County lake
By TOOTSIE SNELLING
Marion County Park & Lake reporter
What a great Old Settlers' Day! The weather was perfect, and lots of people turned out to participate. The only thing I didn't like about the parade was that I was in it, and didn't get to see it. I never looked at it like that before, we always stand on the sidelines watching, enjoying, and waving at everyone. This time we were on the other side, in the parade.
We all had fun getting together and making our family float. We were thankful it wasn't windy, because we weren't sure if it would hold together until we got to the speaker's stand.
Those on our float were Sherry Hess, Karly, Molly, and Emmy, Leann Lewman, Kiana and Levi. Mark Lewman was in the pickup with me. Following was Dan and Tammy Snelling, Tristen and Seth, with their boat, then Dean Snelling with his jet ski, with Julie Aycock, Mercedes and Madison and Lynn Hess and Kent Mai. Also following with their boat were lake residents Roy and Elissa Patton and friends Bob and Carol McCurdy.
Two of our grandkids couldn't make it because of work. Because of the delay in starting the parade the grandkids ate half of our candy, but we still had a little left to throw out. That is their biggest thrill with coming to the parade, getting the candy that others throw out, but this year they had to throw it out and some of them weren't too sure about that.
There were some great floats about the lake, and a lot of work that went into them. Thanks to everyone for letting us know how much you appreciate it. Thanks also to Nancy Fee who took pictures for us and loaned us some fish. Thanks to the Tolands, also, for your fish.
We had several campers in. Some were here for reunions and others just came for Old Settlers' Day. The lake hall was used by two class reunions Saturday evening, 1979 and 1989. By 9 p.m. most all of them went into the country club where everyone meets to visit and reminisce about old times.
I kept in touch with my brother over the weekend, with another hurricane coming into Florida. He said hardly anyone was leaving. Everyone was getting tired of evacuating. A big tree fell on their house but there was no major damage as far as he could tell. He wouldn't know until they got it off sometime on Monday or Tuesday. We keep trying to sell him some cheap land in Kansas and he said after this one they might consider it.
June Jost caught some nice channel cat out of the heated dock. Several other nice channel were caught around the lake over the weekend.
With the cooler temperatures up north the monarchs are flying through. We were sitting on the patio Saturday enjoying the nice weather and saw several of them. I grabbed the nets and my tags and told everyone to get busy. It was quite a sight to see Dean, Mark, and Lynn's friend, Kent, who are all over six feet tall, running around the hilltop with dip nets trying to catch butterflies. We were all laughing so hard and the butterflies probably were too. (I know that some of our customers and people just driving by were wondering what we were doing). After the guys wore out it was Leann, Julie, and my turn. We didn't fair much better.
Sunday they were flying the same way, and Leann said she wasn't going home until she caught one. Finally at 6 p.m. she had her one and was able to go home! We finally wound up with 14 to tag. I was hoping no one would fall down and break an arm or leg. I could just hear them tell their boss, "I was just trying to catch a butterfly for my mom!"
So goes another week at the county lake.
