Case in Point

From Wilton-Durant news to Wilton-Durant driveways

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They say I was the first, but will I be the last?

A couple months ago, we were happy to work with the Wilton Athletic Boosters in order to both boost membership and help take orders for those in and around town who wanted to get a blue and gold “W” painted on their driveway.

Having never had that done before, I clipped my form out of the Advocate News and reserved my “W.” Becky Hansen and Terri Becker showed up and painted it exactly where I wanted it.

Not too long after, I became aware of Durant doing the same thing. While I’m not quite sure if it was an athletic booster thing or Parent Teacher Organization thing, the premise was the same — get a Wildcat painted on your driveway.

The promotion went well in both communities, so I’ve been told. When presented with the option of having a Durant logo painted on my driveway (in Wilton), I thought, “From Wilton-Durant Advocate News to Wilton-Durant driveways.”

Within a matter of weeks, I went from having a bare driveway to having a blue and gold “W” and blue and gold Durant Wildcat and text painted within one of the cement squares (see photo).

I’m a Wilton graduate. I’m a Beaver and I love it! Yet from my days on the Wahkonsa golf course with longtime Durant athletic director and coach Gary DeLong, to my nearly 20 years covering the Wildcats, I’ve been as close to the program as an “outsider” can get.

It’s a tough code to crack. Both schools ooze blue and gold — thankfully the colors are the same! And both are hard clubs to get into. Yet I’ve walked the tightrope for decades now, like a circus act repeated night after night, week after week.

So I figured why not? Of course, when Ben Huston was painting the Wildcat on my driveway he told me I was the first one in Wilton. And of course he said that when others knew in Durant that a Wildcat was going to be painted in Wilton, the questions of “who” and “why” were being asked.

The who is me. The why is for the togetherness and camaraderie that my career is based upon while spending countless hours putting together this weekly product alongside my great team here at the AN.

Will I be the only one? Probably, I’m not naive.

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Election results coming next week—The weekly newspaper issue during election week is always a tough one. We go to press Tuesday evening right in the middle of Election Day. Therefore, it’s impossible to have results for you when you get your copy from the newsstand or your mailbox.

Rest assured you’ll see them in print next week. In most election years, I’d say you’ll know long before that and it will be old news. However, this year may be different. Perhaps not so much with local and statewide races. Yet with so much early voting, some states may take awhile to call with regard to the presidential race, and even some Congressional races.

I’ll be watching with the rest of you, trying to keep up. I’ll at least be thankful to not get dozens of phone calls and text messages every day. Hopefully my email inbox will go down by about 100 messages or so each day as well.

And how about the extra recycling bins being installed at local post offices? Has there been a year with more political mailers?

Lastly, I want to thank local Muscatine County Republican Chair Fred Grunder and Muscatine County Democratic Chair Kelcey Brackett for sending a joint letter to the editor last week with regard to stealing political signs.

It happened in Wilton and Durant — a lot. It happened with both Trump and Biden signs. We’ve heard names of people — often young adults — doing the stealing. We’ve even heard about videos out there of people burning signs after stealing them.

I’m not as dialed into social media as one may think, so I don’t see these things. Nevertheless I remain disappointed.

Regardless of the outcome of this election, we need to come together and coexist in this nation, from the smallest of towns to the biggest of cities. We can do better. We must do better. We can set a better example.

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