 By Alvin Engelke
alvinengelke@hotmail.com
Keith Belt filled his regular appointment at the Burning Springs M. E. Church. He reported that there was ice on his chariot Sunday morning.
Eva G. Pennington has been consulting with her physician.
The boys were working on a well on the dePue straight and one looked up and said, "There's a taxi! It's a yellow taxi." A little later our man was over by the road and the taxi driver stopped to ask directions for a person (who lives in Burning Springs) who has a Creston address. It seems that the Parkersburg post office had a taxi, with Ohio plates, deliver a parcel to Creston. One might wonder if Michael Bailey the postal pooh bah from Clarksburg who decided to save money by consolidation can explain this one. Perhaps this is "the better service" they talked about.
J. B. Runner, age 82, who formerly delivered coal, sand, gravel and block and later retired as second man at the Wirt state road passed away after complications from an infection from an operation. His wife is the former Audra Merrill whose folks were from Creston. He and the late Harry Belt also cut pulpwood and hauled it to Reedy to load on the train. After retiring from the highway department he and his wife worked as the hosts at a Braxton County campground.
Tina Holbert Lamp, age 38, passed away. She was the daughter of Oliver and Betty Walker Holbert and a granddaughter of Olga Ferrell and the late Carl Walker.
Carl & Donna Ferrell, Denver, Tammy & Mikki McFarland spent the weekend of October 12 camping at Bulltown. They went fishing and things got exciting when both Donna & Tammy caught a crappie at the same time. Later Carl and Denver did some more serious fishing with good results.
They went for romantic boat rides after dark & on one of these the captain ran aground even with the co-captain watching the depth finder and saying, "Four feet, 3 feet, 2 feet, 1 ft., no feet . . ." There was this awful scraping sound but, luckily, there was no puncture wounds to the hull and they were able to "get unstuck". They enjoyed fine dining around the campfire although there was some problem with flatulence. They got to watch a Civil War reenactment and in the evening the sky was lit up with the lights from the shooting of cannon as well as listening to the booming sounds.
To be seasonal they checked out the Halloween decorations of other campers, etc. Speaking of ghosts & goblins, it was reported that some very scary creatures might show up in Creston this weekend including such notables as Count Dracula, Werewolf and perhaps Madame Hillary.
There is a big timber job going on in Creston even though the price of most logs is down. An employee of a major state timber company noted that his firm had $3 million in logs in China and the ChiComs hadn't paid. Speaking of Chinese and money, Mrs. Clinton had a number of donors from the Chinese slums of New York who made minimum wage but gave up to $2,300 to her campaign. A search was made for the donors and many couldn't be found. Some years back the Chinese government "donated to the campaign" and received technical help which allows them to now direct ICBMs to American cities as well as the ability to destroy U. S. satellites, etc.
It was reported that there was a serious ATV wreck on Little Creek with a woman being taken by helicopter for care. Details are scarce.
Mr. Loudin who, along with other family members, built a cabin on the old Hunter F. Pell place bicycled to Elizabeth and back one day last week.
Charles Menefee was visiting Mr. & Mrs. Don Rhodes & daughter. The wooden frame on the trailer that Don had torn down caught fire and burned. Don said,
"I was sound asleep when it burned but some son of a _______ done me a big favor."
There was a big concrete pour over the weekend at the new Mowrey residence on the W. T. Petty farm.
Alvin & Nancy Engelke motored to Ohio Amish country to lay in some supplies, etc. Traffic was bumper to bumper with huge crowds everywhere. There was even a touring group of Corvettes going down the road to Charm. Colors were fair there and it looked like the harvest of corn and soya beans was going well. Some late alfalfa was being cut by horse drawn machinery.
A certain fellow, who has been on the lam for some time, decided that the lawmen were closing in on his hideout and that he would have to find some other place to lay low.
While the price of crude oil on the world scene went, for a while, above $90/bbl the local price for Penn grade crude was $82.50 which, in constant dollars, exceeded the price back when oil reached $38 some years ago.
Kenna Seal who used to be a school superintendent and now is a mogul in the education department at the Mouth of the Elk said he didn't mean to say that Lincoln County residents were "four wheel riding, dope smoking alcoholic rednecks." He said he meant to say that there are some people like that everywhere - no doubt he meant in places like Spanish Harlem, Cicero Illinois, East St. Louis, south central Los Angeles and such. Of course he didn't mean any rural West Virginia counties, now did he?. Around Creston ATVs are considered to be lots of fun as well as very useful for oil field and agricultural work. Perhaps Seal, like John Kerry windsails or some such.
A local resident was involved in a fracas at the high school out on the Mt. Zion ridge and is now lodged in the hotel up at Flatwoods.
The other day a local resident was going down I-77 to pick up some parts down in Cancer Valley when a semi passed and blew his horn. It was Rick Starcher who was heading south with a load. | 
