An Arkies Musings

My An Arkie's Faith column from the December 30, 2020, issue of The Polk County Pulse. The young man stood at the counter, ordering a gallon of paint. “I need a gallon of synthetic enamel for a 1971 Oldsmobile,” he said to the man behind the counter. “It is brown, and the paint code is 68.” “I will get that mixed and bring it to your shop this afternoon, is there anything else that you need?” “Give me a sleeve of 220 grit wet or dry sandpaper.” “Let me get that from the back.” “And get me five gallons of lacquer thinner,” the young man hollered. The counterman came out carrying the heavy bucket of thinner and set it down along with the sandpaper. Then going back behind the counter, he reached into a box on the floor and took out a can of black-eyed peas. Handing the can to the young man, he said, “Happy New Year.” “Thank you,” said the young man with a puzzled look on his face. He carried the thinner, sandpaper, and can of black-eyed peas to his car. He took the can home to his wif...

  It was a cold, windy day in December 1903. Orville Wright stands on the beach in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, staring at the sky. Flying overhead, in the machine that they had built together, is his brother Wilbur. It was their fourth flight of the day in their hand-built flying machine. Wilbur Wright succeeded in flying their homemade machine for 59 seconds, covering 852 feet at a speed of seven miles per hour. Orville had piloted the first flight of the day that lasted just 12 seconds and traveled only 180 feet, but it proved that human flight was possible.  Orville wrote in his diary about the first attempted flight that morning. “I found the control of the front rudder quite difficult. As a result the machine would rise suddenly to about 10 ft. and then as suddenly, on turning the rudder, dart for the ground. A sudden dart when out about 100 feet from the end of the tracks ended the flight. Time about 12 seconds.” The brothers realized that a successful flight depended on...

Article by Jeri Pearson from the December 16, 2020, issue of The Polk County Pulse Local author Richie Lawry has made 150 of his books free, thanks to an undisclosed donor.  After receiving a check with the memo made out to "ministry," Lawry said he was confused at first.  "I thought, well I don't have a ministry, per say," he said.” I wondered what I should do with the donation.” However, Lawry does have a ministry. He has been compiling writings, which have been published into several books, as well as having an active blog since 2008 and contributing to local papers beginning in 2016. His writings take everyday life and encounters and correlates the meanings he finds in interactions and situations with spiritual truths that are profound and uplifting. By using his talent of storytelling and creative writing, coupled with his knowledge of scripture and love of people, Lawry has generated a following of people who look forward to his weekly column, An Arkie...

My An Arkie's Faith column from the December 16, 2020, issue of The Polk County Pulse. One of my favorite activities is listening to podcasts. I listen whenever I am driving or have free time. I like those that deal with history and science. Surprisingly Brilliant is a new podcast that started this year. It is a science history podcast that tells the stories of surprising yet brilliant discoveries, ideas, and people. A recent episode told a story that I want to share with you. In 1930, a girl named June Hart was born in the slums of Glasgow, Scotland. She was very bright and overly motivated, but she had to leave school at 16 and get a job to help her family. She managed to get an apprenticeship to become a lab technician at Glasgow Royal Infirmary. Her salary was 25 shillings a week, which would be $160.00 in today’s money. Her job was to look at tissue samples through a microscope. She was exceptionally good at her job, becoming a microscopy expert as a young woman. When she was ...

My An Arkie's Faith column from the December 9, 2020, issue of The Polk County Pulse. The rain beating down on my shop’s metal roof was so loud that conversation wasn’t possible. The downpour was so heavy that I could not see the highway in front of my shop. A flash river was running down my driveway. In the shop bay where I was trying to work, water streamed from the ceiling in several places. “I hope this downpour will be over soon,” I thought. But it wasn’t over soon. The deluge continued. After hours of hard rain, there was an inch of water on my shop floor.  By the time the rain ended, nine inches of rain had fallen. Rainwater flooded the floor throughout the shop. I knew that my old shop building had several leaks, but it had never flooded before. I realized that I was going to have to get my roof repaired. Earlier in the year, I had the leaks worked on a couple of times, but now they seemed worse than before. What was I going to do about my roof? A couple of weeks later, our...

My An Arkie's Faith column from the December 2, 2020, issue of The Polk County Pulse. The first orange hued rays of sunrise emerged in the east as I pulled my Chevy S-10 shop truck up to the storage building. My auto glass supplier from Little Rock drops off my order early in the morning each Tuesday and Thursday. I was anxious to get the glass loaded into the truck and head for my shop. I had a busy day scheduled. When I finished loading my truck, I went over my order and found that I was short one windshield. I rechecked the racks in the storage building, but the windshield was not there. “Oh no,” I thought, “this isn’t a good start to my day.”  When I realized which windshield was missing, my heart sank. How could so many things go wrong with one job? A week and a half earlier, I had ordered a windshield for a Dodge Charger and set up a time for the customer to drop the car off. But when the time came to do the job, I found that my supplier had sent the wrong glass. To make matt...