When you watch the afternoon and evening weathercasts, you hear about the Weather Watchers. Well, not to be out-done, FirstNews also has some folks out there who take time, at five in the morning, to e-mail their weather conditions and many other things. One regular is named Bill, but we call him The Big Wind from the North! He lives in Platte County and lets us all know when his "cooler relatives" start to blow in. Evelyn, near Smithville, is great about rainfall and snowfall reports, as well as the best cake-baker in the universe. Then, there is Kerry of Tonganoxie...and, his mom, Connie. Sometimes I feel a bit like a cyber-Dr. Phil, as the two of them doing a little, good-natured sparring via the world-wide-web. The other day, Connie scolded me for sending wind but no beneficial rain in the weekend storms. She wasn't totally surprised that I'd be full of hot air but provide nothing helpful. Connie also gets after me if it rains too much and she can't hang clothes on the line!

BLOG WITHIN A BLOG ALERT! Clotheslines!

We interrupt our current blog for BREAKING NEWS just into the blog center: I miss clotheslines. I know some folks still use them...like Connie...but most of us just toss the wet stuff into a dryer. When I was a kid, everyone had one. Many's the night, during a spirited game of Kick the Can, I found them...neck first. My mom's first and last time on a horse, involved a clothesline. But, most of the time, seeing sheets, pants, shirts flapping in the breeze is soothing. At our first house, my wife and I tried to put in a clothesline just to achieve that effect and save money on utilities. We were so proud. Our first house! Our home-made clothesline! We took the first basket of clothes to the line...marching majestically...took the initial t-shirt out of the pile and clipped it to the cord. As we stepped back to admire our achievement, both ends of the line fell inward and the whole thing collapsed. One little t-shirt and it was a soggy Armageddon. I still like clotheslines as long as I had nothing to do with their construction.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled blog, already in progress.

In addition to climatological info and family concerns, Kerry also keeps everyone posted on what's going on in his neck of the woods and, this week, that means the Leavenworth County Fair! It will be warm but fun on the fairgrounds. When I was growing up, the Sauk County Fair in Baraboo, Wisconsin, was as close to Disneyland as I ever got. (Just saying the name "Baraboo" over and over while speeding up the bluffs toward the fair was an "E" ticket for me. Try it today...as you are going up or down in an elevator starting saying "BarabooBarabooBaraboo." It's fun and has the added bonus of giving you plenty of personal space.) It was at the Sauk County Fair, that I learned what happens when you take cotton candy, a hot dog, a chocolate ice cream cone, a bag of cheese curds and mix them with eight rides on a Tilt-A-Whirl. It was at the fair that I won my first pet: a gold fish swimming in bright purple water in a baggie. He endured the Tilt-A Whirl better than I. It was at the fair that I saw young people my age with drive and determination...showing their sheep and pigs and horses and winning ribbons and acclaim. I was inspired to show my pet but they didn't have a category for gold fish in purple water in baggies looking nauseated. It was at the fair I learned that girls are not impressed by someone afraid to go in the haunted house or on the Ferris Wheel. Unfortunately, I was 22 years old at the time. I was not allowed to attend the Demolition Derby at the fair because there were too many "roughnecks" hanging around, as my mom would put it. A "roughneck" is several steps above a "ragamuffin" on my mom's scale of characters of whom to be wary. All-in-all, I loved going to the fair because a kid could approximate what it must be like to be an adult...all the bright lights, interesting smells and slight feeling of "anything can happen." Now, that I am an adult, I realize, some days, those bright lights belong to oncoming trains, those smells usually mean there's something that needs to be cleaned up and that "anything can happen" feeling may quickly translate into "how did that happen?"

The best thing about a fair is that it can make everyone feel like that wide-eyed kid again. So head on out to the Leavenworth County Fair, see the sights, drink plenty of water and, if you run into Connie, tell her I'm sorry about the heat. I'm pretty sure she'll blame me.