The True Citizen

I love a small town newspaper. Love love love.

We have a local small town newspaper. We don't subscribe to it, because technically, we don't quite live in this town, but we pick it up occasionally. I picked one up yesterday.

The True Citizen. $1. It's a steal.

Last night, while the Chief caught up on on-line news. I sat cross-legged on our bed and read The True Citizen.

After some time had passed he said, "You must be finding more to read in there than I did."
What was that suppose to mean? I have no idea.

I can find more to read in a small town newspaper than in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Any day.

Take the first page, for instance. You are not going to see Lee Boy's Barbecue featured on the front page of The AJC. You will not see a picture of "Pa" Richards leaning in over his grill testing that smoking meat with his fork, and another of Donna behind the counter.

You can smell the aroma of those ribs wafting right off the page almost. That's worth .50 right there.
Roy F. Chalker Jr. wrote the article. He's been to Lee Boy's three times in the last few weeks since he discovered it, and every last time he's been there, Sam Cummings, the mayor of Midville has been there too.

He asked the mayor if he eats every meal there.
The mayor said "No, just twice on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and once on Sunday."

This is news you can use. This is what news was made to be. I want to go to Lee Boy's now.

Also on the front page: Tyleasha (a teenager) stabbed her boyfriend, Jimmy in the neck with a filet knife. They've been living together on North Hill Street for three months. I guess it's not working out so well for Tyleasha and Jimmy. Jimmy's 32. He should have known better.

The lights went out for hundreds of residents of Burke County Monday night when a line of severe thunderstorms moved across the area. I know about that. That was the night the Chief thought we might as well be driving in it as sitting in it, and we drove by faith and not by sight.

And there's a tribute to Denzell "Snake" Warthen, a remarkable strong safety who met an untimely death when he went to sleep while he was driving. The title suggests a scholarship fund is being started in his honor but the article ends mid-sentence. There's no sign of it on page 2 or 3. Maybe it's continued somewhere...but who knows?
I don't search for it...

On page two are the pictures of the winners of the Annual Frog Jumping Contest held at the library.
 Sam Kyzer's frog "Jumpy" and Kayla Tinley's frog "Lizzie" won the contest.
Congratulations to "Jumpy" And "Lizzie" and their owners!
 This is life.

Also on page two: "Mad Anthony's Big Boom is on!" The people responsible to do it are raising money for the fireworks show on July the 3rd. I don't know who Mad Anthony is.
I should, maybe, but I don't.

We also learn how many people have died on account of the heat between 1979 and 2003. More than 8,000. How did they decide to reports statistics for this particular time-frame? I do not know. And where  did these untimely deaths occur exactly? In Burke county? South Africa? The whole world over? This might not be funny to the Chief but it leaves me giggling...

Page three. The swimming pool at Magnolia Springs is now open. This should help forestall heat-related deaths. (worth another .25, surely)

On page four there's a picture of Mr. and Mrs. Delaigle. They have been married for 65 years. They still look really happy. They are going to spend 3 days on Jekyll Island celebrating.

Page five is the opinion page. The editor (Roy F Chalker Jr.) talks some more about barbecue. Good man.

Don Lively talks about the voices in his head. The Quiet Voice and The Loud Voice. He explains about what they tell him in various circumstances: on the dance floor and during church, and on Saturdays when he should be doing lawn work.

(He's Baptist, so there is nothing that doesn't fit in that picture.)

Alongside the obituaries on page six, F. Leslie Jenkins Jr. wrote an entire column around this sentence "Don't do anything you can't do on a bicycle." You never thought of it, I bet, the virtues of limiting yourself in this way. Or the doability of writing a column on this. I bet it never once crossed the minds of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution people.

 Church News and Announcements are on page 7, as well as a devotional and the local businesses who sponsor the page. This takes up the entire page. There are a lot of churches.

On the flip side of the page is a line-up of  the mugs of people who were booked into the Burke County Jail last week. They should have gone to church.

Also on  page eight:
A man on Keysville Rd wants to know who's been growing marijuana in the woods behind his house. 125 plants. I bet he does.

The story about "Snake" is continued on page 9, I see.

On page ten it says about the High School Field getting a facelift, if plans hold.
And there's a picture of a bunch of darling children who attended the tennis clinic "earlier this summer", holding their rackets high.

There's also a picture of "Gabi". He's the featured pet of the week. His parent is Jessi Chandler. I'm not sure how that works.

On the back two pages are the classifieds.
Auctions you can attend. Houses and lands you can buy....If you don't live in a small town, I highly recommend you look into moving.

Here's some land for you: 56 to 142 acres in North Burke County: Old fields, wooded, county road frontage $1200-1500 an acre.

There are no personals. In a small town, people know people.
Love's Wedding Chapel will marry you, no blood test, no waiting. How neat is that??

And if you need someone to sit with Me-ma while you're at the ceremony, Ethelene Young will do it. She gives her number. It couldn't be handier. She doesn't mention references, but have you ever known an Ethelene who wasn't completely trustworthy? Me either.
That's worth at least a dollar all by itself, having Me-ma looked after by Ms. Ethelene while the wedding is going on.

The Chief can have his Drudge. And you can have your AJC.
Give me The True Citizen every time.