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Remembering Ed By JIM Five years ago today -- September 24, 2018 -- my friend Ed Waggener, ever and always young at heart, quietly "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to set forth on the Greatest Adventure. We had last met up about a year earlier when I breezed into Columbia for a few hours on Saturday of Frontier Days. That splendid autumn morn, we breakfasted at Moore's and talked non-stop, then made a lap or two around the square, pausing now and anon for him to chat with friends, acquaintances, and out-of-town folks alike, and to snap a few photos for CM. Ed obviously was in his element, enjoying the crowd, enjoying the sights and sounds, taking in the buzz, the fun, the faces, with his reporter's eyes and ears and heart. At some point along the way, we paused for a few moments to chat about a few of the buildings and long-ago businesses near the Well Walk. He pointed out where Stanley Epperson, dba Epp's Place, sold beer and burgers for the brief interval in the 1930s between the end of national Prohibition and Adair County self-righteously voting itself dry again; and he spoke, perhaps with a bit of nostalgia, about the Kroger (later Ben Franklin) and C.R. Hutchison & Sons hardware buildings and their former occupants. As he wrote a few years ago, "Sometimes, actually most of the time, visits to Downtown Columbia on 'regular' days finds a previously unannounced vignette, a short skit, a mini-show or a brief encounter with someone you know from the recent or distant past which, in itself, makes the whole trip worth the effort."Anyone who knew Ed knows he loved his family, friends, and the inhabitants in general of Columbia, Adair County, and the surrounding area. And too, everyone knew that Ed, in the grand fashion of News founder Charles Snow Harris and long-time News editor John Ed Murrell, always espoused any progressive idea, cause, or movement that in some way would make life better for the people and the land he so dearly loved. He seemed to know every road, cowpath, and pigpath in Adair County and a staggering number of the citizens, along with an equally amazing number of mostly humorous stories about people and events, made all the better by his inimitable Ed way of telling the tales. His verbal rendition of Joe L. Barbee's telling of the Soldier Jones shooting scrape at the Fairgrounds never comes to mind that I don't hear his uproarious laughter as he related the incident. I'll forever associate Ed and laughter, and likely nothing I ever sent CM elicited more from him than did a 1947 classified ad the Adair County News, republished from the Casey County paper: "NOTICE: Absolutely no more baptizing in my cow pasture. Three times now the gate has been left open. The last time I had to chase my heifers all the way to the top of the ridge, and before I brought them home it was dark, my supper got cold and the Old Woman was fit to be tied. I sure like to see folks baptized, but I ain't going to chase them heifers any more this year. s/ Jake Smith, RFD, Liberty."And too, I always looked forward to his readouts, postscripts, and personal notes for ar-tickles I sent to CM. A particular favorite is this brief excerpt from an email letter, in which he riffed on a passing mention made by the Knifley correspondent of how quietly Christmas had "passed off" there in 1910. Quipped Ed, "If the Knifley Chamber of Commerce or Board of Trade doesn't adopt the line, 'Knifley, KY: No drinking or shooting to any amount' as a motto, they are missing a golden opportunity."I miss talking with him about bootleggers; the general pettiness of politics; the Death Industry (in appropriately hushed and reverential terms, of course) in Adair and surrounding counties and sometimes slipping him a bit of back story (rarely for publication) about this or that person who recently had joined the ranks of the dearly -- or perhaps the not-so-dearly -- departed; and I miss him acting both as mischievous instigator and solemn referee of debates on such topics as how much constitutes a passel. By any measure, we miss you a passel, old buddy, but your laughter and your love of family and friends and of all things Adair Countian live on. This story was posted on 2023-09-24 10:32:02
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