The market is back in action this Saturday, 9 to noon. It will be cold so we hope you will wear a mask.
When it’s below freezing we have to keep the pavilion doors closed and turn on the heaters. Masks and social distancing will keep the market safe and able to operate.
The Free Kids Meal is taking a holiday break but we hope to restart soon. We’re looking for a head cook or a cook’s assistant, or both. If you or someone you know is handy in the kitchen and interested in a part time job, let me or manager Rachael Lynch know at 417 483-8139 or webbcityfm@gmail.com. The hours are flexible but generally six to eight hours on Thursday and Friday and Saturdays from 7 to noon. We’re open to a tag team if two people want to split up the shifts or work together. If the person or persons we hire do a great job, there will be plenty more hours as we enter the regular market season and provide meals three times a week to 100 or more kids. The menus, recipes, and supervision are provided by our manager, Rachael, who has been responsible for the tasty menus this month.
When I began
this column in 2001 I never dreamed that more than700 columns later I would
still have something to say. And what I want to say in this, the last market
column in print, is thank you, Bob Foos, and Sentinel crew, present and past,
for being such supporters of the market. (I’m thinking especially of you, Vicki
Groff, Sentinel staff and market volunteer who has served hundreds of free kids
meals this year.) Bob is literally a
Champion of the Market, along with such luminaries as Tom Reeder, the Perry
Foundation, Extension educators Shon Bishop and Patrick Byers, and market
volunteers Marilyn, Karen, Janet, Kharlie, Dan, Duane, and Donna. 
This month I’ve celebrated Coonfoot & Vicinity, Lollipop Logic, and Nic Frising in the market column. This last appreciation is for the superb photographs that have graced the Sentinel. I was a photojournalism major for a whole semester as a junior at the University of Missouri journalism school so, while I have little talent as a photographer, I have deep respect for the quality photography that Bob has brought to the Sentinel. His body of work has been remarkable and it has been recognized beyond our community by both the Missouri Press Association and the Missouri Photojournalism Hall of Fame. It was the former that singled out a particularly poignant photograph
Bob took in December of 1982 of the broken front window of the Sentinel backed by flames. Talk about being worth a thousand words.
Like the
skilled photojournalist he is, Bob has told the many stories of Webb City in
the pages of the Sentinel, from our cooks (he did a story on my excellent cook
and husband and paired it with a delightful photo of our two little children
looking up adoringly at him as he stood in his apron – naturally I’m a bit
partial to that one), to school sports, to the farmers market, to new
businesses, and so much more. He didn’t necessarily make us look pretty. Carol
Stark, editor of the Globe, once swore she’d never let Bob take another photo
of her after he published a close-up of her judging tomatoes, mouth askew
sampling a slice. He wasn’t after a pretty picture, he was after the story. And
he got it.
