12/19/2025
The Bottom Line
By Heidi Lowe
I feel like there comes a point in life when any decision to leave the house after dark is directly related to your willingness to “put your pants on.” In other words, will you have to go IN somewhere, or can you just drive around in your PJ’s and hope you don’t wind up on the side of the road changing a flat tire in stained yoga pants old enough to have a PhD? The list of things I am willing to “put my pants on for” these days is short, but my daughter is one of them, and that’s how I found myself begrudgingly putting my pants on and driving through town last weekend on Saturday night.
Not finding myself in that position often, it always strikes me how quiet Cassville is. Its unnerving, almost, for those of us old enough to remember a time when the streets would have been overflowing with teenagers cruising the strip, parked around the square, or sitting on tailgates at cowboy corner. Those who can remember the raucous charge in the air, the laughter carried on the wind over the sound of revving engines and the unrestrained cacophony of youth.
My daughter assures me that kids still hang out, it’s just “different now.” I suppose she’s right, but I still can’t help feel like something has been lost. We were the tail-end of generations of kids that connected through proximity instead of social media. There is no doubt we caused a lot of trouble through the years, but there were so many adventures to be had looking for it.
As I drove down the quiet streets of Cassville Saturday night, I thought about those feral kids, the ones that could have pulled up their roots and left… but didn’t. Kids that became business owners and teachers, lawyers and doctors. Kids that keep our electricity on, our water clean, our shelves stocked and our cars repaired. Kids who have helped keep this paper running for 57 years. Kids who, unless you are reading this on Facebook, helped bring you the edition you are holding in your hands right now.
Things may be “different now,” but I believe the ribbon of newsprint winding through our history connects us in a way that social media never will. Through this little paper our community has seen marriage announcements and obituaries, ribbon cuttings and trophies. We have seen benefit dinners and breakfasts at fire-stations. Big fish, big bucks, and big babies that we then watched grow up between its pages. We have shared triumphs and tragedies, laughter and tears.
As you read this Christmas edition of the Barry County Advertiser, we want to join our advertisers in wishing you all Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a wonderful new year. We know it’s been a tough year out there for a lot of you, and we are all so thankful for the amazing community support of programs like Share Your Christmas, the Angel Tree, the Cassville Pantry and others. As the year winds down and slips into the past we are excited to see what the future brings. And we hope you are too.
As always, we thank our advertisers for making our paper possible, and our community for making it special. See you next week.
For more information, or to place an ad in the Barry County Advertiser, please email Heidi at [email protected] or call us at 417-847-4475.
