Chester Chatter: Seizing the day with Abe Lincoln

By Ruthie Douglas
©2020 Telegraph Publishing LLC

History was my favorite subject in high school. In fact, I excelled so much that my teacher assigned me to do a profile on Abraham Lincoln. The assignment would take two weeks, so I set up my study in the library to research and write the profile.

I loved this assignment. I had dyslexia and my mother didn’t speak English until she was 8 years old. And my trouble with the English language shows to this day.

So the day came for me to do the presentation to my class. I opened my talk with an early view of a young Lincoln in Kentucky, living in a log cabin and going to school in a one-room school house. I told of the incident where young Abe was seized by the collar and shaken up by a teacher for some misbehavior.

Suddenly my classroom was aroar with laughter. I was surprised. But then I realized I had pronounced “seized” as “sized.” I marched to my seat, sat down and threw the report to the floor.

That was it. My teacher could not get me to continue and I lost my mark of A+.

News and notes from here and there

Did you remember your mother on her day? She would have loved to have heard from you!

It will be hard to say goodbye to store keeper Lonnie Lisai of Lisai’s Chester Market. For the past years, Lonnie has kept us, his customers and his friends, happy, stocking the foods and other supplies that we wanted. Lonnie was generous with helping with various fund-raisers throughout the community. He also hired and mentored lots of teens who he took under his wing.  I will greatly miss laughing over a joke with Lonnie. Lonnie, the townspeople say, “Goodbye and please enjoy your retirement.”

Did you see the Super Moon recently? It gives me hope.