Webb City Sentinel market column - 10-2-18

Just one more Tuesday before we wrap up the weekday markets for the year. We’ll be open from 4 to 6 pm. this Tuesday. Volunteers from Central United Methodist Church will serve up ham ‘n’ beans with cornbread, cake and a drink for $5. Ham ‘n’ bean refills for $3. All proceeds support the market’s WIC program (which has been temporarily suspended while we seek more funding). Scott Eastman will perform on the market stage. Even though it’s our last weekday market of the year, you’ll still find honey, baked goods, beautiful mums, handcrafted soaps and loads of fresh local produce. Extension will do a market fresh demo with samples. Put it on your calendar. We would like to end the weekday markets with a full house!

We’re open on Saturdays throughout the year. This Saturday, the streetcar gives free rides from 9 to noon. Enjoy a ride around the park, see all the improvements that have been made, enjoy sitting in the midst of Webb City history. No. 60 is over a hundred years old and going stronger than ever.

We have some fun music this week!  The TriStatesmen Chorus and the FOG Quartet play from 9 to 10 Saturday.  The Granny Chicks take the market stage from 10 to noon. 

Cooking for a Cause is once again staffed by volunteers from the Methodist church and will benefit the WIC program. Biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs, sausages, hashbrown casserole and juice or coffee is $6 and served till 11. 

This Saturday is the last Cooking for a Cause of the year, but don’t despair. Breakfast will continue and in much the same form but it will not be a benefit until we reopen for the full season in April.  Until then we are delighted to announce that Chef JT Amos (of pasta fame) is expanding his small business which was started at the market with his artisan pasta. He will serve a very similar breakfast menu – even the hashbrown casserole. His exact words - “I don’t mess with success” so he will use Linda Stewart’s recipe for the casserole. He also plans to add a second meal choice, possibly French toast. He is an accomplished chef and we can expect a delicious breakfast on Saturdays as we enter the winter season.

Another fun activity for the opening day of Winter Market (October 13) is our annual Fall Foos Fotos. Bob Foos will take portraits from 9:30 to 11:30. Organize your family, friends and pets or just sit for your own portrait among the market’s mums and pumpkins overlooking the park commons just west of the market (south of the kitchen). Two packages are available for $15 each (8 wallets with two 4x5s or 8 wallets with one 5x7). Add an 8x10 to either package for a total cost of $20. You can also order extra wallets, 4x5s and 5x7s in case you want to share the photos with family and friends.

And while you’ve got your calendar out, please note that Clickety Clack – We’re Reading Down the Track has been rescheduled this month (we didn’t want to compete with the Maple Leaf Parade). It will be Saturday, October 27th, from 9 to noon. Free reservations are available on Eventbrite.com. We usually have extra seats, especially on the early runs, but having reservations will keep you from waiting. This month, the book we’re reading is Steam Train, Dream Train. A fun story about a train full of animals, we’d sure love to have some of those animals to show during the ride. If you have a stuffed monkey, kangaroo, polar bear, penguin, giraffe, elephant, rabbit, camel, turtle, dinosaur, or mouse that you wouldn’t mind several hundred children loving on, let us know.

The streetcar leaves every twenty minutes from the station just west of the market. A craft and an operating model train will also be at the station.

We are so fortunate that individuals and organizations have stepped up to help us buy the books we use for Clickety Clack. Three cheers for the Friends of the Library who stepped up in a big way. We put a book on each bench so children can read along – that means for each month we buy 24 books (22 benches, plus one extra for the reader and one to put in the library). We could use two more sponsors to close out the year (at about $100 each). Next year we’ll re-use most of our books and so expenses will be reduced.

A friend reminded me last week that I had once said the market is meant to be a gathering place. That is an essential part of building community, one of the market’s major goals. A study came out just this week indicating that some neighborhoods, regardless of economic status, consistently produced more successful children than others. A community that produces successful children is the kind of community I want to live in, don’t you?  I think a children’s literacy event like Clickety Clack has a role to play in that. As does the market. Come join us in building community.