The Notebook
Local cowboy poets - from Delta and Gunnison Counties — did their thing Saturday night in a unique presentation at a celebration banquet for the $1 million raised locally for the San Juan Cancer Center by the San Juan Healthcare Foundation. It was held at the Montrose Elks Club.
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Wally Belden, SJHF president, noted how $1,050,000 has been raised, an amazing figure for a community this size. Francie Smiles was again hugged and thanked for her efforts, as the fundraiser-in-charge.
Tip of the Stetson!, to the poets — Shorty George, Brent Winston, Charlie Ware, Slim Farnsworth — for their illustrative story-telling abilities.
Ten more weeks, I’m told, left in the City Market/South renovations. So says store manager Mike Keenan.
Much is going on inside. Soon, there will be a Starbucks, a fresh sushi bar, full-service meat and fish counters, expanded floral and bakery departments and new fixtures throughout - the whole Magilla.
The Montrose retail market began its expansion south with the opening of the City Market store in 1996. There was a herd of cows across the street back then.
Now and then, while in City Market, I’ll chat it up with Kenny Jewell. Kenny’s a longtime City Market employee, and always has a smile and a friendly word. He is a former president of the Montrose Lions Club.
Kenny and I share an affinity for a particular Shreveport, La., eatery, Herby-K. Kenny’s from Shreveport.
Herby-K can best be described as a “joint,” but with some of the best food ever. It’s a small place - four booths, nine stools - in a tough part of east Shreveport. But it has a longtime, and devoted clientele. You’ll find construction workers, sitting alongside judges and folks pulling up in a fancy Lexus.
A couple of high school pals of mine and I played some golf recently in Marshall and afterwards tried to figure out where to go to dinner. Herby-K was the unanimous choice. Little had changed since I had last eaten there, some 35 years ago. The same pictures were on the wall, in the same places; neon beer signs adorned the walls, even some of the same graffiti in the bathroom. There’s a menu, but you go there for the “shrimp busters” - four jumbo shrimp, flattened and lightly deep fried, fresh-baked sour dough bread, fresh, hand-cut French fries, homemade cole slaw. Good stuff, this. Usually served with large, frosty mugs of cold beer.
The Bussey family has owned the place since 1936. A lot of “first beers” were sampled there. “Mizz Bussey” sat by the register and if you had one too many, or got out of line, you were 86ed and had to apologize to get back in. She didn’t take “no mess.” Once, a pal of mine had his glasses slide off his nose and into the mug of beer, which caught the attention of Mizz Bussey. That’s enough beer, son, she told him. He agreed.
Her son, “Little Herby” was a police officer, and so if you looked on the older side of 16, you’d likely get served. It was a big deal to take a date there, then go to a movie, or the wilder side of the Red River, Bossier City. “Little Herby” married a beautiful blonde named Janet, who is still there occupying Mizz Bussey’s old seat, after Mizz Bussey passed away. Janet later divorced her husband. (As you can tell, we caught up on a lot of old gossip.) A few years ago, a longtime employee, a cook and waiter named Jimmy was shot dead in an armed robbery. It’s unsolved. The news of Jimmy’s death was front page news in the Shreveport Times; his obituary ran among the news stories. That’s how well-known Herby-K is.
It’s like the old adage, about serving good food consistently, and taking care of the customer.
My pals and I - well, it was the first time we had left Herby-K stone cold sober - decided we should commemorate the evening with T-shirts, so I got Kenny one as well.
Quotable
“The miracle is this - the more we share, the more we have.”
—Leonard Nimoy, actor
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