Nancy Bergeron, Add One

Back in the 1950s and ’60s, when the Ruston Fire Department received an alarm, a series of fog-horn-like blasts belched from an apparatus atop a pole behind what’s now the Historic Fire Station on the corner of East Mississippi Avenue and Bonner Street.

Over the past few weeks, the phrases “Tarbutton Road,” “Tarbutton interchange,” and “Tarbutton at I-20” have probably been said or written a zillion times, all in connection with the much-ballyhooed Buc-ee’s Travel Center that’s coming to the north side of I-20 at the Tarbutton exit.

On the backside of the protracted, contentious bid for speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, it’s nice to know that not all government sinks to such juvenile dysfunction every time a new term begins.

In all of my 68-and-ahalf years, I’ve never shot a New Year’s firework. It wasn’t until after my parents divorced and my mother and I were on our own that we ever tried to stay awake to watch the ball drop at Times Square.