Features

The stack of July 22, 2009, issues of The Lancaster News in the newspaper morgue is getting shorter.

Just about once a week now, the voice on the other end of the phone makes the same request.

“I cut out the recipe for that Butter Pecan Pound Cake that has the icing mixed into the batter, but I don’t know what I did with it. Can you tell me how to get another copy of it? That thing is perfect with a cup of coffee.”

One of my neighbors, Ken McManus, has a similar opinion of the cake.

Sausage is almost like barbecue. Each region (and sometimes, country) has its own kind that uses ingredients and seasonings common to that specific area.

It’s sort of like mustard base, vinegar base, ketchup base and white base barbecue sauces. Sausage is what it is, depending on where you live.

In the South, sausage is usually a mixture of ground pork, pork fat, sage and peppers and other spices that’s made into patties and fried.

Pure Prairie League still throws T-shirts in the seats before taking the stage.

The play list for each concert is still taped to the floor beneath each microphone. Some things never change.

Talk about old school, they still tune guitars in between songs, when needed.

When Hazel and Betty Vincent first moved into their home at 112 Survey St. 14 years ago, a manicured lawn was only a pipe dream. 

Their priority was taking care of Betty’s aging mother. 

As years passed, Betty lost her mother.

But Betty found solace for that loss by spending time in her yard. 

The result is a beautifully landscaped lawn filled with spacious beds providing a variety of blooms and foliage. 

The Hoppers, America’s “Favorite Family of Gospel Music,” is returning to Lancaster for a 7 p.m. concert today at Second Baptist Church, 1426 Great Falls Highway.

“This group has been here twice before and is always a fan favorite,” said Dennis Nichols of GlennMark Promotions.

The group, which started performing as a family ensemble in the late 1950s, includes Claude Hopper, his wife, Connie, their sons Dean and Mike and daughter-in-law Kim Greene Hopper.

In the early 1950s, McIlwain Road was a sleepy dirt road community that wasn’t much more than a short cut from Lancaster to Heath Springs.

But about half way down it, something was happening, a group of dedicated church members from the area led by the Rev. J.L. Maloney were hard at work.

When they weren’t working on their area farms or waiting for the mill whistle to blow, they were busy laying bricks to build Oak Ridge ARP Church.

It might have taken a decade to build the mission church, but it was a labor of love.

The TV and radio news reported all day that Hurricane Hugo would hit the South Carolina coast near Charleston, but there was no mention of it coming inland. The order was given for the coastal areas to evacuate.