The Chamber Coffee on December 1st was held at Ruddicks at 117 S. National. Ruddicks was started in 1934. The current owner is Terry Davenport. He has been at Ruddicks for 40 years–first as an employee and now as owner.
In addition to furniture, Ruddicks also offers sound equipment and floor materials and installation. Mr. Davenport said that they can order nearly anything and encouraged people to ask if they need something that they don’t have in stock.
Community Christian Church will be holding an open house from 10 to 1 on Monday December 5th with soup being served from 11 to 1.
Everything Pets had a ribbon cutting Saturday morning at 9:30. The store is owned by Dawn Bryant and is located at 605 S. National. They have large selection of pets and supplies with everything from snakes to flying squirrels to puppies.
Please stop by and welcome this new business to Fort Scott.
Larkin Witt Financial Group held an open house December 1st from 10 to 2 at their office at 207 E. 1st Street. The event drew quite a number of people with over 60 individuals visiting before noon.
Bob Larkin has been involved in financial services for over 40 years. His first office was in Security State Bank in 1974. He grew up on a farm in Fulton, still farms today and was even the co-owner of a local John Deere dealership.
Jordan Witt graduated from PSU (finance) and KU (MBA) and is heavily involved in the Fort Scott community. In the last election he successfully ran for the U234 school board and has been serving there.
The office recently launched their new website at www.larkinwitt.com. The site has a number of financial calculators, articles, research and forms for requesting quotes on insurance and other services.
Jim Brown has quite a Christmas lights display at his house on 13 S. Margrave. His home is located just South of Wall Street behind An Octave Above. You can tune your radio to 100.5 FM and see nearly 8,000 lights running a custom made light show synced to the music. The music is on a 16 minute loop and he plans to run it from 6:30 to 9:30 every evening through Christmas.
Below is a video of the house. If you are reading this in an email, you may have to visit FortScott.Biz to watch it.
Christmas Lights 2011 from Jim Brown on Vimeo.
Two years ago at Thanksgiving Mr. Brown found DoItYourselfChristmas.com where people talk about how to do animated lighting synced to music. He bought the printed circuits and components and made all the controllers himself by soldering the components together.
Mr. Brown said the actual setup of the lights took about two days, but he has spent all of his spare time from the last two years creating the circuit boards and programming all the songs. There are 72 channels that can be independently turned on and off and dimmed from 100% to 0%. Mr. Brown said that programming a single song took about 20 hours. His personal computer controls the circuit boards that control the lights. He programmed the songs using a free piece of software called Vixen.
He runs this off of a temporary electric service on a separate meter. After measuring it the first night, he calculates it will cost $0.60 per night. Mr. Brown said a static display would probably cost three times that because the animated display has many light off or dimmed at any given time.
Mr. Brown said to make sure not to forget to tune the radio to 100.5 because it just looks like a bunch of flashing lights with out the music.
If you live in Fort Scott, you definitely need to take some time to go by and see the light show.
Volunteers in Manila, Philippines are currently trying to break Fort Scott’s record for the longest line of coins. The stunt is part of governmental effort to get more coins back into circulation.
Everything Pets at 605 S. National will be having a ribbon cutting ceremony at 9:30 Saturday morning December 3rd. Stop by to welcome a new business to Fort Scott.
There was a good turn out for the Christmas Parade Tuesday night. The event featured a number of floats followed by the lighting of the downtown Christmas tree and a living Nativity presentation by Bethel Church.
A number of organizations were setup offering hot chocolate and downtown stores stayed open late to provide shopping opportunities for the crowd.
The Larkin Witt Financial Group will be holding an open house from 10 to 2 on Thursday December 1st. Their offices are located at 207 E. 1st Street. The public is welcome and refreshments will be served.
The Lyons Twin Mansions started out as a single mansion catering to bed and breakfast clients, but has evolved into a boutique hotel. Pat Lyons said that the younger generation of customers prefer the freedom of choosing when, what and if they eat. The traditional approach of making one big breakfast for all the guests didn’t work well with the changes in the market. This required a shift away from serving a family style breakfast to a restaurant oriented service and led to the opening of a restaurant in the South mansion.
See below to enter the Lyon’s Twin Mansion Month of Brunch Giveaway!
Not only does this provide guests with an experience more in line with the needs of todays visitors, but it also provides locals with a wonderful place to eat breakfast and lunch in a unique historic setting.
The restaurant is open for walk in service 9 to 2 Tuesday through Friday and 8 to 2 on the weekends and there is no need to make reservations. The full-service lounge is open from 5 to 8pm on Thursdays and Fridays and while there is no kitchen service during those hours, customers are welcome to carry in food.
The kitchen is run by Nate Lyons and Pete Collins while Marianne Avett serves the tables. The setting is designed to be quiet and relaxing and every item on the menu is priced below $10 (sunrise menu, midday menu). Miss Pat said that the goal was to provide great food at a reasonable price and to get people to come and enjoy a comfortable environment that encourages visitors to stay and visit.
The back room of the restaurant has a pool table setup and ready for a game. Across the hall from the main dining area in the library is a large screen television that Miss Pat says the kids enjoy when parents want to stay and talk for awhile.
For business people, the large tables and quiet environment in the dining area make it an idea place to talk with clients or just get out of the office for a meeting. For larger groups or when more privacy is necessary, there are meeting areas available. Miss Pat said, “Our meeting space is free if you dine with us.” Additionally both mansions have wireless internet access, large screens, digital projectors, and phone conference equipment available for use.
The Lyons Mansions also offers free tours and Miss Pat said that it is a great place for locals to bring visiting out of towners who are interested in hearing about some of the history in the area.
The Lyon’s Twin Mansion Restaurant is offering a special give away to subscribers of FortScott.Biz. They are offering a “Month of Brunch.” The winner will be chosen from subscribers to FortScott.Biz and will be given coupons for a weekly brunch meal at the restaurant for the month (taxes not included). So make sure you signup by clicking here if you don’t already get our emails.
We’ll draw a winner in a week. Be sure to watch your emails because you’ll have 48 hours to respond before we select a new winner.
Over a decade ago Mercy had a picnic in the park. I recently found a bunch of photographs I had taken of the event and thought some people in Fort Scott, might enjoy seeing them.
Click on any of the small images below to the larger image. Clicking on the larger image will take you to the next photo in the list. If you recognize someone, please consider emailing them a link or sharing it with them on Facebook. Also don’t hesitate to leave a message in the comments on this post or the individual pictures.
There was a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new Edward Jones office today at noon. Approximately 35 people attended the event. Jamie Armstrong (Financial Advisor) and Tedena Tucker (Branch Office Administrator) will both be working in the new location at 1713 S. National Suite B. The office is right next to subway in a section of the building that used to be the Movie Gallery.
Edward Jones provides financial services to nearly 7 million clients in the United States and Canada.
