I've known J.R. ever since I was a little kid, but never knew him well until my wife and I purchased a farm near J.R.'s place in 1963.

Where our farm is located I could walk out my back door and walk directly into J.R.'s front door. Of course, there is some timber, a creek, three fields, several fences and a black-top road in between the two doors, but that didn't stop me from making the trip occasionally. I usually made it when everything I owned was buried in the snow or mud, and there wasn't any other way to get there to request some help.

Whenever I requested help from J.R., it was always forthcoming, and of course, I never had to listen to any educational remarks while receiving the help, not if I kept the rpm's up enough to drown out whatever he happened to be saying.

The first time I had any business dealings with J.R. was in 1965 or '66. I bought a couple hundred pounds of clover seed from him to sow in some wheat. A few days after I picked up the seed, my wife and I stopped by his house to pay him for it. After he told me what I owed him, I asked him if I should pay him or his wife, Edith. He laughed and said I might as well pay her because she was going to spend it anyway, so I made the check out to her. Then we left.

I didn't think any more about it until that summer, when J.R. combined my wheat. His son, Billy, was home on vacation, and Billy ran the combine while J.R. hauled.

A few days later I stopped by the local MFA elevator to pick up my wheat check. When I told them what I wanted, they got out their files, then spent an unusually long time sorting through them. Finally they informed me that they had no record of any wheat being sold in my name. I told them that it had been delivered on July 4, and that J.R. Jacobs had hauled it. They looked some more, then started laughing among themselves.

Pretty soon one of them came to the counter and asked me if by any chance my wife's name was Marcia. I allowed that it was, and they informed me that she had sold over 900 bushels of wheat on July 4, so I picked up my wife's wheat check and delivered it to her.

J.R. lost his life on March 30 in a tractor accident, and left lots of jokes and stories still untold, and lots of pranks still unplayed.

Yep, for a fact, the neighborhood just isn't going to be the same.