Never too old to learn

By Rennie Phillips

I was born and raised just north of a little town in Nebraska called Arthur. Arthur was and still is small, with less than 200 residents. It used to have two gas stations, two grocery stores, a butcher shop, a restaurant, post office and so on. Most of these closed. Today there is a saddle shop, butcher shop, a bar/restaurant combination, a feed store, one grocery store and a post office. There probably are more, but I can't think of them at the moment. Arthur County in 2015 and 2016 had 460 total residents; 228 of them were males and 232 were females. It's not very populated.

I went to school in a little one-room country school. At the time, kindergarten was for a whole year. I went nine years in the little school, and then on to Arthur for four years of high school. The year I graduated there were 52 students in the four grades. Then I went on to McCook Junior College for two years and then on to Chadron State College for two more. I was wanting a degree in math, chemistry and physics. It was there I met my wife and decided she was a whole lot more interesting than degrees.

We got married and had two pretty neat little boys. We worked on a cattle ranch southwest of Arthur for several years before moving into Arthur. It was while we were in Arthur that I worked for Ted Frye. Ted taught me how to lay bricks and stone, build houses, wire them and the whole lot.

We both became Christians, so we attended a little Pilgrim Holiness/Methodist Church in Arthur. On a big Sunday there may have been 40 or 50 in attendance. As time went by, we felt like we should go back to school for a degree in religion. So we moved our family of four to Bartlesville, Oklahoma, to attend Bartlesville Wesleyan College. After three years, we moved on to Wilmore, Kentucky, where I took four years at Asbury Seminary. A church here in Scott City opened up, so we moved here to begin pastoring a Wesleyan Methodist church. School has always been a part of my life and my wife's life. She got her bachelor's and master's degrees several years ago at the university in Cape Girardeau. I went back to Asbury and worked on my Doctor of Ministry degree. But even since then, there has been a yearning to learn more. My wife has tossed the idea around of working on her doctoral degree.

Every year we got these mailings from the Cape Girardeau Vocational Technical School, so I'd check out the courses. Some of the courses sounded really interesting, so I checked them out a little closer. Finally, I signed up for an evening class on HVAC with Bob Diehl as the teacher. I had a blast. I didn't understand everything, but learned enough to pass the course and be certified. But there were other courses that sounded good as well. Welding and tool and die classes were two of them. Then there were cooking classes. Finally I decided to sign up for an oil painting class. Not enough students signed up, so the class was canceled. Bummer! But the water painting class ended up with enough students, so I took water color painting. It was enjoyable. It was kind of an introduction class.

These short fun classes are really enjoyable. I took a week and drove to Potosi, Missouri, for a blacksmithing class. I had fun sweating and pounding on iron for a week. I've taken several painting classes at Hobby Lobby. Recently I took a watercolor painting class at the River Campus with Daven Anderson. It was a great class.

Shirley, a friend of mine, is as bad as me. I'm not sure how old Shirley is, but let's just say she's 30 in an 80-year-old body. She taught bridge at the Vo Tec school. I talked her into taking the watercolor painting class at the River Campus. Shirley decided the first morning that watercolors aren't her thing. She is always taking an oil painting class.

I guess what I'm saying is don't give up on school. There are all kinds of classes being offered at the Vo Tec. They range from baking to calligraphy to jewelry making to beekeeping to coffee roasting to learning how to use your Android phone. Many of the classes are for a single evening. Some run for several weeks, with the classes in the evening. Call the school at (573) 334-0826 or check them out online at capectc.org/Portals/CTC/Catalogs/Catalogcommunityedcurrent.pdf.

I know once a month there is a painting class at Hobby Lobby. You don't need any materials or even knowledge of painting. All you have to do is sign up and then show up the morning of the class. It will cost you $40 and you will go home with a finished oil painting. It was fun.

One doesn't get too old to take a class, have some fun and maybe even learn something along the way.