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| Hello everybody. Come on in. No, I haven't been called four eyes ... today. |
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| I'm Dwain Lair, welcome to the Ozarks Expo. Let me hand you a Harrison Daily Times gift bag. It has a starter kit of a refrigerator magnet with a liquid and dry measurement conversion table. Megan says it's handy for cooking, and Dwain uses it for mixing pesticides. We all have to be good stewards of the Earth, and not all of us are good at math. So this little conversion chart is simply wonderful. |
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| The Harrison Daily Times takes over Pioneer Pavilion (gymnasium) and the parking lots on North Arkansas College's South Campus for its annual Ozarks Expo. It has all sorts of vendors, from home security to health management home repairs to food vendors to artisans, etc., etc., etc. There was something for everyone, and about everyone showed up.. |
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| Here's a lifelong photographer, Lee H. Dunlap. We swear, he was born with a camera around his neck. That fancy bicycle in the Harrison Daily Times booth was one of the grand prizes. |
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| Dwain is welcoming everybody's good friend, Katherine Nance. He is holding a map of the more than 50 vendors. The rules of the game are: Get each vendor to initial their booth area, then each individual can submit their completely filled up map to the Harrison Daily Times booth and enter the grand prizes drawing. |
Let's take a few minutes to walk around and see who all is here.
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| Here is long-time North Arkansas Regional Medical Center volunteer (Pink Lady) Pat Frank. Pat used to work with Dwain's late wife, Fran. She also has a smile, and said a hospital volunteer red vest has been set aside for Dwain. |
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| Dwain's high school classmate, Barbara Ransom Villines, and her husband, Frank, are new parents. Congratulations you two! Oh, this is better than your own kid, this is a beautiful grandchild who can do no wrong. They had checked out their own Villines Security booth with high-end and fancy designer gun safes. Neat, huh? Frank and Barbara were manning the grandchild, not their booth. We all have priorities. |
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| Here's Megan's classmate and former Girl Scout Troop 114 member Arleta Marshall Kersh. She disappeared in the crowd until the announcer called out her name as a door prize winner. We think she also won last year. Arleta's always a winner. She won also won plenty of ribbons at the fair last year. |
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| Meet Mrs. Ed (Betty) Knight. She's watching the Concerned Citizens of Boone County booth and reading a copy of the Weekend/Sunday Harrison Daily Times with stories and pictures (unknown and not approved by Dwain) on his retirement this coming Friday. Ed and Betty are always friendly, sincere, the kind of friends you can call in the middle of the night from Dallas, Texas, and they would come rescue you. |
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| The man behind this booth is actually Goliath, a giant of a man. If he says to sign this newspaper, Dwain will oblige or get his arm twisted off. Actually, this is Wendell Stephens, a likable guy who gave Dwain many prizes, and gave Dwain's late friend Tom Duck a lot of laughs and a grandchild. We're not sure which was more important. Yeah, sure. |
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| Here is another of Tom Duck's friends, Hilton West. We think the late Tom Duck stopped by Christeson Funeral Home while making his DAILY rounds and harassed his poor "little buddy" Hilton to no ends. What a colorful gift basket in the Roller-Christeson Funeral Home booth. We wonder who won this door prize? |
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| Patty McFarland Methvin was joined by her staff in the Harrison Regional Chamber of Commerce booth. Friendly Patty sold a membership and scheduled a ribbon cutting. We were not surprised. |
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| Here's Jodi Carney of Mountain Home. She's running for circuit judge in the 14th Judicial District. She bought booth space and met literally hundreds and hundreds of voters with a smile on her face ... all day. |
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| Here's Deanna Suzie Evans, she's also running for the circuit judge seat in the 14th Judicial District. This smiling face was as busy shaking hands and giving hugs as a one-armed paper hanger. |
Jodi and Suzie both paid for booth space in the Ozarks Expo. Some other candidates, not running for circuit judge, didn't buy booth space but tried to wander around in campaign gear and hand out their propaganda.
If they run their private and political lives in this fashion, that's probably a good indicator of their public lives and management skills.
Sponsors of events shouldn't have to watch for gate crashers, when other people have been so responsible and paid their dues.
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| Dwain is back at an entrance handing out gift bags and game cards, as Megan stuffs more items in gift bags. We ended up doing a 4-hour stint, but we were repaid with a lunch, one of the best brown-bag lunches we've had. It even had a chocolate chip cookie. Megan said it was delicious ... still kind of warm. |
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| Marsha! Marsha! Marsha! You smell so good. What fragrance are you wearing? Marsha Carter has always got a hug and a smile. This is a reward. |
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| And next we have half of Donna Braymer (on the left) and the smiling face of Greg Brady. Honest. This is Barry Williams who played Greg Brady on the popular sitcom The Brady Bunch. This was quite a surprise when he walked through the door where we (Dwain and Megan) and Lynn Blevins were stationed. Lynn said, "Did you see the way that guy looked at me? He was Greg Brady. I think he was waiting for me to recognize him ..." What? No way! We didn't believe her. |
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| Here's Donna, the great organizer of any event, interviewing newspaper publisher Ronnie Bell. Dwain, disguised as a "one-eyed purple people eater," is still greeting a steady stream of people coming through the door. And Ronnie, he's trying to figure out how to clone Donna. |
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| And here's Dwain, as we're about ready to duck out of the Expo. He's turning the bags and game cards over to sports writer Craig Enlow. |
Off we head to get Megan's glasses repaired.
Oh, the screw came out?
No wonder the right lens keeps popping out of the frame.
Dwain and Megan
Oh, that heading? Sadly, a lot of men were disappointed in the lack (none) of pole dancers.
The fonts and way the newspaper originally had OZARKSEXPO as one word seemed to make people break the word into two words: Ozark and Sexpo.
That would have fun. Hahaha.
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