AUGUST 1977- Beanpole Willis has lived all his life in Adair County and he still doesn't know where Putman County is located. He made the mistake of asking Pewee Sinclair, an authority on such things, its location. "Don't tell him, Pewee," Dan Waggener said, "he'll aim to spend all his money at the Putman County Fair."

Good Country

Tax commissioner Billy K. Neat says that you can always tell Putman County, the county-within-Adair County, because the countryside just starts looking better. Generally, it's located above the fork of Sulphur Creek, thence northward nigh but not into, greater Millerfield.

It is a good country to live near. A.L. Sinclair has roamed it since his boyhood days, when he was growing up at Christine. "We always went to Oak Grove on Sundays," Sinclair said. " Marvin Grider's store was the only place you could get a pop on Sunday, but you had to go to the back door."

Pewee's boyhood days were back in the fifties, so you can tell times sure have changed in the past 20 years.

Oak Grove is located about a mile up the hill above Putman County. It's the home of a number of notables, including Capt. Jim Evans of the Kentucky State Police, and is famous because Hood Lodge is there.

Life is simply Catch-22

No matter what you do in the way of self-improvement, it seems that when you gain in one place, you lose in another.

Dagwood Gore has gone on a diet, and has been highly successful with it, losing 30 pounds in 60 days.

Ask what the diet is, Dagwood said, "It's a very, very little meat and all the fresh leafy vegetables you want to eat. They'll let me eat all the lettuce and cabbage I can hold."

"There's one big problem," he says. "I've eaten so much rabbit food I'm afraid to get near a beagle hound for fear he would eat me up."

Not the only health watcher

Gore is not unique in taking on a whole new regimen, including a definite exercise program, in order to maintain better health.

It used to be that men waited until they had their first heart attack before they mended their habits. Now younger active men such as Gore are taking preventive steps.

Arlis Downey - Hezzie - is one of them. He's playing softball in Columbia's new "Over 30 and over weight" softball league, eating right, and going to church regularly - and losing weight.

Downey is a confirmed town man now. He grew up out at Portland and claims to have been 16 before he saw the bright lights of the city - Columbia. "When we talked about coming to town in the fifties," Downey says, "we were talking about going to Milltown, that was the big town."

Portland was a self-contained community, Downey says. Now it's coming back. There's only one store now. Larry Coffey owns it. And he has constructed a major recreational center at Portland. There's a softball-baseball park at Portland, and it draws big crowds every time it's open. There's a sense of community there which is delightful in today's fast-paced world.