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Scenic Adair Co., KY: The town watchman 2012-06-10 - 201 Greensburg Street, Columbia, KY - Photo by Ed Waggener. It has been a quiet week in Columbia this week. Maybe too quiet. So many were on vacation; the town wasn't bustling with Lindsey Wilson students, and many events took people out of town. Except for the occasional Indy 500 wannabe (now unimpeded by the semi's which used to slow them down) racing around the Columbia Square it's been mostly quiet. On this early morning when the photo was made, only a single starling on the roof top of the house in the foreground appeared to keeping a vigil. There was a time when there was more of a day beginning bustle; when, back in the fifties, on the left, there was hot coffee in the Hotel Miller at this hour, Mr. Kimmons Bailey was out with a big broom and wheel barrow cleaning the streets, and a Columbia Police Cruiser was parked, protectively, on the Square, next to a small building on the Greensburg side of the Historic Adair County Courthouse. Along about that time, Columbia's uniformed night watchman, CPD Officer Owen Rowe, walked the Square and checked the doors of each business, making sure it was locked. At this dawn time, back then, on Sunday mornings, people would be reading their fat Sunday Courier-Journals which cost three times that of a daily C-J or absolutely wonderful afternoon Louisville Times: 15 cents. In fact, wealthier middle class and rich folks paid weekly delivered newspaper prices of 30 cents for a daily paper M-F; with a Sunday, the cost soared to 45 cents; and for those avid, twice daily readers - those who got the morning and afternoon editions - the outlay was 75 cents a week! Then, Columbia got a visit from a Louisville newspaper reporter several times a year, with an occasional 'Columbia is on the move' story with a local leader profiled against the Adair County Courthouse on less than annual but regular intervals. Now Columbia isn't even considered part of the Louisville papers circulation area. And I've heard - haven't bought one in years - that the Sunday Courier-Journal a skinny, thin one, is $3.00!!! About the price of a Prime Rib dinner at Hasenour's in the same era. - EW Permalink | Comments?

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