Two people were arrested Sept. 28 as part of an ongoing investigation into crimes against children involving the Louisiana Bureau of Investigation, Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office and Avoyelles Parish Sheriff’s Office.

Bryana Gaspard, 35, of Faith Baptist Mission Lane in Marksville, was arrested on one count of indecent behavior with a juvenile and one count of production of pornography involving juveniles.

The arrest stemmed from evidence uncovered during a prior investigation that began with the November 2021 arrest of John Randall Crooks. Continued investigation identified Gaspard as a co-conspirator in crimes involving the sexual exploitation of children and the production of child sexual abuse material.

Gaspard was booked into the Avoyelles Parish Sheriff’s Office. Bond information was not available.

John Randall Crooks, 41, of Q Stockman Road in Deville, was arrested on 882 counts of pornography involving juveniles and one count of sexual abuse of an animal.

The arrest stemmed from evidence uncovered during a prior investigation that began in November 2021. Continued investigation revealed that Crooks possessed additional child sexual abuse material and was receiving child sexual abuse material produced by a co-conspirator who was also arrested as part of the investigation.

Crooks was out on bond from previous charges in Rapides Parish and was booked into the Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office. Bond information was not available.

The arrests were the result of a joint investigation involving the Louisiana Bureau of Investigation, Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office and Avoyelles Parish Sheriff’s Office.

The investigation remains ongoing. All persons are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

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I started tournament fishing in the spring of 1990 and can remember it like it was yesterday! A friend of mine who was known as a very good angler asked me to fish a tournament with him. While I balked at first and did not have much interest in fishing tournaments, I gave in after several phone calls and a lot of begging. 

To say I was hooked after this event would be an understatement. This took place at a point in my life when I was no longer playing minor league baseball and was looking for another avenue where I could go out and compete. 

Tournament bass fishing has filled that niche and provided the opportunity to satisfy my competitive fire. But during the early ‘90s, there were not a lot of tournament trails like there are today.  

Angler’s Choice and the old Redman Series, along with a few charity tournaments, were all that were available at that time. Then in the mid ‘90s the FLW organization (named after Ranger Boats owner Forest L. Wood) was formed and they introduced several lower-level trails that allowed young up- and-coming anglers to learn and master fishing skills. 

It was an organization that offered grass roots anglers the chance to compete, get better and move up to the higher levels that FLW offered like the Everstart’s (now Toyota Series), FLW Series, and the original FLW Tour (now the MLF Bass Pro Tour), the highest level of professional bass fishing. 

FLW also introduced what is now called the BFL Tour (its lowest level) which stands for Bass Fishing League and was designed for the weekend warrior or what many called the working man series.

I fished a ton of these starting out and it was not uncommon for the BFL and Toyota Series events to draw 200 to 250 anglers for both the pro and co-angler divisions. It was so hard to get into these that if you did not sign up for all the events on the schedule, you did not get in.  

The best decision I ever made was in 2004 when I decided to sign up and fish as a co-angler on the FLW Tour, the highest level of FLW. This experience was invaluable for my development as an angler. 

I drew some of the best professional anglers to ever wet a hook with former FLW Cup and Bassmaster Classic Champion Dion Hibdon, former FLW Champion and three-time Angler of the Year Clark Wendlandt. 

Spending time in the boat with this caliber of angler will make you better. I learned so much, not just in terms of technique, but time management and scouting. I learned even at the highest level these guys do not over complicate the issue of catching and locating bass; they keep it simple.

I was really surprised how simple pro anglers keep their tournament preparation. It’s attention to detail that makes the highest level of anglers stand apart. 

Making sure their hooks are sharp is very important. Anglers will take the time to change out both sets of treble hooks on a crankbait if they have been fishing around wood or rocks. 

Sharp hooks equal bass in the boat, and bass in the boat equals paychecks! They also make sure they have fresh line spooled on each reel the day before the tournament starts. 

The great anglers are fanatics on tackle storage organization. Being able to put their hands on whatever they are looking for in a timely manner is very important. They can’t afford to waste time on tournament day looking for tackle. No detail is overlooked by anglers who fish for a living. 

Overall, I have enjoyed and learned so much during my 30-plus years of tournament bass fishing. I’ve met and made so many friends through tournament fishing.  Some of my best friends today have come from the bass tournament world. 

Anglers are like a coaching fraternity; there’s a unique bond that you just can’t find anywhere else. If there’s one thing I will miss when I decide to quit competing and lay my rods down for the last time, it’s that infectious comradery you have between anglers. 

Contact Steve at sgraf26@yahoo.com

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“There is nothing new under the sun,” says the writer of Ecclesiastes. Clearly, he never had to update the software on his phone while waiting in the Walmart pickup lot.

Surely the Internet has changed everything. We order groceries from the couch, clothes from the kitchen table, and things we did not know we needed while brushing our teeth. By the time a package arrives, I sometimes have to open it to find out what I bought.

But perhaps the writer of Ecclesiastes knew more about us than we think.

A century or so ago, you went to the general store and told the clerk what you needed. The clerk gathered your order from the shelves. In some places, the store even delivered it to your home. If you wanted something special from the Sears catalog, you ordered it and waited. And waited. The catalog was full of wonders, but “arriving tomorrow” was not one of them.

Then came the shopping cart. Store owners wondered whether customers would really fetch their own groceries. They did. Soon we were pushing carts down aisles, filling them ourselves, and choosing among forty-seven kinds of breakfast cereal. Progress had arrived, though nobody had warned us we would eventually have to steer a cart with one bad wheel.

Now we tap a screen, tell someone else what we need, and wait for that person to gather it from the shelves. They may even deliver it to our home. Or we park at Walmart, check in on our phones, and wait for the groceries to appear. We have used astonishing technology to return to telling the clerk what we want.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Of course, Ecclesiastes was saying something deeper than “the general store will make a comeback.” Human life has a way of circling around the same needs. We find new ways to shop, work, and communicate, but we still know disappointment. We still make mistakes. We still lie awake worrying about someone we love. We still long for peace when the day has worn us thin.

Maybe you need a second chance. Maybe life has been so crowded with responsibilities that joy has quietly slipped out the back door. Maybe you are carrying a regret you cannot undo, or you have managed to look fine in public while feeling anything but fine at home.

For those needs, I have one word: Jesus.

Not because speaking his name makes every problem disappear by Thursday. It doesn’t. Jesus offers something better than a quick fix. He meets people who have failed and calls them forward. He welcomes the weary. He gives forgiveness where shame has settled in, and hope where we thought nothing could grow again.

The shopping cart may keep changing. The human heart still needs grace. And the good news of Jesus is that grace is available to you, right where you are—even if right where you are happens to be the Walmart pickup lot.

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On Sept. 30, 1960, television viewers were introduced to Fred Flintstone, Wilma Flintstone, Barney Rubble and Betty Rubble when “The Flintstones” premiered on ABC.

Set in the fictional Stone Age community of Bedrock, the animated sitcom followed the Flintstones and their neighbors as they dealt with everyday family, work and social life — just with dinosaurs, stone-age technology and prehistoric animals mixed in.

The series premiere, “The Flintstone Flyer,” aired at 8:30 p.m. on ABC. The Paley Center for Media lists the premiere as a 25-minute animation and comedy program.

What made “The Flintstones” unusual was not simply its prehistoric setting. The series was created as a prime-time sitcom, rather than as children’s programming. It was patterned after the popular family sitcom “The Honeymooners” and used its Stone Age setting to portray contemporary family life.

The show would go on to run for six seasons and 166 episodes before its original run ended in 1966.

More than six decades later, Bedrock remains one of television’s most recognizable fictional communities, and Sept. 30 marks the date when the “modern Stone Age family” first arrived in American prime time.

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Quincy Jones was a record producer and composer whose awards include a Tony Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and 28 Grammy Awards.  The list of albums, films, and television shows he worked on from the 1960s until his death in 2024 would be lengthy, but many of them would not have come to fruition had he remembered something.

On August 8, 1969, Steve McQueen, the actor who earned the nickname the “King of Cool,” called Quincy and wanted his, Quincy’s, hairdresser Jay Sebring to meet Peter Yates.  Peter had just directed what has become one of Steve McQueen’s most notable films, Bullitt.  Quincy recalled, Jay Sebring “was my barber and the most famous hairstylist in Hollywood.”  Quincy agreed and picked Jay up.  As they were driving to meet Peter, Jay invited Quincy to a small get together later that evening at 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles.  Quincy was familiar with that residence because he had almost bought the house a year or two earlier.  Quincy was working on the musical score and soundtrack for the comedy film The Out-of-Towners starring Jack Lemmon but said he would stop by after he finished work for the day.  Quincy dropped Jay off and returned to work.  Hours later, Quincy went home and went to bed.  He completely forgot about meeting Jay and his friends.

On the following morning, August 9, 1969, Quincy’s friend, actor Bill Cosby, called him from London.  “Did you hear about Jay?”  Quincy replied, “What about Jay?  He was with me last night.”  Bill told him, “He’s dead.”  Quincy was in shock.  In disbelief, he called Sebring International, Jay Sebring’s company.  When Quincy asked about Jay, the person on the other end of the line asked, “Who’s this?”  Quincy replied, “Quincy Jones.”  The person said, “Jay Sebring is dead,” and hung up.  Quincy turned on the television and saw “all the bodies spread out on the lawn with sheets covering them.”  Quincy was lucky because that slip of memory saved his life.  Jay Sebring was just one of the unlucky people to be at 10050 Cielo Drive that fateful night.  Quincy said, “I knew them all, man.  I knew them all.  Heavy scene.”  The others who were unlucky to be at that home were Wojciech Frykowski, Steven Parent, Abigail Folger, and Sharon Tate and her unborn child, all victims of a murder spree led by Charles Manson.  Quincy Jones was lucky to have forgotten about the party invitation, though he never forgot the horrible event that took place that night.  It troubled him for the rest of his life.

Sources:

1.     Alex Simon, “Quincy Jones Talks Keepin’ On and Other Pearls of Wisdom,” The Hollywood Interview, accessed September 20, 2026, https://thehollywoodinterview.blogspot.com/2014/09/quincy-jones-hollywood-interview.html.

2.     Chris Heath, Quincy Jones Has a Story About That,” GQ, January 29, 2018, accessed September 20, 2026, https://www.gq.com/story/quincy-jones-has-a-story. 

© 2026 Brad Dison. All rights reserved. Remember This? is distributed for licensed publication only.

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Northwestern State University’s Rodeo Team is preparing for its first collegiate competition since the program was reestablished, with 12 student-athletes set to compete at the Panola College Rodeo Sept. 24-26 in Tatum, Texas.

The competition will mark NSU’s debut in the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association’s Southern Region after the university announced the return of the Rodeo Team in May. The team has since grown to a roster of 14 student-athletes under Coach Cody DeMoss, with 12 set to compete at Panola College.

NSU will be represented in several events during its opening competition. The lineup includes four saddle bronc riders, five competitors in breakaway roping and two barrel racers. NSU will also field a team in team roping, while another NSU competitor will team rope with a student from Trinity Valley Community College.

“This is the very first college rodeo that they are going to get to go to,” DeMoss said. “This one being right here in Tatum, Texas, just 120 miles down the road, is a perfect warmup for us.”

DeMoss, a 14-time National Finals Rodeo bronc rider, was named coach as NSU reestablished the program. He said he sees potential across several events as the team enters its first competition.

“I think they’ve got a chance,” DeMoss said. “There are a couple bronc riders in here that have really got a chance to do some good, quite a few breakaway ropers. The horsemanship on quite a few of them is pretty good, so there’s some real talent.”

Allison Savant, a freshman industrial engineering major from Kenner, competes in breakaway and team roping. She said the team has been practicing nearly every night leading up to its first competition.

“I’m pretty confident. We have a pretty strong team,” Savant said. “Mr. Cody has definitely coached us up. We’ve been practicing almost every night. We have really good calves to practice on, so I think we are going to do a really good job.”

For Savant, the Panola College Rodeo will also be her first experience competing at the collegiate level.

“I feel like it’s going to be a fun experience,” Savant said. “First college rodeo, it’s not going to be like the high school rodeos. It’s going to be a little bit different, so I’m excited to see what’s new.”

Cyler Yeager, a freshman from Montana, competes in saddle bronc riding. He said the opportunity to join a new program helped draw him to NSU.

“When I first got to talking to Mr. Cody, he had a lot of great things to say, and I thought it would be great to be a part of a new organization,” Yeager said. “I thought I might be able to help create history and maybe be history myself.”

Yeager said he feels confident entering his first collegiate competition after weeks of preparation.

“We’ve been training pretty rigorously lately, hopping on horses and on the dummy over there and just trying my hardest to get ready for it,” Yeager said. “You’ve just got to trust in the motions that you know.”

The Panola College Rodeo opens a five-event fall schedule for the NIRA Southern Region. Following Panola, the region is scheduled to compete at Southwest Texas College Oct. 1-3 in Uvalde, Texas, Northeast Texas Community College Oct. 8-10 in Mount Pleasant, Texas, McNeese State University Oct. 30-31 in Lake Charles and Sam Houston State University Nov. 12-14 in Huntsville, Texas.

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The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries is reminding hunters to carefully identify waterfowl before taking a shot as the state moves through its special teal season and prepares for Louisiana’s first special black-bellied whistling duck season.

Louisiana’s special teal season runs Sept. 19-27. During the nine-day season, hunters may harvest only blue-winged, green-winged and cinnamon teal. The daily bag limit is six birds, with a possession limit of 18.

LDWF noted that identifying teal can sometimes be challenging, particularly when birds are in flight. Blue-winged teal have a large light-blue patch on the upper portion of the wing, while green-winged teal are the smallest of the dabbling ducks and have a green speculum. Cinnamon teal, which are extremely rare in Louisiana, are more similar in appearance to blue-winged teal than green-winged teal.

Another special season will follow in October. Louisiana’s first-ever special black-bellied whistling duck season will be held Oct. 3-11.

Only black-bellied whistling ducks may be harvested during the special season. Hunters will have a daily bag limit of four birds and a possession limit of 12. A free special permit is required to participate.

Black-bellied whistling ducks can be identified in flight by a wide white stripe on the upper surface of their wings and feet that extend beyond the tail. Adult birds typically have bright orange bills, pink feet and a chestnut-colored chest that transitions into a black belly. Juvenile birds may be more difficult to identify because they have grayish bills, less prominent pink coloring on their feet and lack the distinctive black belly seen on adults.

LDWF cautioned that other species of waterfowl may occupy the same habitats during both special seasons, making positive identification especially important.

“Know the season. Know the species. Know your target,” the department advised.

Hunters are encouraged to review identification materials and current Louisiana waterfowl regulations before heading into the field.

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As many of you know, I was adopted by my aunt and uncle, Laverne & Loyd Graf Jr., when I was 10 years old. They quickly became mom and dad for me. My biological mom, Alta Mae, was not capable of raising two young boys. After starting and struggling through the first grade in Rosenburg, Texas, I was failing school and they rescued me from Houston, Texas, and brought me to Mt. Pleasant just after Christmas. 

I was enrolled in Vivian Fowler School at that time and did extra work into the summer as I got caught up enough to be passed on to the second grade. It was also at this time that I started my youth baseball career in 1968 while spending the entire summer with Mom and Dad.

One place that holds a special place in my heart, as I spent many a day there, was my Dad’s ranch. Graf Brothers Ranch was a partnership between my Dad and his brother William Ed Graf (Uncle Bill). Uncle Bill was the proud owner of a trucking company in Ft. Worth and was basically a financial partner of the ranch more than anything else. 

He had two sons who would come to the ranch once every few months. One of these cousins, Matt, and I became close, as we both loved to hunt and fish. With our ranch having three different stock ponds loaded with bass, Matt and I basically taught ourselves how to bass fish. 

We both subscribed to Bassmaster Magazine and would read each one cover to cover while learning about new baits and techniques. Then when he would come to the ranch, we would go and apply what we learned. 

Those stock ponds were a great training ground for learning how to fish and understanding bass behavior. Matt and I shared some great times for years until we got into our teens. Then I got more involved in sports and those fishing get-togethers became few and far between. 

I still cherish those early childhood memories with Matt even though those trips dwindled over time as he also made fewer trips to the ranch. We’ve lost touch with each other over the years, but I’m sure he has fond memories like me.

One thing ranch life taught me was good work ethic. A ranch does not run itself as it takes a lot of man hours to keep things running smoothly. We weren’t what many would call a big ranch, but we did run anywhere from 100-150 head of cattle depending on the time of year. 

A ranch is a constant work in progress with doctoring cattle, building fences, working on barns, and cutting and hauling hay to make sure cattle were fed even when weather was bad. There are no days off when you own a cattle ranch. Cattle need attention and must be checked on daily, especially when cows were getting ready to calf. 

There was one job I absolutely hated! It’s what my Dad called “piling chunks.” On our ranch we owned both sides of the main road with one side all pastureland while the other side was half-timber and pasture. But over time Dad cleared some of the timber to create more pasture. 

We owned a large D9 bulldozer that Dad used to clear the timber. As he dropped trees on the ground, smaller limbs that fell off the trees had to be picked up. We would then pile them up in small burn piles. This is what dad referred to as “piling chunks!” This process was hard work and took many hours over several weeks to get the job done.

There are many things that shaped me as a person, but the lessons I learned from growing up on a ranch were invaluable. My Dad was a man of few words and was not touchy-feely. He never really shared his personal feelings, but he did believe in hard work and taught me the value of this concept and how it builds character. 

The ranch for me was a training ground on not just hard work, but on developing my skills as an angler and a hunter. It gave me the freedom to learn how to hunt deer and squirrels and how to catch a bass.  

The number of hours I spent on my own in the woods and around our stock ponds starting at the age of 10 was endless. Most kids today don’t know how to be by themselves all day, making one cast after another and learning how to catch a bass. 

Kids today don’t grow up sitting on a single 2×6 board nailed between two limbs in a tree for deer hunting. They’ve never built a duck blind on the bank of a stock pond and enjoyed a good hunt, and when you shot a duck over the water, you had to wait until the wind blew the duck to the bank so you could retrieve it. 

Kids today would consider the work I did as kid a form of child abuse. Again, my parents did not sugar coat anything. Love, while not openly expressed much in our family, was understood. They had goals and expectations for both me and my brother whether it was a job to be done or school. 

We never did without anything that was essential. My Mom and Dad provided for us as a family and made sure my brother and I had everything we needed to not only enjoy life, but to be successful.

I literally would not trade anything for the time I had growing up on Graf Brothers Ranch, as it taught me everything I needed to succeed in whatever path I chose for the rest of my life.   

Contact Steve at sgraf26@yahoo.com

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I met a sentence the other day that has been bothering me—in a good way.

“God, the master of time, never gives the future.”

Read that again. Did your mind immediately go to the future? Mine did.

I have plans for today. Plans for tomorrow. Appointments, meetings, deadlines, things I need to remember, and several things I have already forgotten. All of them are carefully placed on my calendar. Notice the possessive pronoun.

My calendar.

That is how we talk, as though we own Tuesday. We look at a little square on a screen three weeks from now and say, “I have something that day.”

Maybe.

As we say in the South, “The Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.”

Calendars are good things. Planning is responsible. But putting something on a calendar does not mean we possess the day. God has given us this moment. The next one remains in his hands. One of the hardest skills in life is learning to be fully present in the moment we have. We have two favorite ways of avoiding it.

The first is the past.

We call them “the good old days.” The funny thing about the good old days is that when we were living through them, we complained about them too. Personally, I vote for the late 1970s—but only after the leisure suit phase. There are some things even nostalgia cannot redeem.

We remember our younger years as simpler times, conveniently forgetting that we were younger, considerably less wise, and occasionally wearing polyester. Sometimes we look backward because we regret mistakes. Sometimes because we miss people. Sometimes because we realize we were standing in a wonderful moment and didn’t recognize how wonderful it was until it was gone.

Our other escape route is the future. We worry about everything we have to do. We stare at our calendar and wonder who put all that stuff on there, conveniently ignoring the fact that most of the appointments were made by us.

Or we are waiting for something wonderful.

At one point, I was looking ahead to the possibility of praying the invocation at the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame induction ceremony. That was exciting. So there I was, supposedly contemplating the spiritual discipline of living in the present while simultaneously thinking about the 1970s, imagining a future event, examining my calendar—and receiving texts from church staff reminding me of a couple of things I needed to do. I was apparently fully present in about four different decades at once.

It was a busy moment. And now it is gone. That may be the spiritual lesson.

The only moment in which you can love somebody is this one. The only moment in which you can pray is this one. The only moment in which you can notice grace is this one. The only moment in which you can actually live is this one.

We remember the past. We prepare wisely for the future. But we receive life from God now.

So try something. For the next two minutes, be completely present. Don’t revisit yesterday. Don’t rehearse tomorrow. Don’t check your phone. Don’t mentally reorganize your calendar. Just be here.

Now.

If you make it the full two minutes, congratulations. You may already be more spiritually mature than I am. If you don’t, notice which direction your mind traveled.

Did you go backward or forward?

I have a theory that I can come pretty close to guessing your age by which direction you went. When we’re young, we keep asking, “What’s next?” As we get older, we increasingly ask, “Remember when? “Faith may teach us to ask a different question:

“God, what are you doing right here?”

Because God, the master of time, has not given us tomorrow.

But he has given us this moment.

And this moment is enough.

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On Sept. 23, 2016, an unusual item went up for auction in Los Angeles: the cremated remains of famed author Truman Capote.

Capote, best known for “In Cold Blood” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” died in 1984 at the age of 59. His ashes had been kept by Joanne Carson, a close friend of Capote and former wife of “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson.

The ashes were housed in a carved Japanese wooden box and were offered as part of Julien’s Auctions’ “Icons & Idols: Hollywood” sale. The auction house estimated the remains at $4,000 to $6,000.

When the auction concluded the following day, Capote’s ashes sold for $43,750 to an anonymous buyer. The sale attracted interest from potential buyers in the United States as well as Russia, Germany, China and South America.

The ashes were not the only unusual Capote memorabilia offered at the auction. His clothing, prescription bottles and other personal belongings were also sold.

According to the auction house, Capote had told Carson that he did not want his ashes to simply sit on a shelf, making the unusual auction an especially fitting final chapter to the author’s colorful public life.

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