| By Alvin Engelke
 By Alvin Engelke
alvinengelke@hotmail.com
There were 27 for Sunday school at the Burning Springs M. E. church. The Marks family provided music and Rev. Paul Williams brought the message. Next week Rev. Carlos Nutter will serve Holy Communion.
Donna, Amy & Jeremy Ferrell were visiting Mary Ann Dobbins.
Gary dePue who is retired from the aluminum plant at Ravenswood and who farms on Spring Creek was inquiring about his cousin Jack dePue. Gary noted that his wife Wendy, who was a Roane magistrate had been on the sick list.
Anna Engelke attended a soccer convention in Philadelphia.
C. Romeo Griffin, Sr. was attending to business in Elizabeth.
Bessie Arthur was consulting with her ophthalmologist.
A couple of folks who have Creston roots made the Wood County magistrate court list.
Jack Nutter & Fred Bish tore down the old Gay Wright house which now belongs to the Creston Community Building.
Jane Engelke and Danielle Burns flew to Las Vegas on the occasion of the Miss America pageant. Kim Goodwin of Morgantown represented W. Va. and wore earrings that were custom designed by Jane. This was the second year that the earrings made a Tee Vee appearance. While there Jane visited with evening gown designers to acquire inventory for her store. Dress designer Sherry Hill met with several of Jane's clients and did custom designs for them for upcoming West Virginia pageants. There was quite a large contingent of people in Vegas supporting Miss West Virginia.
It should be noted that January 28 is the last day that one can file to run for office. Those who have a mind to run should do so. West Virginia rates 6th from the bottom on educational achievement so there is plenty of room for improvement if someone would like to take on the good old boy group who want test scores kept low so that can continue to rule.
Jane Engelke was doing her laundry when Cosmo, the classy canine, captured a mouse which he had in his mouth with the tail hanging out. He was a very proud fellow even if his mistress was not too impressed by the entire scenario.
Even though W. Va. unemployment figures hit a record low (lowest since records were kept) the highway folks down at the Mouth of the Elk are still singing tales of lower tax revenues. Of course it could be that some of the big outfits use off road diesel and some stations or jobbers do not pay their gasoline tax. In any event the big thing now is a multi year plan for routine maintenance and one outfit got "chewed out" because they had "zero" accomplishments. When asked why there was no ditching or mowing the answer was, "We were fighting snow." The expert then said "Oh", but about half an hour later he again asked why there were no accomplishments. When asked how all the wonderful new plans were to work his standard answer was, "I have no definite answer to that question at this time". There is to be a 6-year blacktop schedule, which obviously relates to planned years remaining in the Big Boss's anticipated tenure. Local maintenance people were told there was no money to maintain surface treated (tar & chip) roads and they would be turned back into mud and gravel roads. It was understood that roads in one county have already been ripped up and changed back. Some would say that this is about a 30-year setback in the state's highway maintenance program. Apparently, some feel that this is "all the peasants deserve".
The price of local Penn grade crude rose to $64.50 or 25 cents lower than Ohio & Pennsylvania. The increase is said to be related to terrorism in Nigeria (where they burn off $1 billion worth of natural gas each day) and the "eradicate Israel" statements made by the former hostage taker who is now "el presidente" in Iran. North Coast Energy which has some wells in Wirt County (& lots more elsewhere) sold some natural gas recently for $23.88/MCF. At the same time Chesapeake (formerly Columbia) only paid $7 or less that 1/3rd of what others received or paid.
While some of the big windbags in Washington cry about "doing something about high energy costs" to make themselves look good it seems that several of the bigger blowhards are doing quite well and they are able to hide their assets from public view. Recently it was learned that the Kennedy family has a trust set up in Fiji to avoid prying eyes, U. S. taxes and such.
Eastern American Energy recently sold some of their wells up in Ohio.
It was reported that Chesapeake Appalachia (which purchased Columbia Natural Resources) has two deep wells planned down in the Widen country.
Thieves have been busy stealing aluminum from folk's trailers while they were away and "Junkers" have been checking out places that do not belong to them. Perhaps some of them would like to bring in some hot lead rather than copper, iron, aluminum, etc.
The U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service will hold a meeting January 31 at Moon Township, Pennsylvania, which is near the Pittsburgh airport, on the status of the production and export of ginseng (sang). The meeting will start at 8 A. M. For details one must contact Pat Ford at her e-mail, patricia_ford@fws.gov. or Anne St. John at anne_stjohn@fws.gov. There will also be meetings for input at Asheville North Carolina and Indianapolis Indiana. They say they want the input of the public on the status of "sang". Last year to protect foreign growers some low level "civil servant" blocked export of both wild and wild grown ginseng.
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