Scratchy Throat

Today, I talked too much. Am I complaining? Not on your life! In order to talk too much, it's necessary to have an audience, and Afton Station certainly provided that today. Thank god for my trusted sidekicks, Ron M. and Marly, because the visitors just kept arriving all day and the guys were an enormous help. But now I'm tired and losing my voice. However, if every day at Afton Station could be like today, I'd gladly suffer long term laryngitis.

Here goes. . . the guest list of 60 visitors read as follows:

Prim AR, Cary NC, LaMar MO, Nevada MO, Fredrikstad Norway, Langley OK, Joplin MO, Muskogee OK, Osnabruk Germany, Tulsa OK, Miami OK, Scappoose OR, Owasso OK, Naperville IL, Eureka Springs AR, and Stillwater OK.

On top of all those fine folks, we also had a group of 20 driving an attractive lineup of Mustangs, cruisers from the SW Missouri "Stang Gang". They came from various towns in Missouri but I didn't take note of all of them. When they left Afton Station, they were heading to Clanton's in Vinita for lunch.

The Mustang folks were posing for a group photo, and I couldn't resist taking this group photo from another perspective!

Furthermore, a group of 6 folks from TX, IL, GA, and MO came together in Afton for a family reunion and were all from the Dawson clan who owned the big hotel in town way back when. All had either grown up in Afton or had vacationed here in the summer, and none had been back to Afton for many years, so some were in shock about its deterioration. Here is the hotel in its heyday. The building no longer exists.
Here are a couple of members of the Dawson family looking at photos of old Afton on, of all places, our bathroom walls.

The corn in "my" field is getting tall. It'll be knee high LONG before the 4th of July!

I expect tomorrow to be another full day, so I'm going to gargle some salt water and head for an early bedtime.