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By Thomas Kinney Apple Fest 2010 is upon us. This Saturday, 4 September, Apple Fest revelers will be descending on the Mason County Court house lawn. Families are expected from all over Texas! Last year as many as 3000 people spent the day in and around Mason to enjoy all that Apple Fest and Mason country have to offer.

The San Antonio International Farm and Ranch Show, to be held Oct 14-16, has added several new features for attendees and their families, according to show coordinators. The show will take place on the San Antonio Livestock Exposition and Freeman Coliseum grounds, 3201 E. Houston St. and One AT&T Center Parkway.

The Department of State Health Services is advising consumers not to eat Wright County Eggs because they may be contaminated with Salmonella Enteritidis, bacteria that may cause serious health problems. On Aug. 13 Wright County Egg company issued a voluntary recall on eggs from its facility in Galt, Iowa. Wright County eggs are shipped to Texas by way of one or more intermediary distributors.

H&R Block in Kingsland is moving to a new location at: 1808 Hwy 1431 across the street from Prosperity Bank. Come and help us celebrate our Open House on Monday, 6 Sept. from 10am - 3 pm, we will be serving cake and punch and will be drawing for lots of door prizes.

By Crystal Kothmann The Mason County Apple Fest is taking applications for the 2010 Arts & Crafts Show. Last year’s Apple Fest brought visitors from all over Texas, one family from 805 miles away! The Apple Fest provides an Apple baking contests, Apple cider demonstrations, food, the Apple Blossom Style Show, Live music, puppet shows, free kids games at Kids Kountry and so much more. So, start making your plans to celebrate in Mason on Saturday September 4, ...

Looking for an interesting year that wasn’t during World War II, I decided to see what was happening in Llano the year that I graduated from high school. That was 1974, but when I looked at the first issue of The Llano News that year, I realized that I’d first have to write a little about 1973. That’s because the whole first issue was a recap of the previous year’s events, and the whole front page was covered with photos from 1973.

On the front page of The Llano News on July 2, 1942, was a photo of the Army Air Force’s “wicked looking” AT-9 training plane from Ellington Field, near Houston, which reportedly “has all the flying characteristics of the giant bombers the graduating class at the Texas air drome will soon be piloting.” Some of those flyers may have been from Llano, although none were named.

After hearing Norman Livingston’s story (told in last week’s history column), I decided to go back to copies of The Llano News from 1942 to see how those remaining in Llano handled the entrance of the U.S. into World War II. I found that, while the war affected everyone in many different ways, life went on, and Llano prospered in the months following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Headlines on January 1, 1942, told how donations for the Red Cross were 50 percent high ...

Norman Livingston was born in Hamilton County, where his parents had a farm on the Leon River, on November 16, 1925. Norman was one of seven children, all of whom worked on the farm; he remembers that they had “horses all over the place,” so when his father traded 21 horses for a J.I.

The riots that rocked several American cities in 1968 never made the papers in Llano, which chose to emphasize the plentiful rains and bumper crop of wildflowers that spring. On the last week of May, it was the upcoming rodeo that dominated the local headlines, not the upcoming primary in California.