Appreciate Help
Dear Editor,

A few days ago I had a serious water problem. I contacted the Harrodsburg City Water Department and they responded very quickly. The water had to be cut off in my home and the job got to be pretty big consisting of moving my water meter and even tearing up some of the street. But the men worked very hard getting the problem corrected.

Harrodsburg is very fortunate to have men working for us who care about our welfare. I appreciate the work of Troy Gowins and all the men who worked with him, the ladies in the office who were very helpful, the Harrodsburg Road Department who came this morning and blacktopped the street, and the Edwards Plumbing employee for what they did.
Now everything is as good as new.

Arlene Medley
Harrodsburg

Set Limit To Letters
Dear Editor,

I was born and raised in Mercer County, but now live in Henry County.
However I continue to receive The Harrodsburg Herald weekly. My letter was to take the form of a suggestion, that being to set a reasonable limit to letters to the editor per author, such as one per month. When I decided to write to you I looked at the guidelines for submitting and found my suggestion should be moot, as your guidelines state that "only two letters on the same issue from the same author will be used, except at the discretion of the editor."

There is a letter writer who is published weekly and the issue is always the same -- anti-Bush and/or anti-Republican. I suppose The Herald is either so short on letters submitted to the editor that the editor's discretion is to fill the section allocated no matter if it is a repetitive issue, or the editor's discretion falls in line with that of the subject writer.

Leon Leonard
Eminence

Memorial Day this year was bittersweet for me. I went to Halls Gap Baptist Church Cemetery Friday evening with my sister, mother and niece and we put new flowers on my dad's grave, and drank in the peace that seems to permeate that cemetery.

I think that feeling of peace is due to all the memories that area has for us. Within sight of dad's grave is the little tiny house where he and mom lived when they married and the house where my grandparents, Tom and Myrtle Jenkins, lived during my childhood. A vacant lot at the back of the cemetery marks the spot where my uncle's house stood. I remember his boxer dog, Pooch.

The church, although a new one has replaced the old one, was our family church for years and I can still taste the Kool-aid and cookies we had at Vacation Bible School and remember a trivet I made out of purple material and soft drink bottle lids -- it was in the shape of a cluster of grapes. I don't think I did the best job gathering the thread to pull the material around the bottle caps, but I was proud of that trivet.

There were special large pictures of Jesus we would have in Sunbeams class when we were little ones, and the "grown up" feeling we had when we were old enough to help take care of babies and toddlers in the nursery.

I was baptized in that church, and at the time, when I was about 13, I thought about becoming a missionary. I know God is probably disappointed I didn't pursue that goal, and I wonder what my life might have been like if I had.

I remember the many times we would visit my grandparents or uncle and aunt and then walk back through the cemetery and down a wooded hill behind the church to our own house at the foot of old Halls Gap Hill. We never feared the cemetery at night -- it was part of our lives.

My parents operated the Cold Springs Restaurant and later a souvenir shop at the foot of old Halls Gap hill.

When we drove to the cemetery late last Friday afternoon, we drove by our old house and talked about the spring that sent water flowing down a steep hillside into a trough -- our place was known as "the old watering trough place" and there has been talk in recent years of someone uncovering the trough that is supposedly underground now, and putting a historic marker there. I wish they would.

Then Monday, I wanted to go back to the cemetery and see the new flowers on other relatives' graves. (I prefer not being there when so many others are visiting -- I like solitude when I visit the cemetery so I can meditate and reminisce at my leisure).

My son and mom went with me Monday and we had lunch in Stanford before we made our way back to Halls Gap.

While at the restaurant, we heard the news -- our former home had burned the night before. While the house has deteriorated over the years even though some owners made an effort to remodel it, I felt a void to know it's now gone forever.

We had often said in recent months that the hillside behind it seemed to be eroding and would probably slide and destroy the house some day, but I never imagined it being destroyed by fire.

We again drove the old road to the cemetery Monday and the fire was still smoldering gently in places among the rubble. The fire destroyed the first house I ever lived in, but it can't destroy my memories -- nothing can do that.

I'm glad my dad didn't have to see that house burn. I envision him up in heaven floating on a cloud telling everybody all the old tales he used to tell me about "the old watering trough place."

One day my body will lie close to his in that cemetery, and I'll say, "scoot over dad and make room for me on that cloud, and tell me those stories again."