets.  One woman that owns a restaurant and during the pandemic she had to close, so her and her friends handed out meals to people that might miss a meal otherwise.  Another woman that is rescuing both urban children and abused animals.  Teaching children responsibility and the animals to trust humans again.  One episode was about a man that converted his family owned whiskey distillery so that they could supply hand sanitizer.  All of these folks function on donations and that is where Mike and his group come in, sometimes they give them equipement and sometimes money and sometimes both.  If you are  a sucker for a feel good story, this is a good place to go.

 Be kind to one another.

We were blessed with close to 6 inches of rain last Friday. It started Thursday evening around 6:30pm, when the winds and clouds came in. We lost our electricity until 2:31 Friday morning. It was off for nearly 8 hours. It was cooler to go outside than it was to stay in the house with no air circulating. Brionna was home with me and she wasn’t too fond of being without electricity. People used to do without electricity, but, modern amenities have come to spoil us. And, cooler days are right around the corner and summer is officially behind us. 

This next Tuesday will be the evening of the Ryan City Council meeting at 6:00.

On Friday, October 5th we will be having another sidewalk sale for our Ryan merchants. 

Megan and Joby Edwards were blessed with a baby boy, Joc, nearly 2 weeks ago. Congratulations to them on their new baby.

This Friday, there will be a meeting at the Mercantile to discuss Christmas decorations around town if anybody is interested in helping with that . The meeting will be held at 6:00pm.

I was riding my bicycle to make a delivery before I opened the store this morning and I noticed Debbie Patrick had moved her car a couple of times away from her usual parking place in front of the old post office building. She was parked across the street beside the Mercantile and was looking out her window across the street and I asked her what was going on. She said there was something in her parking spot and it wouldn’t move. I got a little closer and it was a really big turtle. It had taken up residence in her parking spot and was resting. She said she had tried to get it to move, but, it wouldn’t move. I got off my bicycle and got hold of a chair and tried to budge it to change its spot, but, it sure didn’t want to. It took a bite out of the end of the chair when I was trying to get it to move over to the grass. It finally was in the grass, turned over on his back, and so I told Debbie he must be tired out and so was I.  I made my delivery and after I was riding back to the store and Debbie had moved to her parking place  and she told me the turtle made it across the street and up the steps to the sidewalk in front of Jimmy Ferris’s place. I rode over to the side of the building and caught a picture of him as he was traveling. I guess he made it up the hill from the creek. (see picture below)

Kim’s news for this week:

Saturday, Ruffy Tuffy was very happy, he got a day off cause I went to a Woman’s Church Conference in Comanche. 

This past week we can’t complain, but, Praise God for the rain. 

Everyone have a blessed week. Pray for each other.