TBY: The Best Years

We’ve all heard the phrase “age is just a number,” right? Well, when it comes to fashion, we believe that phrase fits; as long as you are comfortable and confident in what you are wearing, the outfit fits well and is appropriate for the occasion, there are no hard and fast fashion rules about what age group can wear a certain style or fashion. Let’s be honest — so many old fashion rules are no longer accurate. For example, want to wear white after Labor Day? Fine...

It’s officially summer on June 21, and we’re in a summer state of mind. With the free time and warmer weather of summer comes the opportunity to experience new ways to exercise, and our region offers a plethora of fun ways to move. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends individuals get 150 minutes of moderate physical activity each week, with two days of muscle-strengthening activity. ...

When Gail Lowrance retired from teaching special education in 2014, she spent a summer in a tiny town in California where everyone knew each other by name. On her third day there, a bookstore owner recognized her by her bright white hair and greeted her...

Church and civic group cookbooks tell the stories of their community and the people who shape them. Each recipe in these cookbooks is more than a list of ingredients and steps: It is a written legacy of the individual who submitted the dish, their family and history. This monthly series will highlight one of these legacies and give readers the chance to create the recipe themselves...

The beginning of summer means caring for your lawn to create an outdoor space you can enjoy. “It’s kind of a pride thing,” says Jeff Dunlap, Sydenstricker Nobbe Partners’ retail manager. “We spend a ton of money on our homes and our yards, and we want to maintain those well to keep the appearance up on the house, and it also keeps the value of your home up.”...

Sunrise is a favorite time to see sky painting. One morning, as I arrived at Saxony Lutheran High School early to prepare for class, I rounded the hill, and there before me was the most glorious sunrise I had ever seen. The sky was filled with oranges, reds, yellows, purples and blues. ...

Growing up in Cape Girardeau in the 1970s, one of my fondest music memories was hearing Vi and Eddie Keys play in the Arena Building during the SEMO District Fair. Although the Keys never experienced what some might consider “mainstream success” in the form of hit records and national tours, they performed, traveled and frequently rubbed elbows with those who did. They were successful musicians, music teachers and retailers in the Cape Girardeau area...

John Eric and Vanessa Klein’s love for wine began approximately 15 years ago, while they worked at Celebrations Restaurant. It was there they first began to taste different wines and study flavor profiles. Through study, trial and error, and gathering feedback from their friends while they entertained, they were ready to build their own wine list when they opened 36 Restaurant & Bar in downtown Cape Girardeau in 2015...

Looking back, it’s easy to wonder where the time went. Science has figured out how to get some of it back, even if it’s only a second here and there. Let’s use those seconds to indulge in some nostalgia about our favorite alien and wizard. 1972 · 50 years ago...

As I write this, the internal countdown that’s been ticking away inside me for the past four years is five hours away from running out. In just five hours, I’ll be one person in a line of more than 100, in a blue gown that becomes suffocating after 10 minutes, the ugliest hat I’ve ever worn and so many decorative things around my neck I feel like a Christmas tree. ...

I owe my love for mystery books to my older sister and Osterloh’s Book Store in Cape Girardeau. When I was in second grade, I borrowed a Nancy Drew book from her bookshelf when she was at a sleepover. I was hooked, and every time I saved enough of my allowance, I walked downtown to Main Street with my grandmother and bought the next book in the series. I’ve loved mysteries ever since...

Commerce Clowns, Published June 11, 1990 Every parade needs clowns, so these women of Commerce, Mo., dressed the part for the town’s bicentennial celebration, along with three younger ones. From left are Sam Wright with Katlin Vetter, Nita Brazel with Eric Scheper and Glenna Wright with Joshua Wright...

Church and civic group cookbooks tell the stories of their community and the people who shape them. Each recipe in these cookbooks is more than a list of ingredients and steps: It is a written legacy of the individual who submitted the dish, their family and history. This monthly series will highlight one of these legacies and give readers the chance to create the recipe themselves...

It’s a simple story, Kari Buerck says: Her grandparents, the late Glenda and Willard Hadler, went on a trip to Nevada and saw a tree with shoes hanging from the branches. When they came home, Willard decided he wanted to create a tree like the one they’d seen for his own family. ...

Falconry initially piqued the interest of father and son Todd and Colby Rushing because they thought it was “cool.” They quickly realized falconry is much more than an interesting hobby; it is an incredibly time-consuming commitment, lifestyle and vital conservation effort...

Byron Bonner, known to some as Brother Moonie, was born and raised in Sikeston, Mo. Growing up, his brother and sister thought he was “the weird one,” because he would often retreat to his bedroom and preach to his stuffed animals. But even from a young age, he had an admiration for pastors and used that time by himself to process the early traumas of his life...

For me, writing is so dependent on what is going on in my head at any given moment. When people ask about my process, I’m never really sure what to say. It doesn’t happen the same way twice, and a majority of it happens in my head — creative rituals I can’t even comprehend, happening long before I actually sit down to write anything. The only thing that can connect each writing experience together is what comes from the outside: music...

Pop culture is the best time machine; just hearing words like “funky,” “gnarly” and “dude” can instantly send you back decades. Though these may be the best years, don’t forget about the good years along the way. Read on for glimpses into the month of May from 25, 40 and 50 years ago...

This is addressed to the tattoo-curious; I suspect there are more of us than meets the eye. You who are tattooed may smile fondly at our approach-avoidance conflict. But of the tat-less, I want to know: What’s your invisible ink? That tattoo you alone can see?...

A cackling evil witch … a flying house and flying monkeys … the Yellow Brick Road … ruby slippers … a young girl on an epic journey accompanied by her dog and a scarecrow, tin man and lion … That list most likely took you back to your childhood, to the rising anticipation in the days leading up to the once-a-year television broadcast of “The Wizard of Oz” and to sitting in front of the television, mesmerized as the story unfolded yet again on the screen...

Several years ago, I was reading an interview with actress Helen Mirren. The author of the article asked her about her fitness routine and how she stays so fit. Her answer was, “Mostly, I just tried to stand up straight.” Sounds so simple, but let’s take a look...

She gave you life and has seen you through your best, hardest and wayward times. She gives guidance and is present, supportive and honest. She’s not perfect, and she works hard, sacrifices for those around her and loves you. It’s the month of May, when we honor our moms. ...

Students from St. Vincent’s Grade School in Cape Girardeau climbed a jungle gym at Capaha Park during the school’s annual Play Day in May 1971. (Steve Robertson ~ Southeast Missourian archive photo)

When Ed Crowley and his wife, Terri, lived on a dairy sheep farm in Kentucky, they received a phone call from a woman in Florida. She said she was coming in for a conference, and her daughter, who had never been on a farm before, was coming with her; could they visit their farm and milk a sheep?...

Donald Rees, 90 years old, has been a fixture in Jackson for many years as the owner and operator of Rees Family Barber Shop. He currently resides in The Villas at Jackson and can be found each morning walking two miles around the area, counting each lap he makes around the buildings by moving a penny from one pocket of his pants to the other...

History takes up a lot of space. Many thousands of pages in hundreds of books have been written to cover Missouri’s history. The Mississippi River Tales Mural on the Cape Girardeau flood wall covers nearly 18,000 square feet. The Cape Girardeau County Archive Center has 4,500 cubic feet of historical records going back to before the Civil War...

You can tell a lot about a person, an area, a culture, by what people leave behind. It’s something Charley and Verla Mangels, Chester and Kristi Seyer, and Brenda and Mark Kern know well. The group, along with Mary Seyer and Theresa Seyer, and in the past, L.R. and Janet Brandes, works together as Seyer Auctioneering, and they are, in a sense, cultural anthropologists who observe and tell stories about the people of Perry, Cape Girardeau and Bollinger Counties...

Recently, Joplin, Mo., lost two law enforcement officers in the line of duty. It is always hard to hear about our law enforcement officers being killed in the line of duty, especially so close; the community loses so much when we lose those who put themselves between danger and us...

I’m now in my final quarter of my senior year. Everything is winding to a close, and if the first three quarters dragged their feet getting here, the fourth one is sprinting. The end of the third quarter snuck up on me. I blinked halfway through the school year, and now, I only have one report card left. We’re getting ready to start that final math chapter, that final composition paper...

In 1968, Malcolm Lee, Terry Burke and I got together for a weekend spring break session to record an audition tape for summer work as folk singers in some exotic locale that was not Sikeston, Mo. We represented the male contingent of The Travelers and had been together in one form or another since 1961. ...

April Fool’s Day, celebrated April 1 each year, has been observed for several centuries by several different countries and cultures, although its exact origins remain a mystery. On this day, you’re supposed to pull a prank, play a hoax or inflict a practical joke on someone. Then, you yell, “April Fool’s!” at the victim to signify you’re an idiot...

Nothing against my other six uncles, but Uncle Max was my favorite. He grew up in New York State, played Dixieland/jazz piano by ear, sang Sinatra — his wife Kitty’s favorite — and other styles. (If you want to hear how Max Jolls played piano, listen to Harry Connick, Jr.) He also was an engaging teller of jokes and stories. What further bespoke his cool was that he was a pilot for United Airlines. I thought it especially cool that he flew the Green Bay Packers of the 1960s and got to meet them...

Rush H. Limbaugh Jr., a Cape Girardeau attorney and aviation enthusiast, smiled as he read a newspaper account in The Southeast Missourian of voter approval of a $115,000 airport bond on April 22, 1947. With the favorable vote, the city was able to move toward formal acquisition of Harris Field, the World War II training base. (G.D. Fronabarger ~ Southeast Missourian archive)...

The end of the school year is fast approaching, and we can feel it. Underclassmen are stressing over how they’re going to fit all their classes into next year’s schedule, and seniors are constantly muttering the mantra of, “Let’s just get through this. ...

Hard to believe my first contribution to The Best Years was in 1995, a story about my dad making laptop dulcimers. The story about my now-late father, Arthur Bender, was part of a class assignment for an English composition class at SEMO. We were to submit a story for publication, and that was my first time having anything published. It was perhaps a year later before I did another one about the old one-room school that was in Egypt Mills where my late mother, Cecelia Bender, went to school...

This story is part of an ongoing series in which people who live in care centers throughout Southeast Missouri tell the stories of their lives. This is the third installment. There is a painting above Kenneth “Ken” Young’s desk in Perryville’s Independence Care Center. ...

How did the recession in 2008 lead to the events and effects of the 2016 and 2020 elections? That’s the question Melissa Scholes Young set out to explore while writing “The Hive,” a novel about the four Fehler sisters — and their mother — as they work to ensure their family’s pest control business supports their family in the wake of their father’s sudden death. ...

I have a few memories from my life before first grade. Most are indefinite. But there is one indelible remembrance. Not so much the where — it could’ve been kindergarten or just as easily vacation Bible school — but the who. It was a little red-headed boy spotted with freckles. Some adult brought him to the front of the class and asked him to sing. I don’t recall the song. I don’t recall if he had a pianist accompany him. What I remember is his voice...

Stepping into the Catholic Heritage Center and Museum is like wandering into a journey through hundreds of years of Perry County history. In the museum’s two rooms near St. Joseph Catholic Church, visitors can walk through numerous generations of religious and family history from the close-knit Apple Creek area...

Brent Davis walks into Lambert’s Cafe in Sikeston, Mo., and almost every server greets him with hugs and smiles. He used to visit the restaurant often when he was a member of the Highway Patrol decades ago, and evidence of these close relationships lives on the walls, literally: A smiling young Davis in uniform is painted on the mural inside the dining room...

The poet Robert Burns famously stated in his poem “To a Mouse” that “the best-laid schemes o mice an men Gang aft agley.” Translated, that’s, “The best-laid schemes of mice and men often go often askew.” I’ve found that to be true. For example, two weeks ago, after I’d spent several weeks brainstorming column ideas, narrowing them down and fleshing out those that made the cut, my editor-extraordinaire asked if I’d be willing to take my column in a new direction.After we talked further, I said yes. ...

Among the earliest breakfast customers at the annual Lions Club Pancake Day at the Arena Building on March 23, 1960, were, from left, Danna, Danice and Danel, daughters of Dr. and Mrs. Dan B. Cotner of Cape Girardeau. (G.D. Fronabarger ~ Southeast Missourian archive)...

“Skinship” is a collection of short stories by a new writer, Yoon Choi, that depicts the vast array of human experience from the Korean American perspective. Each chapter is a new story from a new point-of-view. In one, a mother leaves behind a son in order to start a new life and marriage in America. ...

When asked what defines bluegrass music, Tammy Harman, event organizer for the Bootheel Bluegrass Festival, which took place Jan. 20-22 in Fruitland, comes back to the same word: family. “It’s all very family-oriented. There are family bands, entire families come to the festivals, kids grow up in the bluegrass community,” she said...

This story is part of an ongoing series called “Chronicles from the Care Center,” in which people who live in care centers throughout Southeast Missouri tell the stories of their lives. This is the second installment. Talk with Bernice Wyatt about her life, and there is one theme that runs through it: her faith in Jesus. She can trace Jesus’ faithfulness to her from being six months old all the way through to her present life at the Lutheran Home at 91 years of age...

Five of the 10 most food insecure counties in the state of Missouri — Ripley, Wayne, Pemiscot, Dunklin and Butler — are in Southeast Missouri. One in five children in the region live in a food-insecure home. And one in eight people who are part of the elderly population here are food insecure...

In Gene and Sherry Crippen’s living room, there are no single-seat chairs. The smallest chair present is a chair and a half, which Gene says he bought for the purpose of being “really close” to Sherry. The childhood sweethearts simply do not want to spend a moment apart after spending decades apart following their break-up during college. In 1990, the Crippens got an unexpected second chance at love, and in October 2021, they celebrated 30 years of marriage...

Not too long after this column publishes, I will be turning 18. In an inconceivably short amount of time, I’ll be able to register to vote, buy a lottery ticket or get a tattoo if I so wanted. Turning 18 is turning out to be quite a surreal experience. ...

Everything is online now. You can order food and medicine, look up recipes and how-to videos, and even video-chat with far-away family members on a computer or your phone. Having the world readily available is a huge help if you know where to go. Many government programs encourage clients to do things online. ...

We have all surely heard the phrase “mountaintop experience,” which usually means an exciting life experience that may or may not have been actually on top of a mountain. Well, I have had four literal mountaintop experiences. No, I have not attempted Mt. Everest or Denali, but these four places met my requirements of a mountain. Some, at least, had the word “mountain” in their names...