Whatever happened to the Sunday drive? Do you remember those days? Packing up the family for a leisurely spin around town on a Sunday afternoon? 

My three siblings and I are all four years apart, so it was rare when we did something together — especially in a car. My Sunday drives were usually just my dad and me, and it often involved ice cream. We would drive around in his Oldsmobile with a couple of vanilla cones, and he would point out what’s new and what’s old and what life was like in his youth. I enjoyed that time with my dad, until my teenage years when doing anything with parents was no longer cool.  

I tried to implement the Sunday drive with my wife and kids, but to no avail — not even with ice cream. The only exception was driving to look at Christmas lights with a round of hot chocolate for everyone. So, what changed?

Well, the cost of gasoline in decades prior was miniscule compared to today. Driving around was cheap entertainment then. 

Like many people during the time, my parents and grandparents didn’t drive very often. As such, getting in the car and going for the Sunday drive was a treat rather than the tedious taxi-cab service so many parents feel like they are providing today. 

We also seem to be in a big hurry now, rushing from one event or activity to another. That wasn’t the case just a few decades ago. The pace was much slower on the weekends, even peaceful. Going 5 mph less than the speed limit now often prompts honking horns, dirty looks and offensive sign language. 

A few years ago, I heard a pastor address his thoughts on why fewer people were attending church services. The primary factor, in his opinion, was that youth sports activities are scheduled on Sundays. He may be right. Scheduling anything on Sundays — other than going to church, having your cousins over for dinner, and watching “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” on TV — was considered taboo in years past. Sunday was a time to be spent with faith and family, and that was it. 

So with all this in mind, I challenge you to take a page out of the past and venture out on a peaceful Sunday drive. And don’t forget the ice cream. 

Have a terrific Tuesday, and thanks for reading. 

Shane Goodman
Editor and Publisher
Times Vedette digital editions
shane@gctimesnews.com
641-332-2707

Nothing seems to warm a person up on a cold day like a hot cup of coffee, or at least that’s what my dad said when he filled up his Thermos each morning. But each time I tried a sip of his coffee, it tasted like dirty water.

I never understood the attraction, and whenever a friend or customer wanted to meet for coffee, I would embarrassingly order a hot chocolate — until my friend Joe convinced me to slowly wade into this ocean of java. Yes, Joe is a pusher.

Joe introduced me to cappuccinos, lattes, macchiatos, mochas and more, and I learned these things are sinful. After taking out a small loan and going to the next notch on my belt, I decided maybe these cousins of coffee were not such a good idea for me. So I took a necessary hiatus — until my daughter Samantha familiarized me with dairy creamer. Not the basic stuff, mind you. French vanilla. Italian sweet creme. Peppermint mocha. I was hooked again.

While at an industry conference, my friend Will watched me pour a cement truck load of creamer into my coffee. Will, a definite coffee snob, helped me come to the realization that I didn’t like coffee at all and that what I really liked was coffee creamer. He was right. If you have done any research on this, you know coffee creamer is awful for you, but the addiction is real.

So I tried going cold turkey with creamer, but I was instantly reminded of the dirty-water taste of Dad’s coffee. I tried cutting back on creamer, which isn’t easy to do when it pours out so quickly and easily from that perfectly contoured 32-ounce bottle. Then my wife encouraged me to try milk and a bit of honey in my coffee instead. So I tried milk and more than a bit of honey — and it was delicious. I am working on reducing the honey, but she tells me it is better for me than dairy creamer, so I am going with the lesser of two evils.

Now, nothing seems to warm me up on a cold day like a hot cup of coffee — with milk and honey.

Our open house is Wednesday

I hope you can stop by and join us for our community open house tomorrow (Wednesday, Nov. 13) from 4-6:30 p.m. at our new location in Guthrie Center at 104 Industrial Road. Enjoy some drinks and snacks and tour our updated facility. The event is open to anyone and everyone.

Have a terrific Tuesday, and thanks for reading.

Shane Goodman
Editor and Publisher
Times Vedette digital editions
shane@gctimesnews.com
641-332-2707

I saw a cartoon the other day illustrating a family driving in a car with the mother in the passenger seat looking at her phone and stating to all, “The blender just texted — we forgot to turn off the stove.”

Sound familiar? We may not be there yet, but we are close. 

Over the past few years, I have been following a series of surveys from Deloitte, which provides audit, consulting, financial advisory, risk advisory, tax and legal services, and I continue to be amazed. The 2021 survey from Deloitteindicated that the average U.S. household had 25 connected devices, up from 11 in the prior survey. 

“Impossible,” I said.

Then I started adding them up. My cell phone. Jolene’s cell phone. Two iPads. Two Apple watches. Two laptops. Two Apple TVs. Three Firesticks. A Ring doorbell. A Nest thermostat. A MyQ garage door opener. Five Amazon Echos. Two wireless headphone sets. That brings me to 23, and I have likely missed some. Yikes.

The 2023 survey found consumers are struggling to find the balance between their digital and physical lives. They are continuing to streamline their household devices, and are slowing down with their device purchases. Many have embraced virtual experiences for the long term. At the same time, they’re trying to manage the drawbacks of too much tech.

Here are a few findings from the 2023 Deloitte report:

• Forty-one percent of consumers revealed they dislike managing their devices (updating software, handling security, or fixing problems).
• Twenty-eight percent said they are overwhelmed by the devices and subscriptions they need to manage — an uptick from 24% in 2022 but not quite reaching the 32% in 2021 when households had even more devices.
• Adults aged 18-40 are feeling more overwhelmed (37%) than older generations (23%). Some of this sentiment may stem from 18- to 40-year-olds managing a larger collection of household devices (26 on average) than older generations (18 on average).

Ready or not, the future is here. Meet George Jetson. 

A sincere thank you

I appreciate the efforts so many of you made to attend our open house at our new facility at 104 Industrial Road in Guthrie Center. More than 100 of you braved the rainy weather and joined us for food, drink and fellowship while learning how we are currently using the updated space and what we have in mind for the future. I especially enjoyed hearing from several guests who worked in the building decades ago and offered insight to many of the questions I had about the building’s configurations. Thank you again. 

Have a futuristic Friday, and thanks for reading. 

Shane Goodman
Editor and Publisher
Times Vedette digital editions
shane@gctimesnews.com
641-332-2707

The above were the words of Casey Kasem when he would close out each episode of his “American Top 40” radio show. I agree. Human beings have no business in the sky. That’s probably not what Casey had in mind when he coined the phrase, but that’s my interpretation… and here’s why. 

I have long believed that humans were made to roam the land. If we were intended to be in the sky, we would have wings. We don’t, but that hasn’t stopped generations of humans from trying to get into the air. Flying in an airplane is unnerving to me, but it is now an acceptable means of transportation for me and for most people.

Oh, well. I get it, and I do fly in commercial planes. But skydiving? Bungee jumping? Paragliding? The margin for error in these activities is slim. Casey was right. Reaching for the stars is fine, but keep your feet on the ground, for crying out loud. 

Meanwhile, about 2.8 million skydives are made in the U.S. each year. The United States Parachute Association, which has 40,000 members, recorded 11 fatal skydiving accidents in 2020, a rate of 0.39 fatalities per 100,000 jumps. They contrast that with a 1 in 6,000 chance of dying in a car wreck for those who drive 10,000 miles or more per year. I’m not debating their math, but I still like my odds better in an automobile. 

The thought of landing on the ground in a parachute makes my back ache. My skydiving friends tell me the impact is similar to jumping off a garage, which, to be honest, doesn’t sound appealing either. Don’t get me wrong. I am all for supporting the 73,000 or so chiropractors in the U.S., but, at my age, I prefer to avoid activities that compress my spine.

So, yes, I am choosing to keep my feet on the ground. And those stars? Well, I keep reaching. 

Have a fantastic Friday, and thanks for reading. 

Shane Goodman
Editor and Publisher
Times Vedette digital editions
shane@gctimesnews.com
641-332-2707

When I knock on a door, and the person on the other side answers with, “Who is it?”, my common reply is, “It’s the plumber; I’ve come to fix the sink.” It’s an obscure reference to a short cartoon that played on “The Electric Company”when I was a kid. Some people get it. Most don’t. That doesn’t stop me from continuing to use it. 

I am not really a plumber, but I do try to be one every once in a while. A few decades ago, I learned a valuable lesson with garbage disposal units. I learned another one recently. 

Let’s start with garbage disposal unit lesson No. 1. In the mid-1990s in our first home, our garbage disposal unit quit working. I found the little tool to hand crank it, but it still didn’t work. So I bought a new unit and replaced it. In throwing out the old one, I noticed a reset button on the bottom. Ugh. With the new unit already installed and working, I didn’t even try the old one to see if it would work. I quietly disposed of it. Now I know that garbage disposal units have reset buttons. Lesson No. 1 learned. 

On to garbage disposal unit lesson No. 2. When our dishwasher wasn’t draining recently, I did a YouTube search and found a few tips. One was to take a plunger to the kitchen sink and try to knock the clog loose. Had I watched more closely, I would have learned not to plunge too aggressively. But I didn’t, and the jackhammer plunging I did apparently broke the seals in my garbage disposal unit. No big deal. The unit was old, and I had replaced these before, right?

In the meantime, our dishwasher wasn’t working, so I called a plumber friend of mine for advice. He told me to contact a sewer service, so I did. The guy who cleaned the line told me I had a leaking garbage disposal unit, which I knew by now. So, I installed a new garbage disposal unit myself. With a dishwasher still not draining and a kitchen full of dirty dishes, I did what I should have done from the beginning and called an appliance repairman. A few hundred bucks more spent, and I learned that the garbage disposal unit I installed has a knockout plug to the dishwasher hose that I apparently didn’t knock out. It was a simple fix, but, at this point, I simply wanted to knock myself out. Lesson No. 2 learned. 

So, if you are following along, you now know that garbage disposal units have reset buttons and knockout plugs. Worst of all, my “It’s the plumber; I’ve come to fix the sink” joke seems to — once again — be on me. 

Have a terrific Tuesday, and thanks for reading. 

Shane Goodman
Editor and Publisher
Times Vedette digital editions
shane@gctimesnews.com
641-332-2707

We have seen an increase in the number of subscribers to our text alert option for the Times Vedette recently, and I am glad to see it. For those of you who don’t know what this option is, it is a basic text message sent to your smart phone over the noon hour on Tuesdays and Fridays with a link to the “hot off the press” issue of the Times Vedette. Click the link, and the web browser on your phone opens up with the latest edition. It is a free service, and we don’t text you with other messages or sell your data to any other service. We simply think it is a nice way to receive your Times Vedette. I speak from experience, as this is how I receive mine. 

You may wonder why you would want the Times Vedette link texted to you when you already receive the email. You may not, and that’s just fine. You may be one of our readers who reads the Times Vedette on a computer, checks email regularly and prefers to receive communication that way. If so, there is no need to change, as we will continue to send the Times Vedette email to you that way. Meanwhile, a significant number of people don’t check their email regularly, and some choose not to use email at all. The text alert is a great option for those folks. You may have children or grandchildren who may prefer this method, and we hope you tell them about this. 

If you want to give it a try, you can sign up here. Just enter your phone number and click a couple of boxes. And, if you decide it is not for you, unsubscribing is just as easy. 

Letters to the editor

I have had requests lately to run letters to the editor. This is a common feature for many traditional newspapers, but it is not something we do in our publications, for several reasons. First, our print publications are monthlies, and the subject of the letters, in many cases, would not be timely and would not give ample response time in follow-up editions, if needed. Second, and most importantly, we don’t want the editorial content of our publications to get into the mud of politics and divisive issues. We do certainly cover government meetings and elections, but our main focus is on the positive happenings related to the people, places and events of Guthrie County. With social media sites like Facebook, Next Door and others, there are plenty of places to spew anger and venom. Meanwhile, we have accepted, and we will continue to accept, political and issue advertising, with some exceptions. The ads cannot be libelous or offensive in nature, and they must follow all federal, state and local laws pertaining to political advertising. 

Newspapers of past generations used their influence to attempt to get certain people elected, have certain bond issues passed, and meddle in politics. Most of those newspapers are now gone or remain in a diminished form today. I am not trying to change the world, and I am not arrogant enough to think you should all have the same opinions I have. I simply want to share the news and information that is important to local residents and to hopefully bring a smile to your face. 

Have a fantastic Friday, and thanks for reading. 

Shane Goodman
Editor and Publisher
Times Vedette digital editions
shane@gctimesnews.com
641-332-2707