You can’t hail a cab with hand waving and a sharp whistle the way you can in the Big Apple, but finding a hack in Sherman and Denison is a lot easier than it was a few years ago. With the introduction of Cowboy Cab two years ago this June and Yellow Cab about eight months ago, consumers have transportation options.

Some folks say that you can tell a lot about a man by his shoes. If true, Naif Risk’s shoes, sturdy, dependable and well maintained, declare him an amiable man with a can-do attitude. His father’s shoes would say the same, as would have his grandfather’s. All three generations of Risk men have shaped the success of one of Sherman’s oldest businesses with their skill and congeniality.

They are yellow, pink, blue, orange, purple, white— even black. They dance in the wind like fairies, their arms over their heads, the breezes blowing their ruffled gossamer dresses— the most beautiful of all flowers, the iris. When the Dallas Iris Society takes its annual bus tour on April 27, one of their stops will be Angel Iris Farm on Luella Road in Sherman.

You will see a smattering of higher end plumbing fixtures at Home Depot and Lowe’s—but for the really upscale stuff you’ll have to do a little more research. Consumers motivated by big, splashy, ads in magazines and on television are becoming more interested in more unusual, more expensive plumbing in ever-expanding kitchens and baths.

“Most houses in Sherman, Denison, and Grayson County have something in them that came from here,” said Jesse Parrish, President of Johnson-Burks Supply. “It may be 20 cents worth, it may be 20 dollars worth, but virtually every house built here has something of ours in it.” From a simple pipe to an entire plumbing system, Johnson-Burks has for the past eight decades supplied plumbing supplies to Texoma.