A Mystery: Who is the COF? What is he?

Reader asks the question. We don't absolutely know. Ask help. But don't know if it's really something everybody needs to know

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By Ed Waggenr

Sue Perkins, frequent, trusted correspondent from Knifley, sends a question: "Ed," she writes, "can you tell me who COF is at Knifley"? The letter is signed "Sue Perkins." (Code name: Susie Q)

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In some ways, I'd like to answer that as quickly as a google search, but let me delve a little deeper before popping off a half baked answer.



CM get lots of emails purporting to be from The COF, an acronym for "Crusty Ole Fool." I'm fairly sure he is for real. I understand how you feel.It has fretted me, at times, too. So I'll let you know what I've found. But I may not reveal all I learn in the future.

I have a pretty good idea who he is, but since all the uproar over the CIA agent, I'd want to be pluperfectly, absodamlutely certain, before blowing the COF's cover. And, even then, I wouldn't go off half-cocked, the way some folks do starting wars. I'd think about telling who he is, if I ever am certain myself.
Could be, The COF will just 'fess up, announce hisself. Could happen, just like that; but don't expect it.

I'd also want to know that he is not a high level something in disguise. Or, like so many of we Knifleyans, have a double-recessive Shy Gene, have something to say, but would rather not be in front of a lot of people -- more than three -- saying it.

Of course we ought to be able to find out The COF's ID if we all put our minds to it. There aren't that many people in Greater Knifley, are there? Under 50,000 if you count all of Feathersburg, Roley, Royville, Liberty, Columbia, Campbellsville, plus Elkhorn and Egypt, wouldn't you say?

Just for starters, could you, Sue Perkins, confirm or deny: Are you the COF? That answer would leave no more than 49,999 suspects to go.

Does anybody at Baker's Store or the Crossroads Market know the COF?

We'll try the easy, obvious first. but this weighty conundrum may need more professional investigating; but it may be over our heads of ordinary CM readers. May need Jason Rector, the KAVFD, or even Post 15 level detecting to solve this perplexity.

Then again, the COF might better be leaving "The COF" alone. Just left be. We surely don't want to spook him and risk losing those entertaining letters, do we?

Still, I understand your curiosity and the interest of Adair Countians in Shelbyville and around the planet who wonder, "Who is The COF? What is he?"

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Comments on this Great Issue of Our Times are welcome.

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And we ask that you please join our feud with NPR announcers at Bowling Green, to teach them life's most necessary mnemonic device: There is no "knife" in nif-ley. If we succeed, we may discover they are not as learning challenged as they sometimes appear, that they may be able to learn some geography and understand that their radio station WDCL is actually on the Nar's, in Purdy, Adair County, Kentucky, and that you have to have a radio as powerful as the one on James Pyle's little Ford Falcon--which he said could pick up Radio Moscow down on Runix--plus a clear day to even get "WDCL, Somerset, KY, as they are wont to call it, anywhere east of Windsor. But we can't put everything aright in the world in a few days. We'll leave the battle over Truth in Broad- and Tele- cast Transmitter Locations for another battle, another day.

This story was posted on 2007-03-04 10:45:13