Serve by Design

Every time our kids come home to visit, they lament the day when they’ll have to clean out the basement after our passing. The irony is that much of that stuff is theirs! I must confess though that Monique and I have contributed to a lot of the stuff that’s stored down there! When we retired from school and church work, we each moved our offices downstairs into file cabinets, onto bookcases and packed away in storage boxes. We have about maxed out the available shelving and space. Self-Storage Image: uhaul.com Have you noticed the one-, two-, and three-story ground-level storage buildings that dot our communities? The “bread and butter” of U-Haul used to be in renting trailers and box trucks for moving our stuff from point A to point B. Today, I’m seeing more emphasis upon providing storage space in modern, secure, and even temperature-controlled   facilities. These buildings have multiple-sized pods for every storage need. Consumers are accumulating more and more stuff! They’ve ma...

After moving back to central Illinois at the end of 1991, I immediately began asking about where I could get a good donut and coffee. One of our church secretaries, Polly Jones, advised that I try out the small shop down the street called Mel-O-Cream Donuts.  While I had never heard of this local and family-owned company, I did have some considerable experience with Shipley Do-Nuts in Texas (over 300 locations!).😉 I told her I’d give the new shop a try but had a strong feeling that it would be hard to beat the familiar  products of my past when I had a hankering for a good blueberry cake, sausage roll or fruit-filled kolache. Kelly Grant Jr., Owner CCO  (1954-2020) Well, that was then, and this is now, some thirty years later. Polly was right, Mel-O-Cream’s chocolate Long Johns, apple fritters, and even the plain old-fashioned donuts are so tasty with a good cup of Joe! Mel-O-Cream has been baking their products (over 100 varieties!) since 1932 right here in Springfield,...