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June 13, 1980 Around Adair with Ed Waggener The article below first appeared in the June 13, 1980 issue of the Daily Statesman. Topics included local politics, a local cleanup project by the FFA and Kiwanis Club, the beach at Holmes Bend, inflation, bottled milk and pool room hamburgers. --Pen By Ed Waggener How do the Adair County courthouse officials rate? In town folks have their opinion. And at Absher, at the Bait Shop, folks have their opinion. Tommy Thornton, the Egyptian troubadour, has ideas on the subject and isn't afraid to share them. On the subject of the courthouse officials, Thornton had the following comments:
Have you noticed the trash receptacles on Columbia's Public Square? They're freshly painted a quiet beige color. The painting was done by the Future Farmers of America at Adair County High, under the direction of the FFA sponsor, Norman Grant. The trash cans are furnished by the Columbia Kiwanis Club. Businessmen who wish to place decals on the cans may buy one side for $15 from the Kiwanians, according to club member David Cunagin. Downtown Columbia has been cleaner since the return of the trash cans. Fortunately, in town, the worry of household refuse going in the cans isn't much of a problem. That's what killed the litter barrel program the state started under former Governor Bert Combs. A walk on the Square on Sunday morning confirms that the biggest trash problem comes from carry-out paper beverage containers, non-returnable soft drink cans and bottles, and pull tabs from soft drink cans. That the biggest problem, too, at one of Adair County's most important tourist attractions, the man-made sandy beach by the Holmes Bend boat ramp. Panama City it isn't. But the beach could be a wonderful place to take a close at home, economical short vacation. It could be, but most of the time, the parking lot and the beach are strewn with all manner wrappers, bottles, cans, and metal tabs. Anyone so free spirited - or so foolish - as to walk barefoot on the beach is likely to sustain serious cuts from the broken glass and the tabs, if that person is not just turned off to Adair County waterland recreation by the messy sight. That's sad, because the lake and the beach at that point is a beautiful place. We'll be living with it until Kentucky adopts a bottle bill similar to Oregon's or until the county passes its own rules on the matter. If that sounds like a plug-in for the environmentalists, it is. But it isn't just birds-and-bunnies talk. There's a far more practical side to it. The biggest loser from the throwaways is not the aesthete, but the Adair County farmers. He usually ends up cleaning up the right-of-ways. And even if he doesn't do that, he has to clean the cans and bottles out of his fields at plowing and mowing time. Maybe it isn't possible for the county to pass such a law. If it were passed, it would be the biggest benefit to Adair County's dairymen, who would find their pasture lands protected and their product easier to market. (Although in all honesty I'd admit that milk never will taste as good out of boxes and plastic as it did when it was delivered very cold, in glass. Of all my childhood memories of things good, nothing surpassed the combination of poolroom hamburgers smothered with mustard and onions, washed down with very cold milk drunk from those little square glass bottles.) Now, speaking of those poolroom hamburgers, they are, as Richard Wethington, the dean of Columbia's poolroom hamburger chefs says, "Delicious little things." Inflation has hit the fifteen cents hamburger there - they now cost fifty cents apiece, but that's not bad when you remember that you're now paying twenty-five cents for nickel coffee, newspapers, and cold drinks. Whether the meat of the sandwich is all ham, all burger, or a concoction of secret ingredients known only to Wethington, it makes the basis of one mighty powerful good sandwich. Nonetheless, Rich takes a lot of kidding about the contents of the burgers from his irreverent customers. "I got an awful good one in here the other day," a regular told him on my last visit there. Wethington beamed. The diner continued, "Yeah, you were gone that day. Randall (Randall Estes, the grill man) slipped up and put some real meat in them," he said, "but I see now that you're back and there isn't any in it." That's just the joking. Truthfully, those poolroom hamburgers are good. They're the kind of addictive food that'll make a man drive home to Adair County just to feast on the tasty morsels, the match of which they don't fry anywhere else in the world. And that's the truth. And here's another thing about the truth. Bill Ballou told it on himself. He says, "A fellow told me the other day, 'Bill, two sounds no one will ever hear at your house: The sound of the truth being told and the sound of ham meat frying.'" They were just kidding, though. Ballou does have ham meat frying a lot. And his wife is a truthful woman. There is more than one way home. This story was posted on 2020-06-07 12:21:58
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April 15, 1978 Around Adair with Ed Waggener April 14, 1978 Around Adair with Ed Waggener September 29, 1977 Around Adair with Ed Waggener November 2, 1977 Around Adair with Ed Waggener May 5, 1978 Around Adair with Ed Waggener January 18, 1978 Around Adair with Ed Waggener February 9, 1978 Around Adair with Ed Waggener May 1978 Around Adair by Ed Waggener April 29, 1978 Around Adair with Ed Waggener February 2, 1978 Around Adair with Ed Waggener View even more articles in topic Around Adair with Ed Waggener |
 
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