By Steve Williams
I just came in from outside on Christmas day 2025. It felt more like a day in Sept-ember weather-wise in Inskip-Norwood. The sky above was blue with fluffy white clouds. My outside temperature gauge pointed at the upper 60s at 12:30 p.m.
The only White Christmas we got this year was Bing Crosby dreaming of one.
But I kind of liked the mild conditions we had this year.
I was a normal kid in Clinton growing up. The more inches of snow on the ground the better. I was the oldest of four boys – five counting Tommy, who came after me but died in birth. Theo or “T.R.” is about six years younger than me, John or “Sleepy” 10 years younger and Joe, 59, 14 years younger.
I went to North Clinton Elementary School through the fourth grade before my parents bought a new home in downtown Clinton which pretty much bordered the Clinton Dragons’ football field and the northwest end zone.
The reason I bring up moving to a new home is because of a sweet memory that came to me recently.
When we lived at 108 Park Avenue in North Clinton, an elderly man, Charley Webber, and his wife lived next door to us. Charley was probably in his 70s or 80s then and we (Theo and me) visited with him often. He loved us and we loved him.
The first Christmas we lived in our new home downtown in 1961, Charley walked all the way from his home in North Clinton – about two to three miles – to bring Theo a gift. He was four years old then and I was 10.
The gift was a Santa Claus bank.
I will never forget that.
My parents appreciated Charley doing that too and Dad took him back home that night.
Will college bowl games go away?
With the way college football decides its national champion now – a 12-game playoff – bowl games have no part in it. And there’s already been talk that the bowl games will eventually go away.
I say if the players on the teams that are not in the national playoffs still want to play, let them do it. A lot of these games are very exciting and fun to watch.
Some of these players however – the ones with NFL aspirations – are not going to play for fear of injury and losing money. Well, that makes sense too.
More on the weather temperatures
Just for the fun of it, I googled temperatures in other states and countries recently.
Miami Beach’s 30-day forecast includes sunshine and an average of around 77 degrees day and night through the month of January.
Anchorage, Alaska, on the other hand is in single digits or below zero.
The weather in London, England, was said to be comparable to Oregon or the state of Washington.
Don’t forget those black-eyed peas on Jan. 1
Superstition tells us eating black-eyed peas on the first day of the year will bring you good fortune and wealth. That might be true, but I eat ‘em year-round because I like ‘em and they go good with cornbread.
I remember my granddad Preacher Conner, who lived in South Clinton, used to crumble cornbread in his buttermilk and drink it. I never could acquire a taste for that.
