Special to the Times Vedette

Mark your calendars for a night of celebration at the Adair County Cattlemen’s 2025 Annual Banquet on Jan. 18 from 8-11 p.m. at the Adair County Fairgrounds. The evening will feature a prime rib dinner, an annual meeting, auctions and live entertainment by Red Dirt Renegade.

Special to the Times Vedette

Join the ACGC FFA chapter for an evening of food, fun and recognition on Jan. 12 at 5:30 p.m. in the high school auditorium in Guthrie Center. This event will feature a variety of activities including a Greenhand jacket ceremony for new members, presentations of awards, and recognition of the chapter’s achievements. Enjoy potato soup and chili, celebrate the accomplishments of the ACGC FFA members, and show your support for the future of agriculture.

 

Locals share beloved stories about their first vehicles

 

By Rich Wicks | Guthrie Center Times

Whether it was a brand new roadster or an old jalopy that was barely road-worthy, most of us can recall our first car. And these first cars often have the best stories. Here are a few from the area.

 

King found a car she can’t part with

The story of Rita King’s first car is really the story of her second car. She didn’t keep her first car very long, and the “old Ford” didn’t find a special place in her heart during its brief tenure.

But her second car is another story.

“I had just turned 17 on Sept. 24, and on Sept. 29 I was driving by Erickson’s Garage, which is a car dealer in Denison. I saw this car there, and I called my mom, and she said, ‘Walk across the street to the bank, borrow some money, and I’ll co-sign.’ The bank lent me the money, and I walked across the street to Erickson’s. Then, as I was paying for it, some other people came in to buy it. So, I had just beaten them to it.”

The car was a 1969 Camaro Rally Sport.

“I sold my old Ford to a friend, and I’ve kept this car ever since,” King said. “I bought it for $1,100, and it has 49,000 actual miles.”

King explained the car wasn’t a showpiece when she bought it, but she was able to see the beauty underneath.

“When I bought it, it was kind of an olive goldish green color, and it had a brown vinyl top and a green interior. It was not pretty.”

So King undertook the long process of getting the car into the condition she wanted.

“I parked it for several years in my dad’s garage. Later on, after the kids were grown, I had more time and money to work on the car. We took out the seats and brought them to Fort Dodge and had them reupholstered up there,” King said. “We hired someone to do the rest of the bodywork.”

She also upgraded the engine.

“John Hoaff of Stuart did all of my motor work. It originally came with a 327, and I didn’t like that motor, so I had it replaced,” King said.

Now that the Camaro is all fixed up, King has chosen to show it off more often.

“I just started putting it in shows last year,” she said, adding that it has already won several awards at local shows. 

King explained that, over the years, she has moved many times but always kept the Camaro. Also, although she has heard numerous offers from people wishing to buy the car, she has no plans to sell it and said that seems to run in her family.

“I have a sister who has a 1969 Chevelle Convertible. I have a brother who has a 1930 Rat Rod. I have another brother who has a 1966 Chevy SS 2,” King said. “So, we are full of old cars in our family, and we always hold on to them.”

King has only one minor change planned for her car.

“I just need to have new springs put in back, because it sits too low and puts a little twist on the driveshaft. But that’s the only thing I’m going to do to it,” King said. “I just love driving it. It brings back memories from years ago.”

 

Coffman blows off steam in his 1955 Chevy

Jack Coffman not only remembers his first car but still has it, along with some great stories. It’s a 1955 Chevrolet that he has owned for more than 50 years. 

“I bought it from my brother in 1969. He’d bought it as his first car in 1966, and he paid $150 from my uncle,” Coffman said. “Then in three years, when I turned 16, he sold it to me for $75. And we kept that until about the time we got married, in 1973.”

Coffman told of an explosive incident back in the day.

“Really, the fun story about that car is I took a bunch of kids to the drive-in theater over in Panora around the Fourth of July. We snuck three of them in the trunk, and we had fireworks with us,” Coffman said. “Well, after the movie was over, we left and started lighting the fireworks and throwing them out of the car. Well, they lit a cherry bomb, and it hit the upright on the window and bounced back into the car and went off. It blew a hole in the seat.”

Naturally, this required a pit stop.

“We pulled over to the side of the road, and smoke was just pouring out. We were lucky we didn’t get killed,” Coffmann said. “I left that hole in the seat as a reminder. And, actually, the kid that was on top of the cherry bomb, it didn’t blow a hole in his pants, but it blew a hole in his underwear.”

Sometimes, what goes around comes around. 

“When I had the car in the All-School Reunion this year, the radiator blew, so smoke and steam were everywhere,” Coffman said. “And then somebody in our group said, ‘I remember the last time I saw this car with smoke pouring out of it.’ ”

 

Thomas recalls one of many cars

Garold Thomas has always liked cars, and it shows. Over the years, he’s owned many, but one of his first cars stands out. 

“I have several Camaros, but there is a 1967 Camaro, and I can’t recall exactly how long I’ve had it. It’s not a fancy one, but this is one of my first cars that has special meaning to me,” Thomas said. “I got it from a friend of mine, and the reason it’s special to me is because he passed away from cancer at an early age. He had sold the car to a guy that was going to make a stock car out of it, but he never paid my friend, so my friend said, ‘I’ll sell it to you. You’ll just have to round up all of the parts.’ ”

To say the car was a “fixer upper” would be putting it mildly. 

“When I bought the car, it was basically four wheels and tires and two doors and a steering wheel,” Thomas said. “The motor was gone, the transmission was gone, the whole front clip was gone, the interior was gone. It took several years to get it done, but I got it back to its original form. It’s just a nice little car. I don’t even drive it much, but I do get it out once in a while. It’s special to me because my friend passed away about four years after I got that car.”

Thomas explained that he restored the car his way.

“I got the car put together the way I wanted. I got stripes on there, even though they’re not ‘factory stripes,’ but they’re the way I wanted them,” he said. “I used to do a lot of the work myself. I can install an engine or change a transmission. At one time, I used to do the body work and painting, but I haven’t done that in several years. I learned by working at a body shop part-time when I was growing up in high school and college.”

Camaros are well-known as sporty muscle cars, so it is natural to enjoy “putting the pedal to the metal.”

“If anybody has a sports car like that and tells you they don’t know how fast it goes, they’re probably not being honest,” Thomas said.

He recalled being a lead-footed driver in his younger days.

“When I was in high school and my first couple years of college, I was a street racer,” Thomas said. “In my hometown, we had a spot where we would go out and block off the highway and have drag races. The farmers out along there would bring out their easy chairs and sit down to watch.”

Nowadays, Thomas doesn’t feel the need for speed like he did in his youth, but he enjoys driving his Camaro occasionally, and sometimes enters cars in a show.

“I used to put my cars in shows more often, but, in the last few years, I don’t do that as much,” he said.. 

Thomas admits, with a smile, that his urge to collect and restore cars may sometimes go beyond a simple hobby.

“It becomes a sickness. I’ll see a car sitting there in bad shape, but I visualize it as it will look when it’s done, and that’s a bad trap to fall into, because I forget how much work it will take to get it there,” Thomas said. “It adds up in a hurry. I went through my car titles the other day and counted them up. I have 84 of them, in all kinds of conditions.”

 

 

 

Company will officially take over accounts of property and casualty insurance customers from Hemphill & Associates on Jan. 1 due to retirement of Doug Hemphill. 

 

By Rich Wicks | Panora Times

Bryton Insurance in Panora has a well-known storefront in Panora. The office is run by owner Chris Arganbright and licensed agent Cindy Carstens.

“We are an independent property and casualty insurance agency. That means we represent several companies, and we do personalized and commercial lines of business. We don’t do any life or health,” Arganbright said. 

She went on to explain how the local agency came to be.

“This agency was the Annear Agency, when the Bryton Company purchased it. I worked for a large agency in Des Moines, and my boss was Dave Creighton, Sr. He and Bryan Hughes bought this agency,” Arganbright said. “The Bryton name comes from ‘Bry’ from Brian, and ‘ton’ from Creighton. They had the idea of bringing bigger-city services to small towns. So they bought this agency and several others in other towns.”

Arganbright oversaw agencies in Panora and other towns by commuting for a while, but she soon found that wasn’t effective.

“What we learned was, having somebody come from Des Moines, in a suit, a couple of times per month to work with customers for those specialized services didn’t work because small-town people want to do business with small-town people,” Arganbright said. “So, Dave Creighton, Sr., and I decided this agency had the most potential, so we bought it together. That’s how I got to Panora. And then, eventually, I became the sole owner.”

The biggest change on the horizon for Bryton Insurance will go into effect Jan. 1, 2025. On that date, Bryton Insurance will officially take over the accounts of property and casualty insurance customers from Hemphill & Associates. This is due to the retirement of Doug Hemphill. 

A Dec. 1 letter informed Hemphill customers of the upcoming change. It also described what is hoped will be a seamless changeover, since Bryton Insurance contracts with the same insurance companies that Hemphill used.

“We insure the City of Panora and the Lake Panorama Association and the school district. And the Hemphill agency insures the City of Yale, so we’ll be doing that, as well,” Arganbright said.

Arganbright shared that property insurance has changed significantly in recent years due to the frequency of derechos and other wind events that have resulted in Iowa being classified risk-wise in the same category as Florida and other states that experience hurricanes. She explained that, until Iowa sees a return to traditional weather patterns, premiums and deductibles will continue to reflect the higher risk that has become Iowa’s “new normal.” But Arganbright and Carstens are ready and willing to help customers navigate this new territory to best meet individual needs.

Arganbright shared a favorite story about Carstens going above and beyond to help a customer.

“We had a customer driving on I-35/80 in Des Moines. A pickup truck in front of them had a ladder fly off, and the pickup kept going,” Arganbright said. “Because our customer had to veer, it was starting to look like our customer was going to take the blame… Cindy figured out there were DOT cameras, and we figured out how to access those and got the license plate of the pickup truck. That helped determine that the accident wasn’t our customer’s fault.”

Arganbright said they pride themselves on customer service. 

“We don’t go beating the bushes, and we don’t want people to feel pressured,” she said. 

By Rich Wicks | Times Vedette

On Christmas Eve, Santa was escorted throughout Guthrie Center by members of the Guthrie Center Fire Department. Kids of all ages came out for a peek at Santa before he made his worldwide trek to deliver presents.

By Rich Wicks | Times Vedette

During the Dec. 23 regular meeting of the Guthrie County Board of Supervisors, Health Service Director Jotham Arber updated the supervisors on plans to add a mental health therapist in an office in Stuart.

“We sent out those mental health budgets to the Board of Health, and they approved them. They wanted a few changes,” Arber said.

He explained that the plan is to hire a therapist to see patients in an office in Stuart but added that the owner/landlord is seeking a three-year lease rather than yearly with auto-renewal.

There was discussion that the proposed new clinic would not get paid if/when Medicaid or Medicare patients are “no shows” for appointments.

“I don’t think we want to over-extend ourselves,” Supervisor Mike Dickson said.

Arber said he will prepare budgets to bring to the supervisors. No formal action was taken at this time.

“I want to make sure that it’s sustainable, not just for right now or the next five years, but for 10, 15, 20 years,” Arber said.

The consent agenda was approved by a 3-2 vote, with Brian Johnson and Dickson voting against. The claims and payroll information had not been sent to the supervisors on Friday, Dec. 20, so there had been little time to review the information.

No members of the public spoke during the Public Comments portion of the meeting.

The next regular meeting of the supervisors will be Tuesday, Dec. 31 at 9 a.m. The public is welcome to attend in person or via remote technology. To join remotely, call 323-792-6123, then use meeting code 547029216#.