In 1988 I published in this space “A Hoopie Survey,” an invitation for readers to send me their opinions, stories and humor on that topic. I’m pleased t
Fred Miller
Last week Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine lifted crowd size limitations on outdoor public gatherings, but issued “simplified” guidelines on how Ohioans should continue to protect themselves from the COVID pandemic.
He suggested that people attending weddings, graduations, ballgames and festivals should, to quote the AP news article, “stay separated in groups of 10 or fewer, rather than merging into one huge crowd.” Pressed on how this could be accomplished, DeWine said, “People should just use common sense.”
Well, we here in Gas Valley, W.Va., are chock-full of common sense, and glad to share it with our friends in Ohio. My mother Ol’ Food ladled common sense into me from the time I sat on her knee, repeating the old-time sayings she was brought up with in Lincoln County.
FRED MILLER
Scratch an Adkins from around East Liverpool (and there are quite a few) and you’ll probably find at least a second-hand connection to Chuck Yeager, legendary pilot, World War II ace and first man to fly faster than sound.
Brigadier Gen. Charles E. “Chuck” Yeager, a favorite son of West Virginia and a native of Hamlin, the county seat of Lincoln County, died Dec. 7 at the age of 97.
My mother Lucille was an Adkins from Hamlin. She was born in 1918, so was four and a half years older than Yeager.
Her younger brother Louis Sweetland Adkins, however, the same age as Yeager and was in his graduating class at Hamlin High School. I never met Chuck Yeager, but I think he and my Uncle Lou were a lot alike: direct can-do men, born storytellers, with a sardonic sense of humor and always active, never still. Lou’s siblings called him Sweetland, and I used that name for him when I wrote about him in this column back in the ’90s. Retired, long divorced and restless, Uncl