A Visit to John Trainer’s Casa
Helen and I were able to make the road trip to John Trainer’s this afternoon – east of Osceola. [@ 80 miles from north Springfield] Helen was driving so we made the trip 
[one way] in 1 hour and 10 minutes. (It normally takes 1 hour and 20-30 minutes.)
As you can see, John and Fran have build a marvelous house with flower gardens, water garden; stone pillar fence, underneath lots of trees. We also drooled at John’s shop! There are 3 lathes in there and lots of other power tools. You can’t see it, but there’s also a fishing boat in there. Now, there’s a thought … ‘Put a lathe on the boat, and ‘turn’ when the fish’n gets slow’. [Am sure all of you have heard of ‘Fish and Chips’]
John put us in the 4 wheeler for a trip around his 170 plus acres. We came across an armadillo and John tried to run down … but it put on the jets and got away. {We didn’t know an armadillo could move that fast.} He [John, not the armadillo] showed us an old homestead cemetery called Payne Cemetery with approximately 15 headstones. John, however, thinks some of the headstones were made from wood and have long decayed. [Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.]
The ‘flooring’ of the 4 wheeler must have gotten to it because it started coughing, sputtering, grunting, bucking and burning rubber. John put the thing in high gear and headed up the hill for home.
John should have been a race car driver the way he was dodging trees, limbs, rocks … etc. … at ‘full speed ahead’. We were thankful he knew where the path was supposed to be. The passengers were ‘holding-on’ for dear life! But finally the 4 wheeler ‘crapped-out’. [SORRY!] Fortunately we were in sight of the house and ‘walked in’. YEPPER … John was ‘quite the driver’ and we were ‘thankful’ he got us as close to the house as he did! [Haven’t located any ticks – YET!]
Written by: David Van Giesen